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ACA Running Thread

The attempts to pin Obamacare on the Republican Party are almost pitiable. The Republicans range from being the most obstructionist party in evers!!111 to secretly designing the health care tax (by keenly opposing it at every juncture).

C'mon guys. You showed up in that dress, might as well dance in it.

No kidding. It's pretty comical to watch as Democrats distance themselves from the law (notice the transformation from Obamacare to ACA in vernacular) and try to pin the ideas on Republicans while maintaining that it is a good law. Not very convincing.
 
No kidding. It's pretty comical to watch as Democrats distance themselves from the law (notice the transformation from Obamacare to ACA in vernacular) and try to pin the ideas on Republicans while maintaining that it is a good law. Not very convincing.

they have not even begun to run from it. The flight will reach Moses out of Egypt proportions when those liar-subsidies blow up the budget next year.
 
Restaurant owners moving towards more PT help
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324694904578601922653718606.html

"... some operators said their hiring of part-timers is driven by the health-care overhaul. Rod Carstensen, owner of 11 Del Taco restaurants around Denver, began in April converting his mostly full-time workforce into one comprising mostly part-time help to minimize his health-care costs. He estimates the costs could have climbed by as much as $400,000 a year without the change.

Mr. Carstensen had 180 full-time and 40 part-time workers and is in the process of switching to 80 full-time and 320 part-time workers who clock no more than 28 hours per week. He is plowing ahead despite the Obama administration's reprieve, he said, because "we need to get there anyway, and it will take until January 1, 2015, to make this transition."
 
ACA problem for non-profit home health company:
http://www.jsonline.com/business/personal-care-worker-health-benefits-in-jeopardy-b9950910z1-215457321.html
"Because Independence First employs a large number of people with disabilities, its insurance costs are sky-high — an estimated $11,000 a year for individual coverage.

Under the law, a worker's share of the premium is limited to 9.5% of his or her wage. That works out to a bit less than $2,200 a year for someone who makes $11 an hour and works 40 hours a week.

Providing health benefits could cost Independence First more than $5,000 a year for each full-time worker.

The other option is to pay a penalty of $3,000 for each worker who gets subsidized coverage through the marketplaces known as exchanges.

That works out to $1.4 million for the 470 personal care workers who work more than 30 hours a week — or almost all of Independence First's net income of $1.6 million, on revenue of $35.9 million, last year.

Other organizations and businesses, such as nursing homes, that get most of their revenue from Medicaid could face the same problem.

"It's not just us," said Lee Schulz, president and chief executive officer of Independence First.

Nor is the potential problem limited to Wisconsin.

"There are very few states that aren't going to have this problem," Schulz said.
 
the trend toward part-timing low-paid, low-skilled workers was an entirely predictable side effect of this bill. they will be part timed and required to go on the exchanges or pay a penalty. once they get on the exchanges they will qualify for the subsidies as they will have low income. I wonder whether the CBO analysis of the ACA accurately predicted the size of the movement to part-timing and the subsidies that will be necessary.
 
No chance in hell

This. Businesses are going to do what they have to in order to survive. PT will become the norm for any business above the threshold that employs a large number is non skilled labor.
 
New York is a highly regulated insurance market with strict guarantee issue rules and benefit mandates. It's among the most highly regulated market in the country, if not the most regulated.

Adding rules around annual enrollment periods and the individual mandate / tax along with fewer benefit mandates drives this decrease. The risk programs help too but these are of course temporary.

The good news is incredibly high rates are now just high rates. The bad news is that it has little to do with increased competition on the exchange.
 
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/17/new...ealth-insurance-new-york/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"New Yorkers to see 50% drop in health insurance costs in Obamacare exchange"

The New York Times tries - and fails - to protect Obamacare from health insurance rate shock.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapot...e-obamacare-from-health-insurance-rate-shock/

Yesterday, fans of Obamacare were cheering. A front-page story in the New York Times announcedthat individuals shopping for health insurance in New York would see their premiums halved, based on figures released by the Andrew Cuomo administration. It was an “extraordinary decline” that “demonstrates the profound promise” of Obamacare, said one supporter of the law. But the cheerleaders are wrong. New York’s premiums will remain among the costliest in the nation, after Obamacare becomes fully operational. And the unique history of how the Empire State destroyed its individual health-insurance market—using policies quite similar to Obamacare’s—will translate, at best, to only a handful of other states.
We’ll start our discussion with a recounting of that tale, of the unflattering history of the individual health insurance market in New York state....
 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/17/the-devastating-obamacare-tax-on-low-income-workers-at-large-firms/
"Obamacare levies a grossly unfair tax on workers in large firms—a tax that is particularly unfair since it hits those with the lowest wages hardest. The tax also is very inefficient as it will lead to all sorts of distortion in labor markets."

