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Obamacare Employer Mandate Delayed Until After Congressional Elections
theodp writes "If you hoped your employer would finally provide health insurance in 2014, take two aspirin and call your doctor in the morning — the morning of January 1st, 2015. The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law until 2015, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance. The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, after the congressional elections, the administration said Tuesday. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don't offer affordable insurance."
And political expediency wins again
The question to ask is why would they want to delay implementation until after mid terms?
How many employers will just pay the fine. 3k per year per employee is less than a heathcare plan
Conveniently after the mid-term elections, where frustration with this trainwreck might reflect badly on those in power... One Turkish professor said "He talks like the president of the ACLU, and governs like Dick Cheney."
Not sure where the uncertainty is. Says right there - January 1, 2015.
Right. Just like it said the deadline was this year, before...
The silver lining of the Supreme Court ruling, is that Obamacare is legally a tax. Mitch McConnell realized that taxes can be altered, or eliminated, in the budget reconciliation process. If the Republicans can get total control, even by slim majorities, Obamacare will die. Hillary Clinton is the best hope of keeping Obamacare alive.
So at this point companies DON'T have to provide you insurance, but you MUST carry insurance. So all those people who would have been covered if the business deadline wasn't pushed back will be forced to buy their own insurance on the individual market. Either that or pay the "tax." This is a recipe for real disaster.
While there is probably a political angle to the decision, the reason for the delay is more prosaic:
Under the new law, companies with more than 50 employees must provide their workers with health insurance.* Those companies that do not comply are levied a per-employee tax penalty. Employees that do not receive coverage through their employer can purchase insurance on the open market, and low- and middle-income workers can avail themselves to government subsidies to purchase coverage. In other words, the government is attempting, through the tax code, to recoup the employee's health care subsidy from the employer.
In order to carry out the employer mandate, the Treasury Department needs to know which companies are opting out and also which employees are subsequently utilizing government subsidies for healthcare. This is a technical challenge that the IRS (the Tax Man) has determined they won't have ready in time for the Jan 1, 2014 deadline. Businesses, too, have complained that their duty and mechanism for reporting who they are covering with insurance is difficult and onerous. So the decision has been made to push back the deadline.
Because the whole mechanism is linked to taxes, it is difficult to push the deadline back by, say, six months, because it would be tough to figure out how to pro-rate both the subsidy and the penalty. Most health insurance contracts (employer-provided or otherwise) run from Jan 1 to Dec 31, anyway. So, they pushed the effective date back to the next tax / health insurance / calendar year.
Yes, the new deadline occurs after the 2014 elections. But considering there are national elections every two years in the United States, pushing any deadline back by one year yields a 50/50 chance of passing over an election year. Would pushing it back just six months be any better, how about two years?
* For those, both outside and inside the U.S., who are wondering why health insurance is a benefit attached to a person's job, rather than a social benefit from the government (like in most other countries) or something each person seeks on the open market (like automobile insurance), the answer is: "it's complicated." It isn't the result of any particular plan, that's for damn sure; but rather the long meandering course of history. Those who are curious should read Paul Starr's book The Social Transformation of American Medicine . The Affordable Care Act follows the path of having health insurance as a workplace benefit mostly because that is how most people in the U.S. already get it.
It not a matter of Obama holding up his end... It is more about the republican governors who would rather derail the affordable health care act by stonewalling the creation of insurance exchanges in their state despite the federal government's willingness to pay for it. The irony being that the exchange idea was the republicans' idea to introduce a free market element to universal health care. Like most things involving republicans it is either filibustered, procedural traps, sabotaging legislation with bad provisions, or in this case all of the above.
Sadly I think the US missed an opportunity to have an excellent universal healthcare system, but the two political parties acted like spoiled brats. The left think their way is the only way, and the right for being in bed with the corporations and doing everything they can to protect their friends at the expense of the country. If they were really looking out for our interests they would have worked together. Instead we had both parties having closed door meetings figuring out how to out maneuver the other party.
I love it when people conveniently ignore the details...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's not what /. needs. I like ragging on the guberment any chance i get, but wtf does this story have to do with technology (other than using a computer to write it maybe).
The chief reason cited for the delay is that the information infrastructure is not ready to handle the new processes and products yet. It is basically an IT project running 12 months behind (at 18 months out) and probably a few billion over budget, and we can all relate to that amiright?
I think the Dems/Admin want to keep obamacare implementation out of the news by doing this, so as to not risk their congress critters that may be coming up for election.
The law had some good parts to it...the sections pertaining to pre-existing conditions is good, and I suppose that letting kids stay on their parents insurance till in their 20's "may" be good, although I think most normal "kids" should be well out on their own and supporting themselves by the time they are 20-21.
But obamacare when it comes into full swing, is going to raise the $$$ of healthcare quite a bit on the young and healthy. It penalizes people that previously had really good benefits at work, making them too $$ for the employers to continue to offer.
