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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.
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
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"!!!!
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?
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
Yup. Admittedly, not all of the people eligible will opt for this insurance -- either they have their own insurance already and eBay's offering isn't better, or they apply and the insurer turns them down due to liability issues (this is why it's critical to always have health insurance in the US -- once you are uninsured for 6 months you can be declined for just about any reason... or you can be insured and "preexisting conditions" will simply be declined coverage).
This will be an interesting precident to set in the marketplace of health insurance
Yup... to call a seller an employee of eBay is something of a stretch, but apparantly they have found an insurer who is willing to try. Kudos. And they're willing to test some very murky legal waters here -- once you offer health insurance for these pseudo-employees, you may discover that the federal government is going to start expecting more from you -- even if it's just forms stating that these people are contractors and that you aren't responible for their FICA and Federal taxes. What about FMLA? What about disability? There's a lot more here than meets the eye in my opinion.
Whose going to manage these benefits? Will eBay have a new department for assisting their people with benefit claims?
In theory, HR does this. If eBay has any clue, however, they'll be using a 3rd party administration service to provide these benefits. They're the ones that actually handle the interface between employees and the health plan -- all your HR does is forward them whatever you hand HR. These are popular nowadays because they significantly reduce the paperwork that HR has to deal with.
Anyone else think there's a web-organization that can claim more members?
That's easy. AOL.
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
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.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Actually, you don't have to be an employee to get group health insurance. There are many instances of "Association" based health plans: Blue Cross/Blue Shield do this often. It lets lawyers, accountants and other self-employeed professionals get group rates by being members of the Bar Association or something similar.
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.
Whose going to manage these benefits? Will eBay have a new department for assisting their people with benefit claims?
What an insurer needs in order to spread risk is a large pool of people selected for some criteria not related to their health/propensity to make claims. The healthy group members pay and don't claim, while the unhealthy members claim a lot more than they pay, and the system works. Traditionally, such groups have been {all employees of a given company}. EBay is a good candidate for a new type of group. What will not work is any internet community that is self-selecting on the basis of wanting health insurance. Such groups will contain too high a percentage of unhealthy people.
EBay will be pretty limited as a precedent, I think. EBay's members have to really commit to EBay (be high volume sellers) to get covered. It's not as easy as saying, "I think I'll switch ISPs to Earthlink because I like the health plan."
On another note, it's not trivial to offer health insurance to a national group. Most health insurers have regional networks of physicians and services. (This is partly because insurance is licensed on a state by state basis.) Some few have enough regional networks to be effectively national, but you can bet that people outside population centers are going to find they have somewhat limited choices when it comes to selecting physicians near them. EBay sellers have got to be just about the most geographically diverse insurance group ever attempted. Many, many employers have one or a few locations, e.g. a plant. EBay users don't have any locations/concentrations other than the fact that more of them will be found in cities because that's where the people are.
Still and all, more power to 'em, I say.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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
I think I'll pass on the /. insurance.
last thing I need next time I'm in a hospital is some troll adding "goatse" to the doctors "to do" list.
ow.
unless the slashdot insurance offered protection from robots. that's the kinda insurance you can live with!
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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