vincecate wrote:If an employer has to pay an $8,000/year health tax for full time employees and nothing for part time employees, then the picture is very simple and clear for him. He should try to just use part time employees and as few full time employees as possible. Nothing complicated or hard to understand for him. Mish has had several articles about this. Employers clearly understand this. Common sense should be able to tell you what will happen. It seems you have too much faith in central planning.OLD1953 wrote: Knowing the final effects of a law as complex as the affordable healthcare act is not possible until after full implementation, and then you'll have to wait for adjustments to the law and the adjustments society will make to the change in the law. It might be possible to know the full effect about 2020. Blaming the movement to part time on the act seems a bit much to me though,[...]
There is another Twist to this that makes the Incentive huge to move almost all employees to part time in those companies that now have a mix of full and part time employess and downgrade existing employer based health insurance plans to the lowest common denominator.
As long as all the full time employees you have, regardless how few, have the option of buying a health insurance plan through their employer that meets the bare minimum of Obama Care ( a bronze plan ). Such as a 70% - 30% plan with deductibles into the $1,000s of dollars per year, and annual limits on maximum benefits, plus the employee has to pay part of the insurance premiums out of their pay check ( what all of us would call a very, very poor health insurance plan ). Then, even if one, or more, full time employee makes the very rational decision not buy that very expensive, very poor health care insurance plan through the employer, the employer avoids all penalties, because the employer offered the minimum to only full time employees, and all full time employees are barred from receiving any federal government subsidies through the obamacare exchanges ( they can still buy health insurance through the exchanges, but they pay 100% of the costs without any help from their employers nor from Obamacare subsidies to make it "affordable").
But, if even one full time employee is is not offered a minimum Obamacare qualified plan through the employer, and that one employee elects instead to receive federal subsidies under an Obamacare exchange, then the employer is fined $2000 per year, per every employee, ( the $2,000 per year, per employee, penalty is not limited to just full time employees, but includes part time employees as well).
Which, when added to the new Obamacare change to pre=existing federal laws treating even "very slightly related companies" as the same company, for both Obamacare, and pre-existing federal health care law purposes, will result in a huge financial incentive for all U.S. businesses to down grade their employer health insurance plans for full time employees to the lowest minimum plan allowed by Obamacare, the so called "Bronze Plan".
Obama has given the official U.S. Government seal of approval to U.S. companies down grading they health insurance plans to the lowest common denominator ( Obamacare has approved a "Bronze Plan" as "quality health insurance at an affordable price" ). Obamacare also provides huge financial incentives to do so. While at the same time encouraging companies with all, or mostly all, full time employees to push them on to the exchanges and pay $2,000 dollars per employee per year, rather than $12,000 per employee per year.
Obamacare mucked with the United States Federal code all over the place. Two thousand plus pages of mostly amendments to existing code sections. Yet it chose to create this monster that will do very little good, why? To make the costs appear Trillions of dollars less, than any reasonable insurance plan would cost. While at the same time allowing supporters of government control of health care to go out on the political stump and fraudulently promise that begining in 2014 Obamacare will provide quality health care at an affordable price. The destruction to the U.S. economy, the U.S. health care system, and the people's trust in government that is going to be caused by this, if implemented, is horrific. All to worship the God of U.S. government control of the U.S. health care system as a worthy end in it it's self.