I don't want to start a riot....

[PrincessFiona]

but....here goes anyway

The CEO of Target took home 19.5 MILLION Dollars this year....and Target is cutting it's health insurance for its part timers and is watering down the health benefits for its full-time workers....I guess this is capitalism at its worst.....

So here is my question...if you were president, how would you make changes in our society so that all working people were insured?


kris

Kris,
You crack me up .
That is an insane amount of money. Re: the insurance thing -- a hard question to answer. If the federal government required employers to provide health insurance that would probably turn into some sort of gigantic mess. But Target cutting back on people's health insurance? Come on .... maybe make them pay more of the share of the cost....but the individual market for insurance sucks. Don't they realize that a healthy workforce is a more productive workforce? That employees miss work or quit if they become too sick to work?

[Rapunzel]

Good question.

[Meenah]

Oh my goodness Kris, finally you have convinced me to go to Walmart.
That is horrible.
Luanne

Kmart, here I come....
Seriously, a very good question... I'm still thinking.
Then again, Kmart has good customer service and since it went into bankruptcy, I have found I can run in and out in a flash.
Shame on Target's President, just shame.

apologies - stupid questions

Is health insurance essential and why do employers pay for it?

[PrincessFiona]

health insurance

The problem in the US is that many people are uninsured (or underinsured)....this means that if they are sick and have to go to hospital that they get billed for it....and if they are underinsured (like my friend whose child had a bad accident and will be in the ICU for another month) once the insurance runs out, you owe that money....they can sue you for it, ruin your credit report and deny any non-emergency care.....

My mother right now is 59 years old. She lost her insurance after my parent's divorce and won't receive govt insurance until she's 65. In the meantime, she works full-time w/o benefits and avoids going to the Dr unless something catastrophic happens...and tries to avoid it then too because she can't afford to pay for it. (Fortunately, my mom will be starting a new job in June with full benefits)

kris

[houseelf]

Kris,

I have a difficult time dealing with the magnitude of this individual's salary in comparison of his employees. On NPR a couple of weeks ago, some economist said that one contributing aspect of the current problem with the general economy including layoffs and corporate scandals is the overall general inflation of CEO salaries. I can't remember the figures exactly, but in decades past, the CEO of a corporation generally made about 40 times the salary of his employees. In current times, the average CEO makes about 1000 times the salary of his/her employees. At what point do the stockholders say, "get real", your salary robs this company of profit, employee benefits, etc.

Anyway, that is my rant of the day.

Kelly

Kelly -- I totally agree. The layoff situation is really depressing -- especially in light of the corporate salaries that get paid. (And everyone talks about the CEO but it is also a lot of the others -- COO, CFO, etc). And I just don't buy the "you need to pay someone adequately to steer to company through tough times" arguement. These people make so much money I don't think they could spend it if they tried.

I do think that some layoffs were justified. At the company I worked at we did some reasonable layoffs after an nasty corporate merger. We definitely had some deadweight and were overstaffed in some functions. But then the cuts just kept coming and get deeper and deeper. I took a huge risk and told my boss that I wanted to be laid off. (I was lucky because I got one of the earlier, better severance packages and missed out on what became ridiculous 60-70 hour workweeks for my co-workers that were left behind.)

But, while all that was happening, our CEO (a real slimeball if ever there was) decided that he needed to start selling his options that were coming up. He had SO MANY options that he had to schedule w/ the SEC to sell a set number of shares per day for the next few years so that his stock sales would not have an adverse effect on the stock price or the industry market. Can you believe that? I think he was selling something like $300K/ day. Thank goodness the board finally ousted him but it was way, way too late.

[Rapunzel]

You know what's worse? CEO's that get huge mega-million $$ salaries with the justification that they NEED to be paid that amount to run a multi-million dollar corporation and then turn around and bankrupt and/or ruin the company! THAT is truly obnoxious. The severence pays for the chief officers who are basically "fired" are astronomical (ie the "golden parachute"). I think if a company's board is going to fire an individual who makes $10 million + PER YEAR then they need to nix a "severence package" and just tell the loser to take a hike. Talk about greedy.

[PrincessFiona]

You know what's worse? CEO's that get huge mega-million $$ salaries with the justification that they NEED to be paid that amount to run a multi-million dollar corporation and then turn around and bankrupt and/or ruin the company!

No KIDDING....You know American Airlines nearly filed bankruptcy this past month. My dad flies for them and so I got to hear a lot of the inside scooperoo...apparently, American was suffering financially before 9/11..and 9/11 didn't have the dramatic impact that they portrayed in the media...it did effect an already faltering business...but it was more the final nail in the coffin kind of a thing.

Anyway, the pilots, flight attendants and ground crew all agreed to a 25% pay cut to keep American from going into bankruptcy because they would then lose all of the retirement that they had. (Of course). After the 25% was passed through the unions it came out that the CEOs had voted themselves HUGE bonuses for the year (ummm..hellllllooooo) and not only that, they were planning on shuffeling away 40 million dolloars to private retirement funds that would be unaffected by a bankruptcy for their handful of CEOs...it would have meant a cool couple million per executive tucked away outside the reach of bankruptcy court.

The flight attendants protested and so these guys had to back off of their grandiose plans.

Capitalism at its finest.

I have a great 'cure' for our ailing health insurance problem. These companies that are embezzling money etc should (as payment to society) be required to pay millions of dollars in fines into a special fund that would be reserved to supplement small businesses so that they could provide a variety of health insurance opps for their employees....and...any company like Wal-Mart (which also has shitty insurance benefits and screws its employees Luanne) or Target or McDonalds would be required by LAW to supply all of its employees with at least two different options of health insurance.

We can keep the govt out of this. The insurance plans would be private or HMOs....but there is no flippin' excuse for these companies whose CEOs are earning millions to not provide health care...

AND btw...this whole BS about the CEOs of HMOs earning millions and denying cancer tx....should be illegal.

rant, rant, rant...

kris

[Meenah]

Kris,
I'm with you 100% on this one!!!!!
Luanne

[SueC]

Wow, how do these people sleep at night?

[PrincessFiona]

sleep

Wow, how do these people sleep at night?

On very expensive mattresses with silk sheets and down feathered pillows!!!!

kris