Harvard Faculty Complains About Higher Costs Under Obamacare After Many of Them Backed It
These Harvard professors were all for Obamacare when they thought other people would be affected by it and pay for it.
Now that it’s at their doorstep? Not so much.
Robert Pear of the New York Times:
Health Care Fixes Backed by Harvard’s Experts Now Roil Its Faculty
WASHINGTON — 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. That makes the outrage among the faculty remarkable, Mr. Cutler said, because “Harvard was and remains a very generous employer.”
Health Care Fixes Backed by Harvard’s Experts Now Roil Its Faculty (The New York Times)
Comments
Welcome to the real world.
Oh this is really funny! They get a taste of their own medicine. They now have to swallow what they doled out and supported for the rest of America. They thought they were going to cut a fat hog in the a$$ by skating out of Obamacare. Now, they realize and resent that they aren’t anyone special, they aren’t the elite, and they’ve been brought down to earth like the rest of us. Poor babies, enjoy your whine.