A burden for thee, but not for me…
For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost. But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.
Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.
The faculty vote came too late to stop the cost increases from taking effect this month, and the anger on campus remains focused on questions that are agitating many workplaces: How should the burden of health costs be shared by employers and employees? If employees have to bear more of the cost, will they skimp on medically necessary care, curtail the use of less valuable services, or both?
“Harvard is a microcosm of what’s happening in health care in the country,” said David M. Cutler, a health economist at the university who was an adviser to President Obama’s 2008 campaign. But only up to a point: Professors at Harvard have until now generally avoided the higher expenses that other employers have been passing on to employees.
Who would have thought that all of the smoke and mirror trickery to delay the real effects of Obamacare would hit people this hard?
Oh yeah, regular Americans who have been paying attention.
American academics are so used to spouting socialist Utopian nonsense while cashing fat capitalist paychecks that their delicate psyches aren’t prepared for the reality of their leftist fantasies. Most big -government elitists are fans of programs that put the burdens on anyone but them, and that is the way that these boondoggles are usually crafted. It is natural that they thought they’d get a pass on this.
This news would be thoroughly entertaining if this tragic reality weren’t already making middle-class Americans endure undue hardships.
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