Health care: Microsoft ending 100% coverage for employees

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/10/health_care_microsoft_employees_to_share_in_their_costs_in_2_years.html

by cwan • 16 years ago

44 38 16 years ago

ajg1977• 16 years ago

An out of pocket maximum of $1k ($2.5k for families) is still a very good deal.

Bottom line - If you're generally healthy it won't make that much of a difference. If you or a family member require expensive care, or you're unfortunate enough to be in a serious accident, you'll still be very glad you're covered by MSFT.

DougWebb• 16 years ago

If you're generally healthy and have health costs < $1000/yr, then this could mean going from 100% coverage to 0% coverage, depending on how they set it up. Still a great deal for accidents, though, compared to what most people have.

whakojacko• 16 years ago

I highly doubt its 0% covered until $1k/year out of pocket-Probably something like 80%.

pyre• 16 years ago

Out-of-pocket maximum means that $1k is the maximum that you'll pay for anything. It probably scales up to the point where your portion is $1k, and after that MSFT picks up the rest of the bill.

enjo• 16 years ago

An out of pocket maximum is generally not the same as a deductible. My wife and I have a similar plan now. It's $1500 (I think) maximum, but we still only pay the routine $20 co-pay for normal visits... $75 for emergency room.

I don't think we've ever actually spent more than $100 out of pocket over and above the monthly premiums. If something went terribly wrong, however, that cap would mean we'd owe at most $1500/yr. That worked out well for my father when my mom had cancer. 4 years of treatment totaling WELL over $1M, and I think he paid like $3500 total.

woan2• 16 years ago

I don't know any other companies this generous even after the change in two years.

ahi• 16 years ago

Microsoft is generous with their employees, but stingy when it comes to defining "employee".

bhiggins• 16 years ago

Microsoft is also great at dodging taxes.

salemh• 16 years ago

Goldman Sachs if not in parity, very close.

erreon• 16 years ago

Almost a year ago IBM announced they were going to cover Health Care for employees at 100%.

Press Release source: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28728.wss

woan2• 16 years ago

Interesting, I was there when they went from full coverage to the co-pay PPO/HMO model, as well as when they went from pensions to 401K retirement.

Some of this seems to be in line with healthcare reform, i.e. no-copay preventative care.

zach• 16 years ago

"We can confirm that Microsoft has begun to evolve its employee health care benefit," the company said in statement.

Wow, way to make it sound more ominous, corporate PR person. You could have just said you were knocking your benefits down a peg, but no, it's only the beginning of Microsoft's benefits turning into... well, what? Something much less generous, I guess.

Here I thought Microsoft was just bowing to the enormous costs of health benefits, but with that turn of phrase, it seems like Microsoft has some kind of new attitude.

lkrubner• 16 years ago

I wonder why they would make this announcement now? Why not a year ago, or a year in the future? My first guess would be there margins are slipping, or they expect there margins to be thinner in the next few years. Thus, they are starting to look for some minor cost savings.

jf• 16 years ago

The announcement was timed to coincide with Microsoft's Open Enrollment period - which opens in November.

lanstein2• 16 years ago

Nope, the changes don't take effect for two years.

saratogacx• 16 years ago

I would suspect that some of the timing may have been based on the outcome of the Obama health care bill. With additional requirements like insuring until children are 26 and things like that it makes it more expensive to provide health care.

marclove6• 16 years ago

I think its nice that they're telling employees about the change this far in advance. Most employers will tell you about this a couple weeks before the prices get jacked up or the benefits get slashed. It shows a lot of respect for their employees.

eclark• 16 years ago

The healthcare coverage was something that drew me in when I started work at Microsoft. It showed a pretty serious level of respect to their employees.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

While MS's health care coverage had been very "generous" previously, make no mistake: this is a pay cut for every MS employee.

cartano• 16 years ago

I am already on an HSA so this actually is a pay increase for me.

lanstein2• 16 years ago

Incidentally, how is it that Mary Jo Foley has her name spelled wrong on her blog heading?? (with a hyphen)

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-tweak-emplo...

natmaster• 16 years ago

When you're taxed heavily by the government for having 'premium coverage', it kind of gives you the incentive to make the coverage crappier.

marclove6• 16 years ago

Nice try, but the the excise tax on "premium" plans doesn't go into effect until 2018. So if their only motivation was taxes, they'd have waited.

Furthermore, I'm not losing any sleep about the government taxing only the portion of the value of a health plan that exceeds $27,500/yr -- in other words, the first $27,500 remains tax-free -- when the average employer-sponsored health plan is valued at $13,375/yr (2009). And here's what a $20,400/yr plan looks like:

For the secretaries and environmental engineers, game wardens and van drivers who work for the state of New Hampshire, surgery is free, even at Boston’s top teaching hospitals if it’s necessary. So are MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays.

Pregnant women pay nothing for prenatal care; alcoholics aren’t billed for short stints in rehab. Seeing a therapist costs just $10, as many as 20 visits a year, and prescription drugs top out at $30 for a three-month mail-order supply. New Hampshire state employees get $450 annually toward gym memberships, if they go regularly, or $200 toward their own treadmill - and there’s a $150 annual reimbursement for yoga classes, diabetes clinics, and nutritional counseling.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/0...

Yea, cry me a river if well-paid employees now have to buy their own treadmills or pay for their own rehab.

larrywright• 16 years ago

So if a company (or state government in your example) wants to provide health care benefits to be competitive in the marketplace, they should be penalized for that?

Additionally, your statement about "well-paid employees" doesn't seem to fit with the article you quoted. Secretaries and van drivers aren't generally highly paid positions.

d2viant3• 16 years ago

It doesn't matter that the tax takes effect in 2018. The "premium" plans are increasing their costs as soon as next year in anticipation of that eventual reality. Companies which have open enrollment coming up soon are seeing these increased costs and dropping plans or reevaluating the type of coverage they offer.

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

Goodbye last conceivable reason to ever go back to Microsoft.

fizx2• 16 years ago

I've heard of people who've worked at microsoft for exactly their chosen childbearing years. It's equivalent to 2x+ salary, and a nice paragraph on the resume.

tptacek• 16 years ago

Help me understand this math? We've had 2. They're expensive (and ours were both complicated births), but 2x?

fizx2• 16 years ago

The maternity leave was ridiculously long. So not so much 2x salary, but they worked 1/2 time.

larsberg• 16 years ago

This may have an impact on recruiting senior hires. It didn't come up often, but when recruiting folks with families and getting on in years -- especially with pre-exiting conditions -- this benefit helped close people who had salary and stock package offers from other companies that I couldn't match. It's really hard to argue with 100% coverage for even things like autism treatment and visits to naturalists/homeopathic-care, which was quite unusual at the time.

shasta• 16 years ago

Wow, this is a gonna be a $2.5K pay cut for us, straight up. We used to take our kids to the doctor whenever they were showing signs of sickness - fever, cough, runny nose, skinned knees. Now we're going to have to weigh whether they're sick enough to shell out $20 to take them to the doctor. And I guess this is the end of lollipop Tuesdays.

Health care: Microsoft ending 100% coverage for employees

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