The health control legislation known as ObamaCare (HR 3590) has an employer mandate provision for those who hire more than 50 people, as I’ve written before, this is a terrible idea. Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhatten Institute explains how the employer mandate harms low-skilled and part-time workers:
…come 2014, the new health care bill will make it harder for employers to hire low-skill workers. And, as workplaces around the country prepare to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, employers are considering how best to comply. For some companies, that means that low-wage and part-time jobs will start to go, not in 2014, but now.
Industries that have traditionally offered the most opportunities to low-skill workers – leisure and hospitality, and the retail trade – will be particularly hard-hit by the new law. Many employers do not provide their employees with health insurance, and both sectors have large percentages of part-time workers, whose cost of hiring will increase significantly.
Under the new law, every employer with more than 50 workers will either have to offer health insurance or pay an annual penalty. The penalty for full-time employees is $2,000 per worker. For part-timers, employers will pay $2,000 for each “full-time equivalent worker,” a block of 30 weekly hours of part-time work by the same or different employees.
Read the whole article: Healthcare’s Impact On the Low-Skilled Worker.
