ObamaCare Penalties now delayed until 2015

[XDCX]

News reports are indicating the requirement that businesses with over 50 employees must pay a $2,000/employee penalty if the business does not provide health care has been delayed until 2015.

Here's a link to a report from USA Today - click here

I'm not sure what impact this will have on most car dealerships since the majority already provide some form of health insurance for their employees. The delay in implementing the penalty will most likely benefit companies that employ a lot of minimum wage employees and typically don't provide health care coverage - e.g. Fast Food, retail sales, unskilled labor, etc.

On a personal level, I hate big government and I'm happy to see this as another set-back for ObamaCare and hope the entire program unravels.

[conn02]

I am just concerned over the "just right" health care provisions. Don't give enough health care, penalized, give too much, penalized. Jump through the calculations to try and figure out if the cost of health care exceeds the percentage of the adjusted gross income of your lowest paid employee, or just pay the penalty and allow all of your employees to fall on the system

[XDCX]

Originally Posted by conn02

I am just concerned over the "just right" health care provisions. Don't give enough health care, penalized, give too much, penalized. Jump through the calculations to try and figure out if the cost of health care exceeds the percentage of the adjusted gross income of your lowest paid employee, or just pay the penalty and allow all of your employees to fall on the system

That's a great point. The tough part, however, is you might need to do that evaluation each year. I read an article the other day that the $2,000 penalty was a somewhat arbitrary number that was selected with little regard to the actual expense of providing health care coverage. If too many employers choose to take the penalty the $2,000 fine will definitely increase.

Clearly the government wants to force employers to provide health care - my bet is they'll keep inflating the $2,000 fine to get more compliance.

[XDCX]

I was trying to get rid of some clutter last month and decided I'd sell off my old Droid X on Craigslist so someone could get some use out of it.

I ended up selling the Droid X to a young family man who worked as a manager at a Sonic Fast Food Drive-in. While we were waiting for Verizon to do the swap we had a chance to chat. I asked him about the challenges of managing his employees and he told me it's harder now than ever before because his company doesn't want to hire full-time employees because of ObamaCare.

He was telling me about one job applicant he had that was already working at Jack in the Box but was capped at working two 13 hour shifts per week. He was going to hire the applicant for 35 hours per week but knew it was going to be a struggle to accommodate and schedule for her other job.

He was telling me that it wasn't just his company that was cutting back on full-time employees - it was happening throughout his industry.

[XDCX]

Originally Posted by XDCX

On a personal level, I hate big government and I'm happy to see this as another set-back for ObamaCare and hope the entire program unravels.

Well, there are reasons to be hopeful - click here

The theory is the individual mandate could be difficult to impose if it becomes a political issue during the mid-term election cycle.

To the extent the program only works if healthy/young people are forced to pay so they can subvent the premiums of older/less healthy people the whole program could unravel if the individual mandates are delayed.