One-year Delay in Employer Mandate of Obamacare
Delay of employer mandate only latest snag in implementing ObamaCare
July 6, 2013FoxNews.com - The Obama administration delaying the start of the employer mandate part of ObamaCare this week is not the first snag in implementing the president’s signature health care law.
Other parts of the 2010 law have already been delayed or discarded, including a requirement that businesses fill out an IRS form for any purchases over a year exceeding $600. Congress repealed that in June 2011.
“It was extremely onerous (and) raised very little revenue,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director and chief economic policy adviser to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.Amanda Austin, a public policy director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, compared the IRS 1099 requirement to the employer mandate, which required many small and medium-sized businesses to provide employee health insurance or face paying penalties.
She argued both came with “tons” of “extremely complicated” paperwork and that the changes were in large part the result of business uproar.
“I think you heard a lot from businesses, really an outcry of why are we doing this,” she said about the IRS requirement. “And down the road obviously we got the provision repealed.”The administration acknowledged as much in the surprise announcement Tuesday that the start of the employee mandate would be delayed from 2014, when much of the law is scheduled to take effect, to 2015.
“We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” said Mark J. Mazur, a Treasury Department assistant secretary.Holtz-Eakin and others also point out the administration also had to scrap the so-called CLASS Act section of ObamaCare that offered federally-subsidized insurance for long-term health care because the legislation stated the premiums had to cover the cost.
Holtz-Eakin called the plan “unworkable.”
Two other parts of the law, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, also have either been delayed or scuttled.
Earlier this year, the administration delayed until 2015 the start of a managed-care option inserted into ObamaCare by Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, who then accused officials of dragging their feet to avoid lower cost competition.
“Our read of the statute is that you're supposed to do it in 2014 and not spend your time luring people into the exchange,” Cantwell said in April on Capitol Hill. “Is there a bias somewhere in the administration against lower-cost, managed-care delivery systems?”The administration has also delayed the start of an ObamaCare provision known as SHOP – an insurance exchange that gives small business a range of choices.
Now those businesses have only one plan, contrary to Obama’s vow that the law would provide a range of options.
“I think the bottom line is that the law is very convoluted, very complicated and is bad policy,” said Katie Mahoney, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive director of health care policy.Neil Trauntwein, an employee-benefits lawyer for the National Retail Federation, says the delays have at least allowed business leaders to return to Capitol Hill to discuss such issues as whether the cutoff for the employer mandate should less than 50 full-time employees and if a 30-hour week is the best definition of a full-time worker.
One Of The Few Ugly Stats In The Jobs Report Will Probably Reverse This Year Thanks To An Obamacare Delay
July 5, 2013Business Insider - Today's bullish jobs report was not without its ugly details.
While U.S. companies did add jobs in June, most of them were part-time.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' household survey, part-time jobs jumped by 360,000 to 28,059,000 while full-time jobs fell 240,000 to 115,998,000.
Some economists have attributed this trend to the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Specifically, they blamed the employer mandate, which forced businesses employing 50 or more workers to offer health insurance or pay a penalty of $2,000 per full-time worker.
Generally, workers are considered to be full-time if they work over 30 hours per week.
In their efforts to dodge this mandate, some companies are thought to have begun scaling back hours.
But earlier this week, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying that the White House would delay until 2015 the enforcement of this requirement.
UBS's Drew Matus speculated that this would likely be good news for hiring in the near-term.
The Administration announcement of a one-year delay in the employer mandate
component of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”, could help boost
payroll growth. Although the delay is only temporary, for those
employers on the cusp of the 50 employee threshold this delay may prompt
them to hire as they may be unwilling to continue to postpone hiring to
avoid being subject to the mandate. Additionally, employers may delay
plans to cut back employee hours to keep them from being classified as
“full time” (the law considers employees who work 30 hours per week
full-time).
Again, this likely to be only temporary. But it is a trend to keep an eye on in the near-term.
Obamacare Exchanges Delayed to 2015, Obama Now Turns to Mass Marketing
April 5, 2013
The prognosis isn’t looking too good for the implementation of the labyrinthine Obamacare law.
The Obama administration announced this week that special exchanges designed to “make it easier” for small businesses to provide affordable health care insurance for employees will be delayed again to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running the exchanges.
As Robert Pear of the New York Times explains, “The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.
Many other people are finding out they’re losing their plans as well due to Obamacare, from part-time employees to spouses. In fact, the CBO projected this year a total of 7 million people will lose their employment-based coverage, almost double its original estimation. The total number of people participating in those exchanges is projected to grow from 7 million in 2014 – the first year they’ll be available – to 24 million in 2016.
Rack up millions more voters dependent on government for yet another service.
On top of that, due to widespread opposition to the medical device sales tax provision of Obamacare, the Senate voted 79-20 to repeal that portion of the bill, something the House already did by a vote of 270-146.
