Even With the Perscription Plan He Is Probably Still Both

I never thought that working in the grocery business would ever prompt me to know the exact definitions of two different wretched personality disorders. No it was not because I was doing any self-analysis, even though at times I thought it was me who might have needed it, no it was what I kept seeing acted out in front of me on a daily basis. Anyway having worked around an individual for so many years who seemed, as my son would say, has issues I found myself asking the gods of Google for an explanation. What were these personality quirks that I saw day after day after day? What would cause a human being to act and treat other human beings in such a caustic manner? I needed to know what this behavior of his was both for my own sanity and perhaps that of my fellow workers.

In my first post on this blog I made a fleeting reference to the Health Insurance Care System in the United States. Politely I asked the readers of my blog to leave this discussion at the door and not bring it up. Today I find myself contradicting my earlier request by bringing this hotly debated topic into today’s post.

Today’s employer sponsored and/or supported Health Insurance Care Plans for the most part offer less coverage, higher deductibles and fewer options than in recent years. With employer policy premiums continuing to escalate the companies and their owners have responded in very predictable ways. Leaving that very broad generalization to the side it is the grey areas of Health Care Insurance rules, eligibility and employee premiums that some business owners really know how to further reduce these spiraling benefit costs.

Now let’s identify some common Health Care Program terms. First Multiple Plan Offerings, Eligibility Dates, Anniversary Dates and finally Employee Contribution Premiums. These are the grey areas of Health Care Insurance Coverage that a savvy business owner can either do the right thing, not altruism, or be a Management Sociopath.

Uzzi is the most interesting of all the business owners that you will every read about on this blog. Uzzi saw opportunities to further reduce company expenses in the area of Health Care Insurance Premiums by attacking it like a Pit Bull on a Poodle. A quick note here no animals were injured in the course of writing this post.

So let’s see how Uzzi took advantage of these grey areas of Health Care Insurance Plans. First his families company is divided into three distinct employee groups. At the top of the pyramid is the executive or owners group. Next there is the administrative group and finally there is the companies store operations group. It should be noted that the companies store operations group is unionized to a degree which has been a thorn in the Uzzi family side for years.

For years Uzzi has used the health care insurance plan definitions and employment classifications to minimize who would get what as turnover took place in the stores. Additionally he realized that his long-term employees, who were the source of such drastic increases because of their more numerous claims he says, were getting older. His mindset has to be that as these older workers remain with the company they will have no place to go so he can also reduce their coverage while raising their premium rates at will. Is this practice illegal? Certainly not. My point is to introduce you to the mind-set of Uzzi and the dynamics of the family business as it pertains to benefits. There are subtle moves on his part that individually do not show malice to the employees however taken in conjunction with everything else that he does in all facets of the business then the picture becomes clearer if not bizarre.

With the ownership of a family business comes hard work, frustration, responsibility and if successful rewards. What an owner chooses to do is ultimately their decision however it is just not about rewards. Or is it? Some feel that there are moral obligations to both the employees and it’s customers. Uzzi, his brothers and in-laws elected to always have a separate Health Care Insurance Plan for themselves. No not for the other executive or directors in the organization just for the family. This plan would have the best coverage including a lot more flexibility with choices of doctors, a better prescription plan and besides it was mostly paid for by the company.

The administrative workers insurance plan and the other managers who participated in it have been subjected to constant premium increases over the years as just about every other worker in the United States has been. But then there is the “Uzzi factor”. Uzzi, having paid a careful eye on what this group of employees were paying each year, along with recognizing that the company had changed Health Care Insurance Plans for the last 7 years, saw an opportunity to exploit the situation and therefore put more money in the families pocket not into the business. During a recent change in companies that provide Health Care Insurance he had the HR department send out a “we are sorry but the premiums the company pays for Health Insurance continue to go up so you will need to pay more yourself”. Reasonable in this age? Yes. Here is the rub by switching Health Care Insurance Plan companies two years ago the total monthly premium actually went down for the company! So last year he had the employees in the administrative group paying more for coverage and the company less. This year the company switched again and the company reduced the total premium that it paid yet required the employees to pay more. So here is a question to ask yourself. Was this the right thing for Uzzi and his family to do? Again as an isolated incident it seems insignificant after all some assistance on Health Care Insurance is better than none – agreed. However readers if you continue to read this blog you might see that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Uzzi’s narcissistic approach to company employees.

Let’s continue now with the topic of Eligibility Dates for Health Insurance coverage. Uzzi uses this to his advantage as well. HR lets Uzzi know that so and so is now eligible for Health Care Plan B or C each week. Uzzi’s response is well unless the employee asks for it do not say anything about it. Okay getting much more into a right thing to do situation and knowing Uzzi as I do this is exactly not the right thing to do especially since the employee was informed at their hiring that they would be eligible for coverage on a particular date. But with Uzzi there are even more opportunities to not do the right thing when it comes to Health Care Insurance.

Uzzi uses the system of position classification to sometimes move an employee from one Health Care Plan to another without telling the affected employee nor actually enrolling an employee in the New Health Care plan. If the employee does not make a claim for the time that they are not covered in a plan than the Uzzi family profits. If the employee does make a claim on the plan when they are not covered then Uzzi claims it was a clerical mix up to both the employee and Health Care Provider. Factor in that today’s workforce is more international and an employees command of English along with the rules of Health Care Insurance favors the employer then Uzzi with the family reigns supreme. Kind of a diabolical “Don’t Ask, Don’t Cover” variation on a theme.

One day I asked an acquaintance of the business if he ever knew anyone else like Uzzi and they said “there is no other one like Uzzi”.

Alex, I said to myself, be objective to Uzzi and the extended family in your writings but as I typed this post those two clinical terms mentioned earlier kept circling above my keyboard demanding to be keyed into this story one last time. I refuse to believe that those two words are really what this post has been about. There are plenty of future post to use the terms sociopath and narcissistic in, yes in deed there certainly are.

Good thing Uzzi and the family have the best Health Care Insurance Plan perhaps the Prescription Plan holds hope for all of us. As to myself I hope that I am still covered.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories