Harvard faculty hit in the head by reality

Good day all. I first saw this story at the Anti-idiotarian Rottweiler this morning. Apparently, the Harvard University faculty has been hit upside the head with the “Clue by Four of Reality.” They are finally seeing how the “Lower classes” deal with health insurance and they are not liking it.

Yes, the Harvard University administration has informed the elites that make up their faculty that they will also have to, *gasp* pay for a share of their insurance! Here are the hilarious details from the New York Times:

For years, Harvard’s experts on health economics and policy have advised presidents and Congress on how to provide health benefits to the nation at a reasonable cost.

And they have yet to get it right. Their so called ideas generally run to government run single payer healthcare similar to all the failed programs around the world. Since they knew they wouldn’t be affected by their ideas, they didn’t care what the “Hoi Polli thought or wanted…Until now.

But those remedies will now be applied to the Harvard faculty, and the professors are in an uproar.

Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care.

Isn’t that a shame? These overpaid prima donna’s now have to fork over a small amount of their exorbitant salaries to pay into the healthcare system. Why, this is unheard of! *giggle* So how did these over-educated moonbats miss the announcement? Surely they had a vote on this? Yep, they did, but it seems they forgot to read the calendar.

The faculty vote came too late to stop the cost increases from taking effect this month, and the anger on campus remains focused on questions that are agitating many workplaces: How should the burden of health costs be shared by employers and employees? If employees have to bear more of the cost, will they skimp on medically necessary care, curtail the use of less valuable services, or both?

“Harvard is a microcosm of what’s happening in health care in the country,” said David M. Cutler, a health economist at the university who was an adviser to President Obama’s 2008 campaign. But only up to a point: Professors at Harvard have until now generally avoided the higher expenses that other employers have been passing on to employees. That makes the outrage among the faculty remarkable, Mr. Cutler said, because “Harvard was and remains a very generous employer.”

Harvard can afford to be a generous employer. To begin with, they’re sitting on some 30-40 billion dollars in tax free endowments. Then there is the tuition they charge for what is slowly becoming, in most cases, a worthless degree. The response from the faculty was…unsurprising. For instance, we have this highly sought after professor who, if he wasn’t a professor at Harvard, would probably be driving a cab somewhere in Brighton.

Richard F. Thomas, a Harvard professor of classics and one of the world’s leading authorities on Virgil, called the changes “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.”

I wonder if Professor Thomas has ever worked in a private sector job at any time in his life? Hmm, a quick look at his Harvard bio tells me that the answer would be…no. Then we have another person, one Professor Mary D. Lewis who likes all things French.

Mary D. Lewis, a professor who specializes in the history of modern France and has led opposition to the benefit changes, said they were tantamount to a pay cut. “Moreover,” she said, “this pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.”

Professor Lewis, when she isn’t mooning over all things French, (Excluding their tendency to surrender to things like driftwood), has never worked a day in her life in the “Dreaded Private Sector.” She is also leading the “Charge of the Moonbats” to restore the original plans. You know, the ones where they don’t pay one thin dime for anything? And as to this pay cut nonsense, I found a rundown of salaries for Harvard Professors. Screaming poverty for someone at her level is either a joke or an insult to people with real jobs. So, what is the new cost structure for the moonbats on the Charles?

Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20. For most other services, patients will pay 10 percent of the cost until they reach the out-of-pocket limit of $1,500 for an individual and $4,500 for a family.

That’s better then most of the crap they call insurance plans under Obamacare. A Hell of a lot better. My insurance requires a $2500 deductible for everything, then my insurance picks up the costs after that. Granted, I pay for the insurance for myself and Mrs. Webmaster, and we are grandfathered in so we didn’t lose our plan. Still,thanks to Obama and these screaming morons at Harvard, my insurance has doubles since Der Fubar took office.

The president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust, acknowledged in a letter to the faculty that the changes in health benefits — though based on recommendations from some of the university’s own health policy experts — were “causing distress” and had “generated anxiety” on campus.

Oh, I think I see the problem here. Faust used recommendations that were meant for us little people, not the “Supreme Elite of Harvard.” I can see how that would cause anxiety, being forced to commune with the lower classes and all.

