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Comrade Kennedy’s bill would make employers provide health care. But does it include towing service?

By: The Political Class (Diary)  |  June 6th, 2009 at 10:00 PM  | 

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Comrade Kennedy’s bill would make employers provide health care. But does it include towing service?

Would this bill cover healthcare for your secretary if she is underwater? Just wondering. Maybe Arlen Specter can make the claim that had this bill been passed in 1969 then Mary Jo Kopechne would be alive today.

Myway news covers the legislation here.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Employers would be required to offer health care to employees or pay a penalty – and all Americans would be guaranteed health insurance – under a draft bill circulated Friday by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s health committee.

The bill would provide subsidies to help poor people pay for care, guarantee patients the right to select any doctor they want and require everyone to purchase insurance, with exceptions for those who can’t afford to.

Insurers would be supposed to offer a basic level of care and would be required to cover all comers, without turning people away because of pre-existing conditions or other reasons. Insurance companies’ profits would be limited, and private companies would have to compete with a new public “affordable access” plan that would for the first time offer government-sponsored health care to Americans not eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or other programs.

Setting the train wreck that surrounds this senator and his legislation aside – is he trying to sink the rest of the economy? This isn’t hard math. Healthcare for a small business costs at least $400 per employee. That is of course is if the employee has no dependents to cover on their policy.

A quick back of the napkin calculation show us that the average small/micro business owner would start laying off employees. If you have 10 employees then Kennedy’s bill would cost $4,000 per month. That’s money straight out of the owners pocket.

I know several small business owners and losing $4,000/month in a down economy means either laying off people or trying to live off of no income. Those are the real life choices that the non-wealthy Washington insiders will have to make. That is of course unless we are elected to the Senate where the government picks up the tab for our employees healthcare and doesn’t notice when you leave one in the bottom of a tidal channel.

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  • reddog53

    Employer provided health insurance is the genesis of our current problem. Mandating that it must be provided is not the solution.

    Everyone agrees that affordable health insurance is a good idea. Linking the access to health insurance to employment is the cause for the ’47 million without insurance’ mantra that we’ve heard continuously; this proposal doesn’t seem to fix that.

    KeithHennessy.com has a great discussion about the health care issue. One of the best points he raises in the post is that health insurance is to reduce uncertainty of health care cost, which is largely unplanned and unpredictable. Out of work people who are sick need treatment, not insurance; this is the real dilemma.

  • pac_NY

    .. it appears all this bill will ensure is that small businesses will go bankrupt since they would find it difficult to to expand and keep up with mandatory health care coverage for their employees, plain and simple.

    Destroying capitalism at every level – indeed destroying America as we knew it – seems the only goal of Obama and his administration.

    (I know – just stating the obvious.)

  • Vegas_Rick

    He grew up rich and never did anything of consequence in his entire life. This guy has got to be riddled with economic guilt. He’s never EARNED a single dime.