MaggieD
DP Veteran
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- Jul 9, 2010
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Re: Entire Healthcare Law Upheld
Employer health insurance is not mandated to be free to the employee. If a company has 50 full-time employees, there is no earthly reason why they cannot offer health insurance options to their employees. This mandate hurts the employees, not the employers. The employees will have to pony up and have health insurance that, in one way or another, comes out of their own pockets...whether in terms of lower wages or higher deductions.
If hospitals didn't have to treat people who didn't have health insurance for nothing, we wouldn't need these regulations. But they do. Now: Penalize people who go to the emergency room for a sore throat, and we'll really have something.
First off, it's not an opinion. I personally work with over 400 companies, that range in size from 3 employees to 1000. This law mandates that a business with more than 50 employees MUST provide health insurance.
Problem is, most 50 man companies cannot afford health insurance for their employees. THey simply dont have the money to fund such a program. Now, because this mandate was upheld, that company faces some major decisions. 1. Provide health insurance. 2. Go out of business 3. Lay off employees to fall below the 50 employee threshhold. 4. Break up company into 2 seperate companies.
These are all solutions that come from the actual business owners. It's not that they don't "want" to offer benefits, they simply cannot afford it. So, this hurts their growth potential, hiring capabilities, or any possibility of increasing wages. They simply can't do it all. They cant afford to invest where they want, increase wages for existing employees, grow and hire new employees, and provide health insurance for everyone all at the same time. They cant afford to do it all.
It's a job killer, and at a time when our economy needs businesses to grow and expand, this mandate stifles any chance of that in literally millions of companies.
Do the math. In a company with 60 employees. The average insurance premium is approximately $500 per person, per month. That comes out to an additional $360,000 per year that that company must now pay in insurance premiums. That is a tremendous burden on a company with only 60 employees. That's $360,000 that could go to hiring new people, expanding their company, increasing wages, etc. But it's now mandated that they spend that $360,000 on health insurance. Go talk to any company with 60 employees. Maybe 5% of them end their fiscal year with $360,000 just left over.
This isn't some kind of opinion. This is reality. I work with these companies. Owners are of a mixed bag politically. Some liberals, some not. But they all know the reality. They simply don't have that $360,000 left over each year to pay insurance premiums. It's a simple matter of math, not politics.
So, what are their solutions???? Where is their freedom to run a successful business now?
Employer health insurance is not mandated to be free to the employee. If a company has 50 full-time employees, there is no earthly reason why they cannot offer health insurance options to their employees. This mandate hurts the employees, not the employers. The employees will have to pony up and have health insurance that, in one way or another, comes out of their own pockets...whether in terms of lower wages or higher deductions.
If hospitals didn't have to treat people who didn't have health insurance for nothing, we wouldn't need these regulations. But they do. Now: Penalize people who go to the emergency room for a sore throat, and we'll really have something.