Crazy Employee Benefits Offered By Companies, Jennifer Parris, FlexJobs

Gone are the days when job seekers were happy to simply get hired. Now, top-tier talent can negotiate for—and get—some pretty cool perks from their jobs. So the next time you’re in the middle of a job interview, find out about some potential perks your new company might offer. Below are a few crazy employee benefits offered by companies to pique your interest.

Here are some crazy employee benefits offered by flexible companies:

1. Unlimited vacation days.

This is a new trend that is quickly becoming popular with employers. Eager to avoid paying out unused vacation days to its employees, more and more companies are offering unlimited vacation days. As long as your work stays stellar and you’re in communication with your boss and coworkers, you can travel around the world, spend time with your family, care for your aging parents—for as long as you want. Companies such as Umbel, ZestFinance, and Prezi all offer unlimited vacation days.

2. Ride the wave.

Forget about surfing the Internet. Employees who work for Patagonia, which sells outdoor clothing and equipment, are given company bikes, access to volleyball courts, and even on-site yoga. But Patagonia steps it up one more notch—the company also allows workers to catch a wave in the middle of the workday. And to ensure that employees hang 10, the reception desk posts daily surf reports on days when waves are killer.

3. Keep it clean.

Weebly offers lots of crazy cool employee benefits, such as a company credit card, gym memberships, and bi-monthly massages. And staffers get one more fun perk—a $50 monthly credit to Exec, a housecleaning and errand-running service.

4. Score some VIP treatment.

After getting their work done for the day, employees of Quicken Loans get to unwind at any event at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, OH. From sitting courtside at a Cleveland Cavaliers game, they can also attend concerts, comedy shows, and other events at the stadium—transportation included.

. Have a personal assistant.

Life can get in the way of work—but not for the employees at SC Johnson & Son. There, staffers get to enjoy that fun thing called work-life balance, thanks to an on-site employee concierge who handles everything from picking up groceries to shopping around for the best car insurance. They’ll even stand in line for you if you want to see Bruce Springsteen in concert!

Here are other crazy employee benefits our researchers have come across over the years:

• Pet insurance
• Free mechanical bull rides at the bar across the street
• Free season passes to local ski resort
• All the snacks you can carry
• Discounts on homeowner and auto insurance
• Free lunch daily
• Fridge stocked with snacks
• Apple laptop and workstation
• Free beer on Fridays
• Housing provided
• Two hours of free housecleaning services a month
• Bring your dog to work
• “We promise not to poke you with a sharp stick.”
• Free gym membership
• Unlimited usage of the company Ping-Pong table

Drug Prices Got You Down? Pharma Couldn’t Care Less.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, April 12, 2016Source link

One way of defining a “rogue” industry is to see which ones have declared war on their customers. By that measure, pharma stands at or near the top of combining the elements that go into making a rogue: contempt for the public and the unmitigated pursuit of greed.

In the midst of the 2016 presidential campaign, unaffordable drug prices are again among the handful of top issues that all candidates must address. By quick reckoning, this marks the seventh presidential campaign cycle where that situation applies. At the same time Congress is also holding hearings on rising drug prices and several members petitioned the Secretary of Health & Human Services to assert “march in” rights (i.e., suspend patents) on the most egregiously priced brands. The leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, wears the albatross around her neck of receiving more contributions from pharma than any other candidate.

As the recipient of all this political and media heat, one might think pharma would lie low and suppress its price gouging until after the November election, thereby allowing the amnesiac American public to refocus its attention onto some celebrity transgression or cute animal video.

But pharma doesn’t see the need for even a temporary respite. This week a Reuters analysis revealed that in the five years since 2011, prices on the nation’s 10 top-selling drug products increased between 50 and 126 percent.

Reuters’ Caroline Humer wrote that compared to the outrageous 5,000 percent drug price hikes engineered by outlier executives such as Martin Shkreli, “Routine price increases by bigger players may draw less attention, but they add up.” Using figures from the pharma data supplier IMS, she found that sales revenues for the 10 best-selling drugs went up 44 percent between 2011 and 2014, even while prescriptions for those medications declined 22 percent during that time.

The drug industry’s spokesmen respond that these increases reflect published prices and do not take into account rebates and other discounts. Yet pharmacy benefit managers told Reuters that even after rebates, they have been forced to pay 10 percent annual price increases on these top-selling medications during a period when the U.S. consumer price index rose by a yearly average of 2 percent.

Pharma not only brazenly increases its prices during a period of intense media and political scrutiny, but it also refuses to recognize the objective reality that drugs are increasingly unaffordable. The industry instead prefers to define the situation as one of public misperception that pharma must address with a proactive PR campaign.

Last month The Hill reported that Steve Ubl, the new president of PhRMA, pharma’s trade group, plans to add “top scientists and researchers” to its stable of professional lobbyists and to hire “patients who have benefited from some of the newest, and most costly drugs” to meet with lawmakers.

