Helping the Common Worker
So Aetna, a health insurer, is “helping” their low end workers by setting the floor wage at $16 an hour. A huge increase! Here is a snippet from an article in a recent WSJ:
Amid signs of a tightening labor market, Aetna Inc. plans to boost the incomes of its lowest-paid workers by as much as a third in a bid to draw top prospects and reduce turnover.
Sounds great, right? But weren’t they supposed to refunding money back to their customers if they were raking it in instead of now making it impossible for other industries to compete for these workers? Wasn’t the ACA supposed to put in controls so they could only make so much profit? I don’t understand these MLRs (medical loss ratios) but it just seems that hiding profit as salaries, from the CEOs to these low end workers, is a great way to make it seem that you are not making much money. Someone please explain this to me.
So they shouldn’t raise the wages of their workers so that others can keep their wages down too? Might I remind you that $16 an hour will equal $32,000 a year–not exactly a princely sum. You missed the mark on this one.
Depends on your perspective. The CEO made $30 million last year. He could have paid for that increase and they STILL could have refunded some premiums.
“So Aetna, a health insurer, is “helping” their low end workers by setting the floor wage at $16 an hour.”
Does this include MDs?