TNR reports on the firing of Hyatt’s Boston-area housekeepers, noting:

The housekeepers, some of whom had worked for Hyatt for over twenty years, were making between $14 and $16 an hour plus health, dental, and 401(k) benefits. Their replacements were to make $8 an hour with no health benefits.

It’s unclear to me why, within the context of the current debate about healthcare, the benefits angle to this story has received zero attention. Instead, everyone rushes to the $16/hr to $8/hr change in gross-pay. Sure, Hyatt is now paying half as much and these replacements are, apparently, pretty much all there on guest-worker visas (and so are, by definition, short-term, damned near cash basis day workers).

The key fact, though, is all that stuff that comes after the mention of base pay. These folks that have been fired were getting health, dental, and 401k benefits. That’s a vaguely astounding contract they had; seemingly unprecedented, actually. I’d wager Hyatt cut their expenses on employing these workers by four to five fold just by dropping benefits. Tacking on the pay cut was just gravy; something they did because they could. Based on some back-of-envelope calculations using these figures to get ballpark estimates for provisioning the insurance coverage, to provide the health benefits (forgetting dental and 401k for now) Hyatt was paying these workers the equivalent of $23/hr. Add in the rest and you’re up to $30/hr easily. Probably well beyond it.

So, we have workers’ jobs cut specifically to save on the (presumably) outrageous expense of providing them with healthcare; these firings have subsequently gone national for a variety of completely unrelated reasons. During the biggest healthcare debate of my lifetime. What does the media focus on with absolute uniformity? An $8/hr pay differential. As if nothing else is going on here. Do we mention that these uninsured guest workers still create a cost on healthcare in this country? Do we mention that Hyatt has effectively shifted some of its healthcare expenses from Hyatt to you, the US Taxpayer? Do we mention that this is yet another clear-cut case of spiraling health coverage costs measurably and indisputably claiming jobs, all the while adding to the rolls of the unemployed (and uncovered) in this country? Of course not. Keep walking. That sort of thing just isn’t said.