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eBay To Offer Health Insurance
Logic Bomb writes "EBay has announced it will be offering group health coverage for "full time eBay merchants". Anyone who grosses over $1000/month in sales -- at least a whopping 80,000 users in good standing -- will be eligible to buy into a typical "employee" health plan. This is a big first in the Internet world. Full details from the LA Times." And the LA Times, trying to cop a pose from the NY Times, reqs a login.
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The important questions:
Will they allow you to give feedback to health providers in your area?
Can you pay with PayPal?
Will you be able to set up a doctor's appointment for organ removal and simultaneously list the spare kidney for sale?
What's your damage, Heather?
What happens if the reseve on your bid isn't met? Do you die?
I think we're seeing the eventual effects of the web that were severely disturbed by the dot-boom(bomb) phenomenon. Ebay is unquestionably _the_ online auction website and its full time merchants generate a significant amount of revenue for ebay. This further increases the incentive for many of these "marginal" merchants to go full time -- they can drop the job that they may have "just for the benefits" and furthermore, it may make dealing with some of Ebay's idiosyncracies a bit more palateable. About time! Hopefully, ebay will set a nice precedent for the rest of the industry.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
as a small business trying to operate mainly on eBay (for credit card purposes), this is another step in proving how corporate they have become, and another step in eliminating the small sellers, which was the whole purpose of eBay to begin with, the access to COLLECTIBLES not mass-produced merchandise.
Don't be misled. Today is Chinese April Fools Day.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Health insurance has always been a huge game of numbers and betting on the odds. Betting on the odds that you are, or aren't going to get sick, are or aren't going to need major medical, are or aren't going to need an operation, etc. And in that big game, the more people you have on the plan, the more likely you're going to find alot of people who pay you for insurance, but don't need those things.
..when will we get to have /. insurance? Any web-following then, with sufficient numbers, should be able to follow suit and get big discounts on a group plan. With enough people, you even get to have the nice and spiffy plans where you can pick the sort of benefits you want.
An insurance company is out to make money, just like you and me, who get a job to make money (or sell things on eBay in this case.) So, if you offer them a large customer base, 80,000 people, then that's a big enough market you start to drop your prices signifigantely.
This will be an interesting precident to set in the marketplace of health insurance. If it goes through and works,
Whose going to manage these benefits? Will eBay have a new department for assisting their people with benefit claims?
Hmm...imagine if http://www.yahoo.com/ or http://www.msn.com/ were able to follow suit and offer health insurance. Anyone else think there's a web-organization that can claim more members?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Houston Chronicle has the story available with no register.
I wouldn't do this, my friend's sister's cousin tried getting a surgeon on eBay. He seemed nice and said he had great deals on triple bypass surgery because a "friend's" practice was going under and he wanted to use up the remaining surgical supplies as soon as possible. But the next thing she knew, she woke up in a bathtub of ice with two scars on her back and a note that said "Dial 911 Immediately"!!!!
Click here or here.
Will you be able to set up a doctor's appointment for organ removal and simultaneously list the spare kindey for sale?
I find that prospect likely. Afterall, Ebay does provide you with the necessary (unused) tools.
I think you missed a key point - It's only sellers who gross over $1k/month that eBay is offering this too, not eBay's entire userbase.
eBay takes a commission from every sale - So those sellers are far, far beyond even paying customers at many sites as far as the revenue they bring into the company.
Meanwhile, Yahoo and MSN are free services, or if they charge, they don't charge nearly as much as the amounts of commissions eBay skims from the qualifying classes of sellers.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This I feel is the start of the second Internet boom, just this one will be for real. All the companies with no hope of making a profit online are gone. The ones that are left either make money, or at least have a pile of cash they are sitting on.
Buying your couch online is out...earth to owner, couches cost A LOT more to ship than books, and people want to sit in them first. Commerce on the web that makes sense is in. eBay is probably the first in the second stream of successful internet companies to start gaining attention.
Can't wait to see more real profits from the internet...
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
the LA Times, trying to cop a pose from the NY Times, reqs a login.
I found myself asking these questions:
In the end, I'm left with the impression that this is just a young kid editing a web page who wants to use a clever turn of phrase he heard. It adds nothing to the story; it takes away much.
Since I doubt that most of theses sellers declare thier full income from ebay, I wonder if the IRS will attempt to use this to get a listing of thoses people.
Self-employed purchase of health insurance is very expensive. Maybe you live in the middle of nowhere and the rates are cheap, or maybe you're smoking some really good crack ;), but in the NYC metro area, if you're self-employed it costs a small fortune to buy health insurance from anyone. HMOs and others charge much higher fees to self-employed individuals than to corporations (per person). That's one reason why there's a larger federal tax break for money spent on health insurance when you're self-employed (there's an additional Schedule (E?) that you have to fill out if you don't work for someone else's corporation). So I'm sure the "bulk" insurance that E-Bay is selling is cheaper per person than buying it alone. E-Bay's insentive may partly be for the tax benefits.
