How’s that hope and change thing working for you Kool Aid drinkers that voted for Imam Obama?
Microsoft’s gold-plated employee health-care benefits are losing a bit of their gleam. The company told its employees today that they will be required to start contributing to their health care coverage beginning in two years. Microsoft is currently among a relatively small number of large U.S. corporations — and one of very few tech giants — that pay all of their employees’ health-care premiums.
“We can confirm that Microsoft has begun to evolve its employee health care benefit,” the company said in statement. “There will be no changes for the next two years, but in 2013, employees will contribute to their health care.”
Although Microsoft is unusual in paying for 100 percent of health-care benefits, the risk in requiring contributions is that full coverage might have been a factor keeping some employees at the company, or persuading talented recruits to join. However, the company said “a guiding principle in this evolution is that Microsoft will continue to offer market-leading health and wellness benefits that rank among the best in the country.”
The move appears to anticipate rising costs under U.S. health-care reform initiatives, said insurance agent Jonathan Hanson of Hanson Benefits in Kirkland, who specializes in employee benefits.
Microsoft’s health-care benefits have traditionally been “very rich” compared with those offered by most corporations, Hanson said. He likened the forthcoming contribution requirement to telling people who get free Jaguars that they’re going to need to start paying for part of the car’s air conditioning.
Microsoft didn’t quantify the changes as part of its public statement, but Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reports that there will be out-of-pocket maximums starting between $1,000 and $2,500 for catastrophic illnesses. She reports that the company is encouraging employees to set up health savings accounts.
