If The Senate Wants To "Probe" Us, Kiss Us First!

In another example of the Federal government overstepping the limits of its constitutional authority, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., opened a probe into the limited benefit “mini-med” plans that McDonald's Corp., the world's largest restaurant chain, offers to employees.


Sen. Rockefeller asked Scott Beacham, CEO of BCS Financial Corp., whether the company's health offerings amount to a good deal for many of McDonald's low-wage and hourly employees. Closely held BCS Financial, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., offers limited-benefit plans that cover 30,000 employees of McDonald's, based about a mile away in Oak Brook, Ill.

Mini-med programs are designed to offer a low-cost way to cover part-time employees with limited benefits. McDonald's told the Obama administration it may consider dropping the plans if it couldn't get a waiver from new rules governing insurance products.

“The products BCS is selling to McDonald's employees are not likely to protect them against the costs of a major health care episode,” Sen. Rockefeller said in his letter. “If this is the case, McDonald's hourly wage workers are setting aside portions of their paychecks for an insurance product that may not be providing them a good value.”

Apparently, Rockefeller is uniquely qualified to determine what represents a good value to the consumer.

The plans are typically offered to companies with part-time workforces in high turnover industries that don’t make enough to afford coverage, or for which it might be prohibitively expensive to insure, said Daryl Richard, a spokesman for Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth Group Inc., which offers limited benefit plans to about a dozen companies.

Under the unconstitutional health overhaul signed by President Obama in March, companies are banned from capping yearly coverage for workers.

The cost of including all employees in a traditional plan could represent as much as a 500 percent increase, bringing costs from 1 percent to 5 percent of store revenue in an industry with very tight margins.

In his letter, Sen. Rockefeller asked BCS to provide information on what limits the plans put on coverage, information about how extensively McDonald’s employees use the plans, and how the company sells the products to the McDonald’s workers. BCS has close ties to Blue Cross & Blue Shield insurance plans, through members of its board, according to its website.

I hate to sound like a constitutionalist version of the Detrimental Cowboy, but Obamacare is positioning itself to force employers into a nationalized plan that will end up eliminating the private health insurance industry.

Even though Obamacare will be supposedly funded by an employer tax, Americans are being naïve if they do not understand that such a tax will simply result in higher prices through inflation.

Sadly, this is less about access to care and more about a Federal power grab. And contrary to what our liberal blogging cowboy says, this is not about political parties, this is a bipartisan power grab.

Each time the government gains control of something they gain power. That’s what this is about. The government gaining power and further bleeding the wealth of the American people through higher taxes and inflation.

Open your mouth, say “aahhh” and bend over, America.