Developers: We can use your help.
I'm just waiting for eBay to start offering sick days and paid vacation so I can quit my day job.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Why bother...
Read about it on CNET without the hassle.
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The 'why' part is obvious (to me). The perception in the eBay community has been that the wholesalers are taking over and pushing the independent sellers out. eBay is attempting to stem a revolt and/or mass migration to another auction site.
It may seem like 1K/month in sales is a lot but compared to the liquidators who sell there, it isn't. eBay needs those 80,000 Power Sellers to be able to keep selling too.
My guess is that this arrangement won't cost eBay much, if any, money from their own pocket. I saw no mention that they are going to co-pay for the insurance. But, they've made it possible for the full-time eBay dealer to get decent group insurance. Not a bad incentive to stay with eBay.
So I have to keep my account in good standing? That means if some malichious little brat decides he doesn't like me and makes up all sorts of slander and negative feedback I can lose my eBay healt insurance? Or by good standing do they simply mean paying my auctions fees? Anyone have any input?
To all those wondering how auction sellers qualify as employees -- a quick "find text" in the article doesn't turn up any form of the word "employ".
This is simply a group policy, like those you can get thru the National Association of the Self-Employed, or dozens of other small-business and "group" organizations.
All you need for group discounts is a large group -- they don't have to be co-workers. E-Bay isn't contributing to the funds.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
How do you suggest that they "bring back the old eBay service"?
They started a medium that turned out to be wildly popular, and I'm sure that [insert company name here] noticed that a lot of people were turning to eBay to buy the same products. Who can blame them (the company) for auctioning directly on eBay also?
What's eBay supposed to do? Only allow individuals? Hah! I'm sure they have no plans to kill half of their revenue stream anytime in the near future. I say bravo to eBay for proving that it is possible to be profitable on the Internet.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
> 1. Why do I need to be told a login is required? Won't I find that out soon enough?
I would waste more time trying to load a slashdotted page than reading a sentence fragment and deciding that since I'm not going to register anyway I might as well just go to the comments and hope someone has whored the story.
I'm of mixed opinion on the reference. On one hand, it's childish and, as you indicated, is trying to be "hip". On the other hand, I'd rather have bad personality than none at all. I view slashdot as a community, not a newsfeed. If I want a newsfeed, I can check out Newsforge or C|Net or CNN's Tech section and get it there. I come to Slashdot because of the (sometimes) insightful commentary coming from people who know more than I do about a subject, and the occasional amusement from some troll who has been modded up. Sense of aquaitance is important. I don't want hemos and cmdtaco and whoever aloof from Slashdot's user base (even though they sometimes seem to be from themselves) - the site looses a lot of its appeal because it becomes just another newsfeed I'll check a few times a day.
FYI: for those in NYC & NY state, there is a program that offers very inexpensive access to the HMO's. I'm not a hundred percent sure of how much the government is picking up, but it's called Healthy NY.
/month, and covers most of the necessary things in medicine. It is offered by *all* HMO's that operate in New York State. Same coverage, different administation, and networks, yields the price difference.
It is available for uninsured working individuals, sole proprietors, and small buisness owners. They each have their own rules. However, the prices are in the 180-220
For those of us who are a bit older, the issue with insurance isn't so much the price as it is the availability.
Insurance companies will deny coverage to individuals, or will deny coverage for preexisting conditions, for the flimsiest of reasons. Also, there is no federal law preventing them from cancelling your insurance, or raising the rates through the roof if you get sick.
This same "medical underwriting" applies to small businesses and associations.
In the US, if you don't have a job, you run a real chance of losing everything in order to pay for a medical event. You can always get the treatment - you just may end up broke to get it.
All of the federal protections on health insurance is offered only to people covered by group insurance (companies, etc.) and not to individuals.
Oh, BTW, the insurance companies don't do this just because they are evil predators. They know that if they offer insurance without conditions, too many people will wait until they get sick, or at least until they get old, before applying. This negates the "share the risk" aspect of insurance. OTOH Company insurance, which is virtually forced on all employees, produces a crop of young and healthy people to pay the expenses for us older folks.
Some states have pools from which you can buy insurance regardless of your medical status. Unfortunately, these are almost impossible to get into, or are extremely expensive. And given the previous paragraph, you can see why this is not an ultimate solution.
The only good weather is bad weather.
It sounds like there are group systems for the self employed, but I just wanted to note that personal medical coverage is very different than group coverage. If you are healthy, then it's an option, but if you have a preexisting condition within the last 10 years, you won't be covered on it for the next 10 years, whereas with group coverage it only looks 6 months into your medical history and after 1 year you get full coverage. There are other differences (the price for one. Personal is a lot more expensive), but this was a big one for my wife and I since she has breast and thyroid cancer.
-no broken link