Fix Health Care Policy

The 3 Biggest Ways Obamacare Kills Jobs

Obamacare’s provisions will result in significant job loss acrossAmerica. Below is a summary of how Obamacare’s provisions will harm job growth:

1. Employer mandate. Obamacare requires all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers.The employer mandate creates incentives for businesses to avoid higher costs by, for example, hiring part-time employees instead of full-time employees, since businesses will not be penalized for failing to provide health insurance to part-time employees.In addition, as Heritage research shows, “Obamacare hurts less skilled workers. It raises the minimum productivity required for them to hold a full-time job, particularly workers with families.” The cost to an employer of hiring a full-time worker increases to at least $10.03 per hour and for those with family health coverage, it is at least $13.75 an hour. Research showsthat “a third of uninsured workers earn within $3 of the minimum wage and therefore have a higher risk of losing their jobs because of an employer mandate.”Businesses can also avoid penalties by keeping the number of employees under the mandate threshold of 50, which further discourages creating new jobs.
2. New taxes and regulations. Obamacare adds tons of taxes on employers. These additional costs reduce the ability to hire workers and could even prompt layoffs. One particularly damaging tax will be the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices. Research has shown that, “Under reasonable assumptions, the tax could result in job losses in excess of 43,000 and employment compensation losses in excess of $3.5 billion.”Obamacare also, for the first time, applies the Medicare payroll tax to high earners’ investment income, including capital gains. Taxing capital reduces economic growth and investment.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: employer mandates, job killers, new taxes and regulations, ObamaCare

VIDEO: IHOP Owner Fears Obamacare’s Impact on Jobs and Economy

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — In 2006, when Indiana small-business owner Scott Womack purchased a development agreement to expand his IHOP franchise into Ohio, he had no idea Congress would pass a massive overhaul of the health care system four years later.

Today, one year after that legislative overhaul became law, Womack is very aware of Obamacare — and of its effects on his plans for growth.

Under the year-old law, Womack must provide health insurance to all full-time employees beginning in 2014. Right now, he employs nearly 1,000 full- and part-time workers and already offers insurance to his management staff. He simply does not know how he’ll generate the revenue to do more. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: anniversary, employer mandates, IHOP buiness owner, job losses, ObamaCare

Small Businesses v. Obamacare

The National Federation of Independent Business, representing the interests of small businesses across America, today joined more 20 states on the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. The move is the latest blow to President Obama’s post-passage public relations effort.

NFIB’s involvement was prompted by the individual and employer mandates, new taxes and onerous paperwork requirements. An accompanying statement said the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would devastate small business, threatening their viability. The lawsuit’s two main legal claims involve the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate.

Last month Heritage’s John Ligon documented how Obamacare penalizes small businesses: higher health care costs, an ineffective small business tax credit, higher regulation compliance costs, and Medicare taxes on “flow-through” and investment income.

(more…)

Tags: constitutionality, employer mandates, new taxes, NFIB, ObamaCare, onerous paperwork requirements, U.S. Small Business Administration

Unions Using Obamacare to Punish Small Business

When does Washington consider a successful small business a problem to be dealt with? When that small business successfully competes against unionized firms. Then it needs to be tied down with expensive red tape until it is no longer so successful.

Say what? Members of Congress routinely extol the praises of small businesses as the engine of job creation – especially in these difficult economic times. This is standard practice on Capitol Hill – small businesses do not have the same resources as large ones, and they often cannot afford to comply with federal mandates. Rather than put them out of business Congress exempts them from expensive regulations.

The Senate health care bill also gives small businesses an out. The bill fines businesses $750 for each employee if the company does not provide more expensive “qualifying” health coverage to all their workers. However, companies with less than 50 workers do not have to pay this fine.

Or at least, that was how the bill was written. A small provision slipped into the bill at the last minute changes that threshold for the construction industry. Now any construction company with five or more workers would have to pay the fine. With a few paragraphs in a 2,074 page bill the Senate gutted the small business exemption for construction companies. (more…)

Tags: construction company, employer mandates, ObamaCare, small business, unions

Morning Bell: The Six Key Issues the House Must Cave On Before Obamacare Becomes Law

This morning at around 8 AM, the Senate passed, again on a straight party-line vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) manager’s amendment to the Senate’s version of Obamacare. This keeps the Senate on pace to pass the bill at 9 PM on Christmas Eve despite the fact that Americans overwhelmingly opposed the legislation. But even after the Senate gives President Barack Obama his $2.5 trillion Christmas present, the bill, assuming it is to be considered in regular order, still must go through a House and Senate conference.

