Offer group health insurance to App Store developers

Originator:jalkut
Number:rdar://10977818 Date Originated:02-Mar-2012 11:52 PM
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:Developer Tools Product Version:
Classification:UI/Usability Reproducible:Not Applicable
 
This is intended to be a message in support of Radar #10977795. Please read Tim's bug for a more eloquent description of what I'm about to say.

I can't count the times in my career as an indie Mac & iOS software developer, I've heard from folks eager to get going on their own projects, but afraid of what it means to go "indie" when it comes to health insurance.

The United States is unique in the world for failing to offer our citizens a reasonable safety net for health. Other countries are probably seeing indie-minded developers leaping at the opportunity to develop new apps and companies centered around the iOS and Mac App Stores. In the US, the hesitation to "go indie" may be seriously hurting Apple's developer/AppStore ecosystem.

Apple could change things dramatically by opening up their existing health insurance network to all or some dedicated iOS and Mac developers. Developers would pay comparable premiums to what Apple employees pay, and probably tend to fit a similar health profile to Apple's own employees.

Please consider passing this … "crazy" … suggestion along to your developer evangelists, to your lawyers, to Tim Cook, to see what they think about revolutionizing the app industry in yet another important way.

Daniel

Comments

Re: On premiums

Once you factor in the company-paid part of an employee's health insurance premium, you are still looking at an exorbitantly expensive plan. The cost of providing benefits to a full-time employee are dominated by insurance.

Would it be cheaper than ad-hoc individual plans? Possible, even likely. Would it be affordable? Probably not. :/

By numist at March 3, 2012, 3:11 p.m. (reply...)

On premiums

Daniel wrote: "Developers would pay comparable premiums to what Apple employees pay"

Typically there's a company-paid part of an employee's health insurance premium. I don't think that Apple should pay this for third party developers, so actually their premiums would be higher than an employee's. But this is still often much better than private individual health insurance, primarily because of laws like the Kennedy-Kassebaum Act, which protect people in group plans:

http://www.online-health-insurance.com/health-insurance-resources/KHC/content/the-kennedy-kassebaum-act.htm

By timburks at March 3, 2012, 5:12 a.m. (reply...)

Please note: Reports posted here will not necessarily be seen by Apple. All problems should be submitted at bugreport.apple.com before they are posted here. Please only post information for Radars that you have filed yourself, and please do not include Apple confidential information in your posts. Thank you!