Seeing a greater than normal amount of derp-age, short memories, and whining from my IT co-workers. We just started open enrollment period for the health care electives.

Plans changing, options dropped, premiums increasing, and new options with complications and different sorts of tax-free savings plans. With further complicated options, etc. etc. HR presentation stated *on the first slide* that part of this was company adjusting offerings to avoid the 2018 ACA “Cadillac plan” penalty.

So I heard lots of whining about ACA, etc. Seems these same people don’t recall the fact that premiums jumped by larger percentages annually *before* ACA. Or that they held steady and the presentation indicated that the company was eating part of or all the increased costs that year. One factor is the the high-end plans with a higher premium cost, high coverage percentages (like 90/10), but low deductibles are going away for plans where you are going to be hit for most of the initial health care outlays ($1000 or so) that are not preventive in nature like wellness exams.

(end rant - my coworkers should know better. Bunch of engineers and IT folk up here.)