Labor/Employment,
Letters
Nov. 1, 2011
The demise of employer-provided health coverage
A reader responds to "The stork has landed: Employers (and insurers) must provide pregnancy benefits."
Michael H. Leb
Neutral
Leb Dispute Resolutions
Labor & Employment
Phone: (310) 284-8224
Fax: (310) 284-8229
Email: michael@lebdr.com
U Michigan Law School
THE NEUTRAL CORNER is a monthly column discussing recent cases or topics of interest from a neutral's perspective.
Helene Wasserman's informative piece on the amendments to pregnancy disability and insurance coverage laws ("The Stork Has Landed: Employers (and insurers) must provide pregnancy benefits," Oct. 27) decries the "staggering impact" the legislation will have on employers. Given Wasserman's career as counsel to employers, her perspective is not surprising. The impact, however, will be far more "staggering" on employees whose employers cancel insurance or move out of state completely. Given the nation-leading unemployment rate and huge number of uninsured, the last thing California needs is laws that give employers who can relocate another reason to do so, and force smaller businesses - which typically cannot move out of state - to choose between incurring enterprise-threatening cost increases or discontinuing employee health insurance benefits. With the nation's largest employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. having just announced it is discontinuing benefits for employees working fewer than 24 hours a week, it could hardly be clearer that employer-provided health coverage, a vestige of World War II-era wage controls, is on its last legs. Ill-conceived legislation like this simply hastens its demise.
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