A new Republican majority in Congress definitely means continuing challenges for the Obama administration with things like the Keystone XL Pipeline and immigration. But in addition to that, the issues with the Affordable Care Act are a bit complex – it’s clearly not just a “yay” or “nay” situation.
Jason Millman for The Washington Post points out why the GOP’s goals might be counterproductive, in fact it might increase the need for Obamacare:
The fight is tied to the Affordable Care Act requirement that companies with at least 50 full-time employees provide comprehensive and affordable health insurance to 95 percent of their full-time workers or face penalties. The so-called employer mandate defines full-time employees as those working at least 30 hours or more per week.
The GOP bill, one of the first to get consideration in the new Congress, would redefine “full-time employee” under the ACA as someone who works at least 40 hours a week. It sounds commonsense enough — 40 hours is entrenched in American culture as the standard workweek. But studies indicate that what the GOP is trying to do will actually increase Americans’ dependence on government-provided health insurance and raise the deficit.
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The current ACA policy states that an employee must work for 30+ hours a week to be provided insurance from an employer that has 50+ employees. With these new revisions, some companies could have the incentive to cut back the amount of employees they have and also cut hours to avoid providing benefits, which will require employes to reach out to things like Medicare and the ACA.
A Commonwealth Fund analysis pointed to how this will affect federal spending and concluded that raising the full-time threshold will increase reliance on public coverage through the ACA due to the amount of people who work at least 40 hours a week right now.
Clearly a lot of people are very opinionated on the subject, and who knows how and what will actually change, especially until 2016 rolls around. But it’s interesting and important to examine what goals are being presented and what they actually mean for taxpayers.
