General Consultant Discussion

OBAMACARE STRIKE COULD SHUT DOWN LAS VEGAS HOTELS Buzz Feed: ""Contract negotiations are stalled for thousands of workers at casinos on the Strip and in downtown Las Vegas to the point where they may go on strike and the sticking point is Obamacare. On Feb. 20, thousands of housekeepers, porters, cooks, cocktail servers, and others represented by Nevada's largest union, the Culinary Union Local 226, voted to end a contract extension the workers agreed to last summer. The union wants to maintain its current benefits including health care coverage at no cost to workers, pensions, and guaranteed 40-hour workweeks. Rising health care costs due to provisions in the Affordable Care Act could put those benefits in jeopardy, the union says. 'The biggest hurdle to reaching settlements in Vegas is the new costs imposed on our health plan by Obamacare,' Donald 'D' Taylor, president of Unite Here, the parent union of CU Local 226, told BuzzFeed in a statement. 'Even though the president and Congress promised we could keep our health plan, the reality is, unless the law is fixed, that won't be true.' On March 20, workers will have the opportunity to decide whether or not they would want to walk off the job at several hotels, including the Stratosphere, the Riviera, and the Plaza.

Now this will be interesting if they extend talks up to July .. right during our meeting.

DC made sure we had water. Vegas will make sure we have culinary workers.

Ohh...fresh red meat for me.... Of course, the president, again unconstitutionally and illegally just extended compliance with Obamacare plans another 2 years to push it out past the coronation of Hillary Clinton. I bet many of you didn't even know this. Yet a few dollars are shuffled around by a Christie person over sandy funds for a town in NJ due to politics and its headline news in the mainstream media for months. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101469265

So it is just a matter of cost shifting. Somebody is going to end up paying for underfunded healthcare. Having associated with healthcare in one way or another for nearly 30 years, America is in a healthcare crisis no matter how you split the hairs - Anyone read last week's Time magazine article on childhood obesity?? Truly frightening!!!! Worried about adopting a Canadian or European model on healthcare rationing? Unthinkable right? Folks, it is happening NOW. Ever had a procedure denied by the insurance company? If that isn't rationing, what is? Local hospital just wrote of $40 MILLION last year in financial assistance and unreimbursed care, that's right, $40 Million, one year, one hospital!! Who is paying for that? Insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid and people who have some cash that aren't broke. We can argue all day about making the medical community more transparent, giving people information so they can go to the market place and get the Wal-Mart price, but at the end of the day, there is still an incredibly big elephant in the room and unless SOMETHING is done to fix it, we are all going do the tubes. The Vegas union is incredibly lucky that they have insurance. Let's do something for those that don't.

From the union's perspective, they would be fine if the reduction in healthcare benefit-premiums now paid by employer were made up by an after-tax equivalent raise in their pay. This is about employee compensation, not healthcare.

There are some major ways to cut costs in the healthcare system that weren't even scratched in the ACA due to the power of the trial attorney association and the fact that the vast majority of people in congress/whitehouse/supreme court are all lawyers (and yes, according to the constitution, you do NOT need to be a lawyer to be on the supreme court) The amount of over testing done and insane paperwork and regulation to deal with the threat of litigation as well as government regulation is insane. If our businesses were like doctors, for each one of us billable we'd need 3-6 non-billable employees. That's why there rates equal 3-6 ours just to make what we make and then they have to make up for like 8 extra years of college and grueling residency years making next to nothing per hour. If healthcare regulation could get the lobbies and lawyers out, the costs would drop DRAMATICALLY. If we eliminated health insurance as it exists and moved to a catastrophic only model (like we have in almost every other insurance such as car, home etc) people would actually shop for healthcare based on price, value, service etc. Right now, when was the last time you ever asked your doctor how much a procedure, test etc was? Probably never other than maybe the measly co-pay amount which is set by the insurance company. By putting insurance companies in place (which are really just payment administrators for the most part) it's completely distorted the market. If you'll notice the skyrocketing of healthcare costs has pretty closely coincide with the increase in the amount of people with health insurance and the amount of stuff health insurance covers

@MarkChinsky - Wow, we agree on something....