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Health Care Bill Fact of the Day: Providing Businesses With an Incentive to End Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance

By: Jeff Emanuel (Diary)  |  August 11th, 2009 at 10:30 AM  | 

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The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act” contains an “employer mandate,” or a legal requirement that all American businesses with 25 or more employees offer health insurance to their workers.

The penalty for failing to comply with this mandate to offer employees health insurance is a $750 fine per full time worker per year.

In 2008, employer-provided insurance policies averaged $4,704 a year for individuals and $12,680 for families, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (p. 2 here). This means employers would be able to save $4,000 per worker (or $12,000 per family) by ending their employee health benefit programs and simply paying the federal government the fine.

Source: Senate HELP Committee bill fact sheet, pp. 7-8.

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  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jacobson get2djnow

    that the public option would never cause people to lose their insurance, if they like what they have now. /sarc

    An employer would have to be nuts to throw money into an insurance policy for his employees when the gov’t is willing to do all the work of covering employees’ medical needs for a measly $750. Not only that but no more open enrollment hassles and no more annual increases in employee copays. For the employers it’s all upside.

    • itdiehard

      Unions will use this savings to boast wages by 6G per worker…

      • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jacobson get2djnow

        The union bosses will increase union dues by 5k. Then the unions will use the money to prop up their corrupt athletic supporters in local, state and federal government. Still, they will be able to tell their mouth-breathers that brought home the bacon.

        Oh, the bosses will also be able to afford new union jets.

  • izoneguy

    Obamacare would create a huge bureaucracy that would be staffed with SEIU members (most government workers are SEIU members). SEIU would collect a windfall in new union dues which would be fed back into Democrat politician?s campaign coffers.

    It is about a permanent funding mechanism for the Democrat party.

    Look at this info from Open Secrets….

    These dems have raked in the most cash from union contributions.

    Hoyer tops the list with $3,596,358
    Edward Kennedy is 2nd with $2,741,591
    Pelosi is 3rd with $2,737,550

    Unions Lobby to Thwart Health Care Deal Breaker

    http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/07/unions-lobby-to-thwart-health.html

    Download a list of contributions from labor PACs to all current members of Congress (including to their candidate committees and leadership PACs) since 1989 here:

    http://www.opensecrets.org/news/LaborPAC_Contribs.xls

    If you use this info give credit:
    http://www.opensecrets.org/MyOS/credit.php

    Just counter Pelosi and Hoyer un-American accusations with these facts. National Health Care is a Union Trojan Horse…..

  • DerKrieger

    …health care.

    But only if it means my employer pays me the cash value of my insurance coverage as additional salary and then asks me to go buy my own insurance.

    I wish businesses would fight back on this even a little instead of looking at this as an easy way to offload their health care expenses.

    They can offload them and still nurture free market solutions like high deductible, low premium plans with HSAs. I have one and I love it.

    • http://jeffemanuel.net Jeff Emanuel

      Few understand that benefits like health care aren’t paid for by the employer, but come out of overall compensation in lieu of wages. The fact that few workers know this means employers who cut off health care can keep that savings, because workers don’t know enough to demand that cash be added to their paychecks.

      Education is needed in this area.

  • whoframedrudy

    Currently, an employer that does not provide health benefits is at a competitive disadvantage in the labor market. Not so under Obamacare. So yes, with a public option and this negligible fine, the ‘private option’ will wither on the vine of profit maximization. In the private sector, this would be called ‘predatory pricing.’

    It’s perverse: using capitalism to transition into socialism.