Here is a KEY CHANGE the GOP wants to do on OBAMACARE: House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said they want to REWRITE the Affordable Care Act so employers could avoid providing health coverage to workers who put in less than 40 HOURS a week -- up from the law’s current 30-hour threshold. The measure (which would face a presidential veto) would make it easier for employers to shift MORE workers to PART-TIME status and AVOID buying insurance or paying FINES under a provision of the law taking effect at the end of the year. The likely result: A MILLION people would LOSE employer-paid health care and have to look for subsidized coverage on government insurance exchanges or go on Medicaid. The industry is getting around this ruling where they can, they avoid the insurance mandate by just giving people 29 hr/wk instead of 39 hr/wk, making it very hard for low wage part-timers to earn enough to live on. And, if they live in a state without a higher minimum wage, and without Medicaid expansion, then the workers remain without access to ANY insurance. And this has been an INCONVENIENCE for employers, because they have to go thru the HASSLE of hiring more workers to get the same amount of work done. It is ironic that the Republican leaders borrowed language from the labor movement, characterizing the proposal as an effort “to restore the traditional 40-hour definition of full-time employment”, when the Progressive use of the term was to prevent worker exploitation of TOO MANY work hours. When ACA was written, no right-minded person actually believed that so many business owners would be so greedy and self-serving that they would stoop to cutting hours to 29 to avoid this... but I guess we should have known better. While raising that threshold “wouldn’t have a meaningful effect on the number of people who have insurance,” it would “essentially wipe out” the employer mandate... because it is very easy to just schedule 39 hours instead of 40, and avoid insurance altogether. bloomberg/news/2014-11-07/republicans-to-chip-at-obamacare-by-redefining-work-hours.html
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 18:30:10 +0000
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