If Delta is self-insured, this obviously doesn’t apply, nor do my remarks about the individual per-year maximum coverage and total company premiums (unless they operate their internal self-insurance as an insurance company would).
But what I’ve said does apply to other companies, including those that I worked for, that are not self-insured.
The use of the term “surcharge” in connection with the Delta policy is curious and maybe a clue, because a surcharge usually means some additional charge above an already existing charge. I guess I’ve never experienced being in a self-insured company, so I don’t know how it works. The basic question is, I guess, whether the employees already pay a “premium” to the company for their health costs benefit, or if it’s included in their benefits package at no (explicit) cost.
In any case, I think that the Delta Airlines approach is a well thought-out policy that other companies could well emulate. I hope so. For the benefit of themselves and all of our society, the most important thing right now seems to be to coerce if necessary the “hesitant” unvaccinated to capitulate, in any way that’s legally possible. The full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine (and I think Moderna will come in another month or so) adds the imprimatur needed for this to happen.
There was some clarification about this in the news yesterday. The health insurance program at Delta is administered by UnitedHealthcare, but Delta pays the medical bills (“self-insured”), not UnitedHealthcare. Employees pay a monthly premium for this insurance plan. Employees can opt not to remain in the in-house insurance plan and get outside insurance on their own, if they so choose.
With the exception of who ultimately pays the bills, this is the same as other employer-sponsored health-insurance plans. The “surcharge” will be an increase in the monthly premium for unvaccinated employees who stay on the company plan after Nov.1.
UnitedHealthcare was not involved with this plan revision by Delta; it was done entirely on Delta’s volition.
The seven-day averages of new cases in both SD and LA Counties (from the LA Times) are showing an encouraging trend, with an apparent peak having been reached in both counties. Hopefully that’s the case and the trends will be only downward from here.
There’s an interesting feature when comparing the two peaks. Los Angeles County (right) has three times the population of San Diego County, yet the peak in the number of new cases per capita in both is almost exactly the same.
Any meaning there? Well, I don’t know. But, as food for thought, LA has an indoor mask mandate and SD does not. (SD has an indoor mask recommendation.)
Marin County requires mask in- and outdoor in school and schools tend to be very strict in enforcing these regulations. I think it is safe to assume that these kids were masked.
This article affirms that masks were required in Marin County schools at the time, and has additional details about the way the virus spread from the unmasked teacher to the students (and beyond). I think the assumption that all of the children were masked is pretty solid.
Masks were required indoors at the school, and all classrooms had “portable high-efficiency particulate air filters,” the CDC said. Classroom doors and windows were left open.
It’s hard to believe that a knowingly symptomatic adult would even enter a classroom, let alone remove their mask to speak to the class.
That’s a good point, although I would think that the children themselves would most likely have left their masks on while the teacher was reading to them. It wasn’t a signal that they could take theirs off. But no, probably not completely “safe to assume” that was the case.
In our experience the kids themselves feel much safer with masks. If a teacher would say that they could take the mask off they wouldn’t do it and would make sure that others in the classroom also wouldn’t do it. Our daughter would never think about removing her mask while in school (in- or outdoor)
Yes - and kids do read the news and are fully aware of the current delta surge and what happens at schools in Florida, Georgia etc. It’s often a topic of discussion at home (it seems that most kids have much more common sense than many adults wrt yo masks, vaccination etc)
Unmasked and symptomatic for a few days (do the teachers have to self attest about not having symptoms?). It will be interesting to see what/if disciplinary actions this teacher will face…
Well, OK. There are numerous media photos in which you can see that some among the young children in elementary school classrooms have their masks technically “on”, but, while their mouths may be fully covered, they’ve pulled the top part of the mask below their noses.
Also, very few masks are truly form-fitting and so hardly air-tight when worn. There are often fairly large gaps on the sides of the face and between the nose and eyes, where air can flow freely in and out. They are nowhere near 100% effective at preventing virus from being inhaled or exhaled.
Fortunately, all of the people who were directly infected at this school, as well as those to whom the virus was further transmitted, recovered, and none experienced severe illness. The symptoms were largely fever, chills, cough, headache, and temporary loss of smell. And those things went away.
If the windows were really left open on both sides of that Marin classroom, would so many students really have been infected? And is the classroom really big enough to allow a 5 x 5 grid of desks six feet apart in both directions? It seems like ventilation, masking, and social distancing have typically been more effective than that, even with the Delta variant.