That tax was billed as a way to help pay for the law, the projected costs of which keep rising every year. An actuarial study from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concluded that as a result of the law, health care spending will be $478 billion higher over the next decade than it would have otherwise been had no law been passed. Furthermore, as a result of the law, about 50 cents of every dollar of health care spending in the U.S. will be financed by the government by 2021, bringing us halfway to full government-run health care.
Almost three years after it was passed, the legislation is still as unpopular as ever. So the administration has now turned to mass marketing for help in researching the lives of uninsured people, hoping to craft winning sales pitches to garner more support for the law, especially in time for the 2014 midterm elections. Marketing for the new system will start this summer, going into high gear during the fall after premiums and other plan information becomes public.
As chaotic as this bill is, and as many times as it’s being delayed, it was still way easier to pass it than it will ever be to repeal it. That’s what the Democrats had in mind during those four months in 2009 between Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party and Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death in August. That gave them a 60 seat filibuster proof majority, in addition to a House majority, allowing them the opportunity to pass any legislation they wanted with lightening speed – highly unusual in Washington. They were going to make it count, electorally. Of all the things they could’ve passed, they went for the one goal they’ve had for decades and was thwarted the last time it was tried: near-universal health care.
Pass it now, ask questions later. And we have ever since, with everyone still trying to find out what’s in it, Republicans doing everything they can to defund it, and Democrats scrambling to still sell it in hopes of changing public opinion.
I’m sure this administration wasn’t expecting the resistance they’ve encountered from the public for yet another entitlement. Most Americans like their Social Security and Medicare, so naturally, they should’ve loved this one too. Instead, they’ve been fighting it every step of the way, and no amount of mass marketing will change the clear fact that this bill was nothing more than major federal power grab.
The Obama administration announced this week that special exchanges designed to “make it easier” for small businesses to provide affordable health care insurance for employees will be delayed again to 2015 in the 33 states where the federal government will be running the exchanges.
As Robert Pear of the New York Times explains, “The law calls for a new insurance marketplace specifically for small businesses, starting next year. But in most states, employers will not be able to get what Congress intended: the option to provide workers with a choice of health plans. They will instead be limited to a single plan.
“The promise of affordable health insurance for small businesses was portrayed as a major advantage of the new health care law, mentioned often by White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress as they fought opponents of the legislation.”Since insurance is more expensive for small businesses anyway, it’ll just be cheaper for them to pay the penalty and dump employees into the government exchanges than it would be to pay for the insurance. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects the penalties to bring in a total of $13 billion a year in revenue – or only about 30 hours worth of federal spending.
Many other people are finding out they’re losing their plans as well due to Obamacare, from part-time employees to spouses. In fact, the CBO projected this year a total of 7 million people will lose their employment-based coverage, almost double its original estimation. The total number of people participating in those exchanges is projected to grow from 7 million in 2014 – the first year they’ll be available – to 24 million in 2016.
Rack up millions more voters dependent on government for yet another service.
On top of that, due to widespread opposition to the medical device sales tax provision of Obamacare, the Senate voted 79-20 to repeal that portion of the bill, something the House already did by a vote of 270-146.
That tax was billed as a way to help pay for the law, the projected costs of which keep rising every year. An actuarial study from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services concluded that as a result of the law, health care spending will be $478 billion higher over the next decade than it would have otherwise been had no law been passed. Furthermore, as a result of the law, about 50 cents of every dollar of health care spending in the U.S. will be financed by the government by 2021, bringing us halfway to full government-run health care.
Almost three years after it was passed, the legislation is still as unpopular as ever. So the administration has now turned to mass marketing for help in researching the lives of uninsured people, hoping to craft winning sales pitches to garner more support for the law, especially in time for the 2014 midterm elections. Marketing for the new system will start this summer, going into high gear during the fall after premiums and other plan information becomes public.
As chaotic as this bill is, and as many times as it’s being delayed, it was still way easier to pass it than it will ever be to repeal it. That’s what the Democrats had in mind during those four months in 2009 between Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party and Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death in August. That gave them a 60 seat filibuster proof majority, in addition to a House majority, allowing them the opportunity to pass any legislation they wanted with lightening speed – highly unusual in Washington. They were going to make it count, electorally. Of all the things they could’ve passed, they went for the one goal they’ve had for decades and was thwarted the last time it was tried: near-universal health care.
Pass it now, ask questions later. And we have ever since, with everyone still trying to find out what’s in it, Republicans doing everything they can to defund it, and Democrats scrambling to still sell it in hopes of changing public opinion.
I’m sure this administration wasn’t expecting the resistance they’ve encountered from the public for yet another entitlement. Most Americans like their Social Security and Medicare, so naturally, they should’ve loved this one too. Instead, they’ve been fighting it every step of the way, and no amount of mass marketing will change the clear fact that this bill was nothing more than major federal power grab.