This is what comes from "we have to pass the law first to see what's in it...".
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Not sure where the uncertainty is. Says right there - January 1, 2015.
Well what was it a week ago?
Dark Reflection
Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.
Take a look at almost every other major set of regulations that the government has put out (D or R) and see if any of it has rolled out on time. Take the cutover to HDTV: it took years to do and kept getting pushed back. The fact this is happening here is no surprise, and not an indication that it's going to cause prices to increase, jobs to be lost, or the dead rising from the grave.
The problem is that the people wanted socialized medicine and we got an insurance scam. Of course the correct name for this is Romneycare since it closely resembles what Romney implemented in Ma., but that wouldn't have made for a good fight betreen the R's and the D's.
The real problem is that healthcare costs too much in the first place. You can't just insurance that away. What we really need is for the federal government to tell the whole crooked industry, "Just one more $2 ahh stick or $8 tylenol and we nationalize the whole damned thing!".
The difference is that in some areas decisions that were made by insurance companies are now made by publicly accountable government employees.
Which would be interesting if the "publicly accountable" part were even remotely true. Look at the political actions of managers and supervisors in the IRS, and the utter stonewalling by that agency and un-shocking lack of curiosity by their boss who heads the executive branch, the president, as to who to hold accountable for exactly the sort of capricious behavior that you're suggesting won't happen. The IRS is hiring tens of thousands of brand new, un-accountable, essentially un-fireable new employees explicitly to have them make judgement calls about whether individual people have been sufficiently in compliance with a gigantic, byzantine new law that nobody understands. They will decide whether those individuals ultimately may end up having wages garnished, businesses ruined, homes seized, or spend time in prison if they aren't doing it exactly right. That you see such new power and enforcement in the hands of the IRS as an improvement is unfortunate.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
They don't have to pay the fine, or provide insurance. They just make their employees part timers.
I've seen some anecdotal evidence of this (from waitstaff at a couple different restaurants, security guards at my parking deck, blog posts). Unskilled labor positions (i.e. the people that were targeted to receive this benefit) are just having their hours cut to 30 hours/week because part time employees are not subject to the insurance requirement. With current employment trends, it's easy to hire some extra part timers to fill the gap. It's a non-issue for skilled laborers, because most already receive employer provided insurance.
The real problem here is this law was intended to require a benefit (i.e. minimum compensation) for people who do not generally receive it already. So now, not only will they not get insurance, but they're also facing a 25% cut in income.
Having been tested in reality it has a lot better shot than some ideologically or "reason" based idea that somebody pulled out of their ass.
I'm glad for your state. Unfortunately, one size does not fit all.
Thank you for throwing spaghetti against the wall. Can you actually give some reasonable idea why you think it won't work in other states?
It's called dereliction of duty.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The real chief reason is the democrats don't want to lose their asses in the next election when people finally figure out what a cluster fuck the health care bill is and how for many of the current people who HAVE health care already it will mean more money out of their pockets for worse coverage.
...ramrod such bullshit laws down the throats of Americans, and then don't even want to obey to the letter of their own laws they passed when they find out that it adversely affects even their own ilk.
I respectfully disagree that it is just an IT delay. Problem will still be here in 2015 and people will still not want to sign up, plus the insurance cost raises will continue in at least double digits, so this is ALL ABOUT reelecting Demos in 2014 midterms.
Obama, on the other hand, wants a broken system where everyone bitches, because he fully intends as he has said on camera before becoming President, that he wants to go to a single payer system (100% Gov't run healthcare), but just can't get there all at once.
And in the end that means the Federal government and its enforcement arm, the IRS, will take whatever they need from you and me to support the care they give to everyone, whether we like it or not.
This is a quick review of what tyranny looks like; Pay what the Gov't says or you are a criminal as there is no other option but to leave the country. New Zealand, Australia, Chile; they are all looking better.
People just want full insurance without having to fill out forms, switching providers, doctors or anything else. The only people crying about money are the Tea Party weirdos who cry about dropping a penny in their couches. The fact is, the Administration should have just simply took over the entire health care industry. When you have an industry that can only make money off healthy people, then you simply cannot expect to make money unless you let the sick and dying go. Which is the opposite of what is SUPPOSED to happen. Much like the military, it needs to be socialized. All of it. The industry was in shambles before this act, and it will more than likely be in shambles after. Everyone should be allowed to receive health care for free. It's 2013, we have the means, we have the wealth, and we have the regulatory power to make it all work.
The reason it's a steaming pile of shit is because you Americans are so afraid of the word "socialism" that you will implement the most ghastly, awkard and expensive medical systems simply because you're afraid that Jesus will puke in his cornflakes if you simply go to a universal system.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
People were being sold socialized medicine... but many didn't want it.