Ubl acknowledged that the trade group would abandon its largely defensive approach in favor of developing a proactive policy agenda and driving its adoption. Ubl told The Hill, “going on offense” refers to defeating federal policy changes that would “limit price increases.”

Medication costs now account for 16.7% of all health care spending and nearly 20 percent of every dollar that employers spend on health insurance benefits. The recent pace of drug cost growth makes it the fastest growing component of health care spending. The reality of growing drug unaffordability was seen two years ago in a Commonwealth Fund report that showed one in five U.S. adults could not fill their prescriptions or skipped doses because of the costs, twice the proportion of patients in Germany, Canada and Australia that are impeded from their medications by cost.

Yet pharma ignores this stark reality and the plight of its American customers by continuing to raise its prices at an intolerable rate. At the same time its response to complaints by the public and their elected officials consists of an aggressive PR campaign to hoodwink the public and seduce politicians. Not only does the industry rebuff all efforts to moderate its prices, but it also opposes calls for more transparency on the product development spending with which it justifies those prices.

If pharma isn’t an out of control, rogue industry, then the term lacks all meaning.

Sacramento Business Journal, March 22, 2016. Kent Hoover

It’s as if the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits for small businesses were designed to fail: Six years after Obamacare was enacted, few companies are taking advantage of tax breaks that were supposed to make health insurance more affordable.

Only 181,000 small businesses claimed the Small Employer Health Insurance Tax Credit in 2014, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s only a fraction of the 1.4 million to 4 million small businesses that were estimated to be eligible for the tax break, which covers a portion of an employer’s contributions to their workers’ health insurance premiums.

Businesses with fewer than 25 employees with average wages of less than $50,000 (adjusted for inflation — $51,800 in 2016) are eligible for the tax credit if they cover at least 50 percent of the cost of individual coverage for their workers.

So why aren’t more small businesses taking advantage of the tax credit?

The reasons vary from the credit being too small compared with the overall cost of health insurance, to it being too complicated to figure out. (Only companies with fewer than 10 employees and average wages of $25,900 or less are eligible for the full tax credit, which is worth up to 50 percent of premiums paid by the employer. The value of the credit phases down as a company’s size and wages go up.)

Also, beginning in 2014, you had to buy insurance through a Small Business Health Options Program exchange in order to qualify for the tax credit. These SHOP exchanges were supposed to give small businesses a better deal on insurance by increasing competition in the small group market, but they’ve proved to be a flop.

The SHOP requirement proved to be the reason why Buffalo Supply Inc., a medical supplies and equipment company in Lafayette, Colorado, couldn’t take advantage of the health insurance tax credit. Executive Chairman Harold Jackson told the House Small Business Committee in a hearing entitled “Lip Service but Little Else: Failure of the Small Business Health Insurance Tax Credit” that he ran into problems when he tried to enroll in Colorado’s SHOP exchange last year. First, the online application asked for a lot of information he didn’t have — such as the Social Security numbers, dates of birth and tobacco use of his employee’s spouses and dependents. Then, after he spent two or three days gathering this information, and 10 hours entering it into the SHOP system, he couldn’t figure out how to review the insurance plans that were available.

“I called the 800 number, and they told me they don’t give quotes to small businesses. The SHOP representative said I needed to go through a broker. When I called a broker, clearly he had heard from businesses like me about the SHOP. Even though the SHOP referred me to him, he told me, ‘I can get you a quote, but I don’t want to go through the exchange, it’s too much hassle.’ ”

Jackson ended up with a policy with a $16,380 annual premium for family coverage — more than 25 percent higher than what it paid in 2010, when the ACA was enacted. Plus, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums are higher.

“So we are paying more in premiums and sadly our employees are also paying more when they need medical care and services,” Jackson said.

Then there are small businesses that employ too many workers or pay too well in order to qualify for the tax credit. Michael Ricco, quality manager of AEEC, a Reston, Virginia-based professional services firm, told the committee that these types of small businesses could use help with insurance costs as well.

“The size standard for companies to use this health care tax credit is on the woefully low side and should be increased so that many more legitimate small businesses can take advantage of this credit,” Ricco said.

In AEEC’s case, however, it still wouldn’t qualify for the tax credit because its workers make more than the $50,000 annual wage cap.

“We question the fairness of this cap because, it essence, it punishes our company for paying our employes a higher wage,” he said.

Even businesses that pay well need help covering health insurance costs, he said, especially since workers’ expectations for benefits increase with their salaries.

“For example, a cashier at McDonald’s is going to be thrilled with any health care coverage while a senior data architect expects a platinum health plan. So small businesses like ours are among the most in need of a tax credit,” Ricco said.

But Holly Wade, director of research and policy analysis for the NFIB Research Foundation, said the tax credit was designed in such a way that the biggest beneificiaries are small businesses that are the least likely to even offer health insurance. The tax credit isn’t likely to sway even them because it’s temporary and complicated to use.

“The small business tax credit is a much better talking point than it is a financial incentive for small businesses,” Wade said.

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