This will cost HP talent if and when the economy improves, as people will move towards companies that do not remove benefits wantonly. Every HP employee should be asking “What’s next?” Is it the match to the 401K? Same sex DP benefits? Health Insurance regardless of status? Vacation? Or will HP follow FedEx and simply take away 5% of the salary!

American’s need universal access to health insurance so that we make choices about marriage; a sacred institution, based on love, commitment and the best interests of all concerned; not based on whether or not we will have health insurance in the morning. We do not need national health care just univeral access to reasonably proced insurance without a penalty for age, health status or one’s marital/DP/sexual orientation status.

January 21st is coming….

[
To: Employees covering an opposite-sex domestic partner

As part of the annual U.S. benefits enrollment process, HP communicated a change that affects coverage for unmarried opposite-sex domestic partners. HP has been among a minority of employers offering benefits coverage for opposite-sex domestic partners. As we integrate and align benefits across HP and EDS, HP coverage will be limited to only legal spouses and same-sex domestic partners, starting January 1, 2009.

Our records show that you are among the roughly 1% of U.S. employees currently covering an opposite-sex domestic partner. As such, we wanted to ensure you were fully informed about the change and options available to help transition coverage to other sources. With this change, coverage for your domestic partner and any covered children of your domestic partner will end on December 31, 2008. We have below provided additional details regarding this change and the opportunities to continue coverage.
]

I was eating an apple when I read your reply #30. You’re lucky I won’t be suing you for choking to death on the apple.

That was way beyond hilarious.

Add in the “gay” issue and 98% of the readers are thinking only about butt sex.

Ya, now that you mention it. Butt sex. YA !!!

Ok, can we now go back to something intelligent.

>>How do we know that? Because we can trust
>>some source who is unnamed. Because we don’t
>>know who even wrote the article?

Using the magic of The Google, the only relevant citation I found was MARC PERKEL’S POST ON THIS BLOG.

On a hunch, I checked that right-wing nut Clayton Cramer’s blog referenced by RSweeney in #27, and buried deep within it was a note that said he (Clayton Cramer) allegedly saw this in the enrollment package for COBRA. So whatever “they” did, it wasn’t even HP, it was the insurance company that runs their COBRA program, not the insurance for regular employees.

HP is known for “valuing diversity”, and they’re usually the target of holy-rolling, tongue-speaking whack jobs for failing to discriminate against anyone who isn’t Ward or June Cleaver. In fact, they were sued by (and successfully defended against) some wild-eyed fundie who had been fired for harassing gays, and putting up xeroxed pages describing how gays were evil incarnate and were going to bring down eternal damnation upon everyone they came in contact with.

[Eds. might want to remove this whole thread for violation of posting guidelines.

Musta been too much rum in the ‘nog at the Perkel household.

But they are still covering the FAMILIES of same sex domestic partners.

How do we know that? Because we can trust some source who is unnamed. Because we don’t know who even wrote the article?

Maybe if you re-read it and think about it a little bit, it will make sense. Or not.

Your rant doesn’t make sense. #33 – athon is talking about heterosexual men and women who previously could get health care benefits and now can’t without getting married. Same sex domestic partners still have this right in HP.

#33 athon

What benefits do they lose by getting married? The only one I can think of is a federal tax break if they both work.

>>I know of several examples of couples that
>>are having to get married…even though they
>>would rather not in order to keep their
>>benefits.

Well, fuck ‘em. Don’t they know that marriage is the cornerstone of American society, a privilege to be afforded only to heterosexual men and women, and not to be sullied by those dirty homos?

In the alternative, the other person could get a job with bennies, like so many other couples do.

If they’re not interested in either of those options, perhaps they could work for universal civil rights in the US, so that the homos could get married. I suppose that’s why HP implemented the policy in the first place, because same-sex marriages are prohibited by law, and there’s NO WAY, other than by granting benefits to domestic partners, that the families could get health insurance.

Damn.