“Did you receive a ‘long-term care’ email from your employer? Here’s what it means to opt-in or opt-out”

“Did you receive a ‘long-term care’ email from your employer? Here’s what it means to opt-in or opt-out,” by Mike Lewis, GeekWire

Quote:

“They arrived over the past month in the inboxes of Microsoft coders, Amazon copy editors, and Boeing engineers along with tens of thousands of other employees across Washington state: Emails from payroll departments or human resources telling staffers that they might have the option to opt-out of a new state payroll tax to fund long-term care. To which many employees responded: ‘What in the world…?’” … OK. So should I opt-in or out? Those are not the actual choices. Your actual choices are to opt-in the state tax or opt-in on a private plan because the state now requires some form of long-term care coverage …. So among the vague provisions … is the proof of insurance that is required to bypass the state tax. While you need to provide it, there is no clear requirement that you need to provide it each year, according to an analysis by the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine. This means you could get a policy for one year, decline renewal, and remain outside of the tax as long as you stay with the same employer.”

 

LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:

Oh what a tangled web they weave when politicians practice to conceive careless, compulsory, complicated new programs.