President Barack Obama attempted to downplay differences between the House and Senate bills telling American Urban Radio Networks yesterday: “The Senate and the House bills are 95 percent identical. There’s five percent differences, and one of those differences is the public option. This is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights. As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect to this bill.” We’ll let President Obama fight with his base abut how important a strong public option is to health reform, but a government run plan is just one of six key differences between the House and Senate bills:

Soak the Rich or Tax Everybody: The Senate bill relies heavily on a new excise tax on high cost health plans: a 40 percent tax on plan exceeding $8,500 for an individual and $23,000 for a family. The AFL-CIO and SEIU both call this a tax on working families. The Senate bill also includes a new premium tax on all insurers and the CBO confirms that the cost of this tax will be passed on to all Americans with private insurance. The House bill depends on a heavy new income tax targeted at top-earning taxpayers and small businesses. The 5.4 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000, and on families with incomes above $1 million, is structured in a way that over time more and more Americans will be hit by this tax and small business owners would be particularly affected. (more…)

Tags: employer mandates, excise tax, individual mandates, Majority Leader Harry Reid, Medicaid Expansion, ObamaCare, public plan, senate health care bill, taxpayer funded abortion

Putting Party and Vanity Above Country

Like a desperate last-minute Christmas shopper who will grab any gift and pay any price, Congress may rush through a hasty and ill-conceived rewrite of health care legislation. President Obama’s message to Senators seems focused more on party loyal and an appeal to desires for glory than on what Americans want or need.

With public support collapsing all about them (61% in opposition according to CNN’s December polling), Democrats may be motivated by a feeling that they’ve gone too far to turn back now, even if it’s in the wrong direction. They could invoke Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism that “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Franklin, however, had a much nobler purpose in mind—independence from government tyranny.

What’s in the final bill may become immaterial in this Christmas rush. That’s dangerous because the ultimate language remains a mystery after earlier efforts ran afoul of multitudes of objections. The 11th-hour rewrite of the bill will be major version Number Nine since varying editions began surfacing during the summer. With or without a co-called “public option,” it’s certain that the bill will displace millions of Americans from their current private insurance, put Washington in charge of all health care and insurance, and expand the number of people who depend on taxpayers to pay for their coverage. (more…)

Tags: employer mandates, Health Czar, individual mandates, Obama Health Care Plan

Employment Discrimination in the Senate Health Care Bill

The Senate health care bill includes a well-known “employer mandate” provision that would require employers to offer “qualified” health plan and pay 60% of the premium, or pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per full-time employee.

What is less well-known is that the provision would also tax companies even if they do offer insurance – but only if they hire people from low- and moderate-income families who qualify for, and elect to accept, premium subsidies. And the tax penalty for hiring those employees – arguably the people who need jobs the most – would be a whopping $3,000 per year.

Who would qualify for such a subsidy?
There are two criteria. First, family income – not how much this employee is paid by this company, but total family income – would have to below four times the federal poverty level (FPL). The FPL depends on family size; for 2009 four times the FPL would be $43,320 for a single adult with no children and $88,200 for a family of four (regardless of whether it’s a single parent with three children or two parents and two children). (more…)

Tags: discrimination, employer mandates, federal poverty level, income inequality, IRS, Obama Health Care Plan

Heritage’s Ernest Istook Schools Ed Schultz on How Obamacare Kills Jobs and Hurts Poor

Ed Schultz is a leftist radio personality who recently graduated to MSNBCs barely watched opinion line up. Schultz still hosts his daily radio show and recently had Heritage Foundation fellow Ernest Istook on to discuss Obamacare. The following exchange (audio here) transpired:

SCHULTZ: OK, give us your new information from the Heritage Foundation on health care. Tell us how screwed up the Democrats are on that.

ISTOOK: Well, you know, I think this may be in the category of unintended consequences, although frankly it may be part of the cost control. As we’ve been going through this 2,000 pages that have been brought up for debate in the US Senate, evidently the penalties that they put upon employers if their, the people who work for them go into this public plan, this so-called insurance exchange …

SCHULTZ: Don’t tell me they’re going to jail! Please …

ISTOOK: No, this is not about that.

SCHULTZ: OK. (more…)

Tags: Ed Schultz, employer mandates, Obama Health Care Plan