But she said the changes were necessary because Harvard’s health benefit costs were growing faster than operating revenues or staff salaries and were threatening the budget for other priorities like teaching, research and student aid.

Economic Reality sucks, doesn’t it? Of course, this is Harvard and the Moonbats have never let reality interfere with their world view.

In response, Harvard professors, including mathematicians and microeconomists, have dissected the university’s data and question whether its health costs have been growing as fast as the university says. Some created spreadsheets and contended that the university’s arguments about the growth of employee health costs were misleading. In recent years, national health spending has been growing at an exceptionally slow rate.

Aren’t these the same nitwits that were pushing Obamacare? Why, yes, it is, and with the same accuracy we’ve seen from the Department of health and Human Services.

Some ideas that looked good to academia in theory are now causing consternation. In 2009, while Congress was considering the health care legislation, Dr. Alan M. Garber — then a Stanford professor and now the provost of Harvard — led a group of economists who sent an open letter to Mr. Obama endorsing cost-control features of the bill. They praised the Cadillac tax as a way to rein in health costs and premiums.

And it never crossed that idiots mind that the healthcare plans offered by Harvard would meet the definition of a “Cadillac Plan” did it?

Jerry R. Green, a professor of economics and a former provost who has been on the Harvard faculty for more than four decades, said the new out-of-pocket costs could lead people to defer medical care or diagnostic tests, causing more serious illnesses and costly complications in the future.

“It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” Professor Green said. “I don’t think there’s any government in the world that would tax the sick.”

Congratulations! You have finally figured out the true purposes of Obamacare. The goal is to kill the sick, not cure them. It’s also meant to transfer money from the productive people in this country, (Which would exclude most of the Harvard faculty), and transfer it to the cronies of Obama. Of course, not all professors at Harvard University are surprised that the cost increases.

Meredith B. Rosenthal, a professor of health economics and policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, said she was puzzled by the outcry. “The changes in Harvard faculty benefits are parallel to changes that all Americans are seeing,” she said. “Indeed, they have come to our front door much later than to others.”

It looks like Professor Rosenthal is that rarest of people at Harvard. Someone who has worked in the Dreaded Private Sector, if only for a short time. In the eyes of the other faculty at Harvard, this makes her damaged goods. She must be “Burned at the stake!”

One of the issues with Harvard is that it has one of the best medical schools and hospitals in the world. Because of this, the faculty was able to go anywhere they wanted for medical treatment. With the rise of Obamacare, and it’s trickle down, (More like a raging torrent), effect on the healthcare sectors, Harvard is having trouble putting all those hospitals and doctors into their network. This doesn’t sit well with the Moonbats.

“Harvard employees want access to everything,” said Dr. Barbara J. McNeil, the head of the health care policy department at Harvard Medical School and a member of the benefits committee. “They don’t want to be restricted in what institutions they can get care from.”

The Harvard genus of the Moonbat has a rather unique barking call. It goes a lot like “Do YOU know who I am?” These spoiled brats have no idea how the real world works. Harvard has been covering the expenses for their lower paid faculty, those making $95K or less for years. Yes, these hikes are going to sting a little bit, but compared to what people in the real world are dealing with? Sorry, we don’t have any sympathy for you at all. Pity these boneheads can’t understand the real world.

“It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” said Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology. “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”

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Professor Mary C. Waters. I just looked at her bio on the Harvard site and her Wikipedia page. (Such as it is) She is utterly clueless about how the world actually works. I mean this woman is dangerously clueless. She is the type of person, (so it seems), who would refuse to believe that the oncoming train is not able to stop and that she really does have to get out of its way.

I’ve been reading a number of blog sites that have picked up on the Times story and making great sport of these knotheads. Here we have people who spent upwards of 20 years or more in school, have multiple degrees in a multitude of absolutely useless subjects and yet probably don’t even know how to tie their own shoes. If they are expecting the American people to support them, well, I think this will be the general reaction to them.

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Sorry Moonbats, America just doesn’t give a damn for you overpaid, underworked lazy, spoiled Marxists.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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