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."

Comments

Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!

[FooAtWFU]

More regulatory uncertainty! Yay!

Re:Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!

[cod3r_]

Maybe they did realize that during this tough economic time (that will probably go on forever since we only consume and don't actually produce anything) it might be a bad thing to force businesses to offer health insurance that is rapidly rising.. Our company only employees 22 people and we provide health insurance that costs us somewhere in the neighborhood of 75k/year.. Having gone up about 20% since obama care passed.

Re:Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!

[I'm New Around Here]

Hawaii has a better method, which I believe is also unique among the states.

Employers have to provide an insurance plan to their employees. The employer doesn't have to pay for it, just be a member of a group plan.

I think the minimum employee number that requires this is 15. So if you want guaranteed coverage, get a job at any medium sized business.

The part of the law that makes sense is that there is no 'individual mandate' provision.

Re: Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!

[ebno-10db]

So far, obamacare sounds a lot like the usual healthcares we enjoy in EU countries

And Canada, Japan, Australia, etc.

Unfortunately it's not. It's structured as a big giveaway to for-profit insurance companies and big pharma. Hopefully that will get fixed before it banrupts us. I've been a big proponent of UHC for decade, but Obamacare is about the worse plan to implement it I've ever seen.

Re:Oh, look! Just what the economy needs!

[MightyMartian]

The NHS is a wreck for a lot of reasons. And really, it's a hybrid system, still allowing private health care in a limited form. Look to Germany, which has a universal system and manages it very well.

And as to standards of care, well the problem in the US is that the standard of care is directly proportional to the kind of insurance you can afford. If you don't have good health insurance, or even health insurance at all, and you have a major medical crisis, you're in real trouble.

I'm a Canadian, and while our system has its flaws, my experience with it has been very good. In 2006, my wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, had to have two surgeries, the lost one being a total thyroidectomy. My income was limited, we had two kids in grade school, and by the time of her second surgery the business I worked for had went under. We were able to keep our house (though finances were very stretched as I was on unemployment) and our credit rating and thus within a year or two, with a new job, we were able to deal with remaining debts incurred. In other words, a disease that may very well have proven ruinous in the United States was, in the Canadian universal system, not only survivable from a health point of view, but also a financial point of view.

I make a lot more money now than I did seven years ago, and I suppose on a purely short-sighted selfish level I can grump about the amount of my taxes on top of premiums that I pay for health coverage, but having come out of a major medical crisis with my finances intact and without being saddled with a vast mortgage just to pay the bills, I can safely say even if the system cost me twice as much a month as it does now, I'd stick with the universal system any day of the week.

So, is this delay legal?

[msauve]

Is this delay specifically authorized by the law, or is the Obama administration simply going to fail to uphold a law they pushed to get passed?

Re:This'll take awhile for people to accept

[Temkin]

Yea, we'll get used to having beurecrats make decisions regarding our famililies heathcare. I mean, having the IRS target the businesses of political opponents is nothing compared to denying Grandma her hip replacement because you voted for the wrong candidate.