I wish the newspaper article had done a more complete job (but that is often asking too much). From what I know, the reporter didn't bother to mention that the in-house plan is essentially a Blue Shield plan. The hospital used the Blue Shield PPO network for its access-- except retaining the risk in-house saves the 15% or so profit margin Blue Shield expects,  In other words, they get a better plan for less money because the hospital was able to slide through the faith-based loophole. Cheers, Herb

The potential issue in this situation is that the hospital is using a faith-based exemption, provided to protect the religious interests of the institution, to achieve a purely secular purpose.  Exploitation of these kinds of "loopholes" even if legally legitimate, and this one is suspect, tend to water down the value of religious exemptions as a whole. 

In other words, "faith based exemptions" are not seen as a legitimate excuse for bad behavior.  Of course, in this situation, there is a contract  (i.e. employee handbook) that employees are asked to abide by - perhaps the institution should as well?  If not, it should be made eminently clear that the alternative provides significantly more benefit to the employee, or the employee should have the option of choosing which program to follow.

It is a negative enough experience to be laid off, and this is amplified by this poor decision.  In the future, publicity of these types of situations will likely lead to a "legislative correction" removing any religious exemption. 

Also, these types of decisions, along with attempts to escape scrutiny for employment discrimination, etc., by claiming religious exemptions while preserving purely secular goals that non-religious entities cannot achieve, will cut against these institutions when it comes to warding off unionization, etc.

The hospital's decision in this case as described in the article may be for short-term gain but in the long-term will endanger goodwill and create exposure to further problems down the road. 

The news article seems to assume that continued access to the internal plan is not COBRA. Is it factual that offering continued access to an internal health plan (the same health benefit that the former employees previously had as employees) does not fulfill the legal demands of the COBRA law? It seems to me that the journalist is very remiss in making an assumption on this question without citing any evidence.

On the other hand, to use the religious exemption in this case (for a secular purpose, as Michael points out) is really, really bad ethics. It sounds like the kind of decision that gets made when you have too many lawyers and MBAs in the room and no one with a clear voice for God's will.

There is a larger issue here: The continued willfulness of the American people to maintain a unique health system that the rest of the world has found inefficient, too costly and unfair to the marginalized. Faith-based, nonprofit health ministries are forced by this system ("managed care") to behave in ways that are unethical, not really faith-representative and driven by profit-motive. These issues keep coming up in Adventist hospitals across the country and in many other nonprofit hospital systems. The American people (especially the politicians) are partly to blame because we cannot seem to bite the bullet and make the transition to a single-payer system such as operates in Canada and all the other industrialized nations on the globe. (And please don't trot out the propaganda about waiting, etc.; anyone who has been there knows that it is simply not true that the quality of service, the wait time, the rationing, etc., is any worse than what you get in America now. In fact, in many cases it is better.)

I don't understand why they don't get COBRA.  The companies with COBRA charge a small administration fee along with the insurance premium. Private insurance is very expensive after COBRA.  Because you are faith-based doesn't mean you can't take care of your employees.  Faith-based means you should do what you can to help laid-off employees, not the other way around.  Get real!!

From the article:

"The Adventist health benefits offered to laid-off workers provide continued coverage for three months, but with services to be obtained at an Adventist facility, Nobriga said. After the three months is over, former employees must pay $400 a month for insurance and continue to use the Adventist facility. "

 

I don't get it, that is what COBRA is, after not being an employee you are allowed to pay the premium that you would have paid to get the health insurance as an employee. That lasts from 18 to 36 months depending on the employer and or disability.

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Q2: What does COBRA do?
COBRA provides certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children the right to temporary continuation of health coverage at group rates. This coverage, however, is only available when coverage is lost due to certain specific events. Group health coverage for COBRA participants is usually more expensive than health coverage for active employees, since usually the employer pays a part of the premium for active employees while COBRA participants generally pay the entire premium themselves. It is ordinarily less expensive, though, than individual health coverage.

http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_cobra.HTML

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Under COBRA, employers have the responsibility of notifying their covered employees, spouses, and dependents when they become eligible to continue coverage. COBRA coverage for beneficiaries must also be identical to that provided to similarly situated active employees and their dependents. The exception is that firms may charge COBRA beneficiaries up to 102 percent of the average employer cost of providing health insurance under its group plan rather than the rate that is nominally charged to active employees which is often highly subsidized. (The average COBRA premium is about $400 per month.)

 http://www.iatrogenic.org/library/economics/Cobra.html

 

 

 

This issue is troubling from a couple of angles.  When AH wants to pay hundreds of thousands in huge salaries to AH administrators, AH distances themselves from the Church that provides them a faith-based connection.  When AH wants to save a few thousand AH wants a close connection, how disingenuous.