Wow. That is a damning article. Thanks for posting.

There is one quibble - he repeatedly assumes that healthcare costs are directly passed through to employees and subtracted dollar for dollar from their cash compensation. In my experience that is not actually true. Employers have to compete for labor on cash compensation, especially for low wage workers who perceive that they need the cash more than the coverage. So what really happens is part of the cost comes out of employee compensation, but some of the cost also is spread around the business in other ways, including passing it through to customers via higher pricing. In the current high unemployment rate market more of the cost can be put on the employees, in a strong labor market more of the cost will be shifted to consumers.

I don't think that quibble undermines his larger point though.
 
Tell the 13M Americans who got insurance rebates last year and the 8.5M who have gotten them so far this year, that this is bad.
 
Wow. That is a damning article. Thanks for posting.

There is one quibble - he repeatedly assumes that healthcare costs are directly passed through to employees and subtracted dollar for dollar from their cash compensation. In my experience that is not actually true. Employers have to compete for labor on cash compensation, especially for low wage workers who perceive that they need the cash more than the coverage. So what really happens is part of the cost comes out of employee compensation, but some of the cost also is spread around the business in other ways, including passing it through to customers via higher pricing. In the current high unemployment rate market more of the cost can be put on the employees, in a strong labor market more of the cost will be shifted to consumers.

I don't think that quibble undermines his larger point though.

Conceptually, I would tend to agree with you. However, research papers which study natural experiments tend to find the opposite: when ER's costs rise (usually by a mandate of some kind) wages tend to fall almost exactly by the same amount.

Here's probably the most well known research paper on the subject:

http://aysps.gsu.edu/isp/files/ISP_SUMMER_SCHOOL_2008_ERARD_INCIDENCE_OF_MANDATED_MATERNITY_BENEFITS.pdf
 
Tell the 13M Americans who got insurance rebates last year and the 8.5M who have gotten them so far this year, that this is bad.

Certainly this is not the hurdle that legislation needs to clear to be "good". Do you agree?
 
The reality is things could be better and be fixed easier if one side wouldn't waste so much time trying to kill it. Today, House Republicans voted for the THIRTY-EIGHTH time to kill ACA.

If they EVER made an effort to work with Obama, it would work better. One side's agenda is to attack, attack , attack rather than fix.

Every major social law has been amended and massaged during its first few years. From Social Security to Medicare to GI Bills to many others, the sides saw the problems, worked together and made each program be better than it was when passed.

This time, we have one side whose only goal is bring everything Obama wants to do. There has never been a more universally obstructionist and destructive Congress than today.
 
Another glitch...This isnt a big deal but just a good example of the many on going issues. Smoking was one of the basics...Not a hard thing to do.

http://news.yahoo.com/break-smokers-glitch-may-limit-071436839.html;_ylt=A2KJ2Pbo19tR0w4AgebQtDMD

Agree the glitch isn't a big deal.. but I find the subject interesting. I can't help but wonder how proponents will react to a 'risk premium' applied to their health insurance due to their McDonald's Value Meal habit... and if you're thinking 'I don't eat at McDonald's', hopefully you'll recognize that any diet other than figs, twigs, and pure spring water probably increases your risk for something..
 
The reality is things could be better and be fixed easier if one side wouldn't waste so much time trying to kill it. Today, House Republicans voted for the THIRTY-EIGHTH time to kill ACA.

If they EVER made an effort to work with Obama, it would work better. One side's agenda is to attack, attack , attack rather than fix.

Every major social law has been amended and massaged during its first few years. From Social Security to Medicare to GI Bills to many others, the sides saw the problems, worked together and made each program be better than it was when passed.

This time, we have one side whose only goal is bring everything Obama wants to do. There has never been a more universally obstructionist and destructive Congress than today.

Arguably many (all?) of those enjoyed more bipartisan support in the vote count.
 
The GOP announced BEFORE the bill was sent they wouldn't help at all. The reality is ACA is overwhelmingly the GOP health plan of the 90s.
 
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