I would much prefer transparency in medicine, insurance, and allow insurance to be purchased across state lines.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
"Simply go to a universal system" would mean higher cost for worse coverage, just like in UK. NHS costs about $5K a year per taxpayer. On top of it, if you are used to the level of care and service you get by the US healthcare system, you would be shocked at how poor the care is in the UK.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"Simply go to a universal system" would mean higher cost for worse coverage, just like in UK. NHS costs about $5K a year per taxpayer.
Here is a better way of looking at it. Annual costs: US = $8233 per citizen (84% coverage), UK = $3433 per citizen (total coverage). Your "higher cost for worse coverage" is completely wrong and quoting cost per taxpayer is not an informative way to look at it.
"Simply go to a universal system" would mean higher cost for worse coverage, just like in UK. NHS costs about $5K a year per taxpayer.
You are either completely unaware of how much the USA spends on healthcare or you're using some really inventive mathematics, because $5k/year is substantially less than what the USA spends.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The part of the law that makes sense is that there is no 'individual mandate' provision.
This is the part of the affordiable care plan that makes it "affordable".
The idea behind insurance, it is pooled risk (not a right although it might be argued that access to healthcare is a right). The notion that insurance is the only thing that can assure access to healthcare is the root of the complication. Insurance is merely a financial responsiblility you have to yourself and your family. As with most responsiblities, the more we distort it into a right or a requirement, it loses the ablity to function the way it was intended.
Insurance premiums go in to a pool and claims are paid out (okay, there is generally an investment component, but let's ignore that for now). For an insurance to be viable, the claims and premiums must balance over time that's why the pools have to be large to average out variation. By definition, on average, people must pay in as much as the average expected claim value. The whole social engineering part of this is that not everyone can afford to pay for their expected claim value. The attempt to "socialize" this is to require folks that have a negative expected net value for insurance enter the pool to subsidize the folks that cannot afford their expected claim value. Otherwize it will not be affordable to folks that expect to have more claims than the premiums they pay.
Sadly, most folks expect they should be able to have more claims than the premiums they pay or they won't play. Or more perniciously, they attempt to overclaim to get the value that the "deserve". This desire basically ignores reality and destroys the model.
My opinion is that we probably really need a hybrid system. With the current environment, a small (but growing) set of doctors are going back to "cash-patients". The overhead of insurance processing, and the low-reimbursment rates of medicare really signal that we are pretty far off the market level. Perhaps decoupling catastrophic health insurance from more common preventative health insurance will help. Maybe it should be formulated like flood or earthquake insurance into too-big-to-fail, but still optional pools. All other preventative health insurance should be "market", with subsidies for those that cannot afford it. Trying to combine all this stuff into one policy ignores the unknown catastrophic risk profiles that exist, but still should be socialized.
Sadly, the Affordable care act makes subsidized high-deductable insurance plans non-conforming (both employee and employer need to pay a fine to the irs as if you didn't have any insurance). This was intended to force young healthy folks to subsidize the insurance pools. Unfortunatly, it seems that this is a highly regressive policy, yet one tailored to garner the maximum amount of support rather than to actually attempt to solve a problem. Of course the reason was done this way was to promote certain social agendas (requiring coverage for certain procedures and medical services). That is the mess you get when you put too much in the same pot.
This. I can't stress enough that this is the ringing bell of truth.
Our healthcare system has to change. That's for sure. Obama promised a lot. But by the time the econopocalypse creeped back from doomsday levels, what he proposed was not healthcare reform, but health insurance reform.
(Which, hey, is also desperately needed. This bullshit with pre-existing conditions and the ways that health insurance companies absolutely screw people over and kill them has to stop. There are some really good measures in the bill that would fix some of the more glaring issues. )
But it doesn't address the root of the problem. Tack on "medical" to anything and the price jumps a factor of 10x to 100x. And all the places that buy medial equipment, or hire medical staff, or hand out sterilized medical two by fours for therapeutic beatings are spending "other people's money". There's absolutely no consideration about the cost of this stuff. Indeed, the worry that they'd be sued for using the $2 syringe instead of the $25 syringe makes them prefer the expensive option. And the fact that they earn a percentage of the total cost of the transaction doesn't hurt.
yes, game the system. As in convincing non-medicare insurers to pay a bit more.
Perhaps you should push back on those costs a bit harder. For example by not letting doctors write $500 prescriptions when a $4 one will do the job, not allowing every test in the book when a stethoscope will yield the answer, etc. Don't allow $100 dollar lab tests that any high schooler could perform in 10 minutes with $2 in supplies. Make doctors wash their hands for God's sake (a real problem sadly enough). If people didn't hear so much about deaths from hospital acquired infections they might be less concerned with the bright and shiny (which they mistake for evidence of cleanliness).
I have no doubt people who can pay their bills don't. They see an OTC painkiller going for $8/pill and feel ripped off. People tend not to pay when they feel ripped off.
The fact that every other country manages to cost half as much as here (including indigent care) demonstrates that it can be done. If you're not the problem, point out the part that is and let's fix it. But be very sure you're not the problem first. People actually ARE dying over it.