On top of my already huge list of reasons to oppose this healthcare bill (Posted above), here's another one. This healthcare bill will hurt the people who need it the most;
http://healthcare.nationalreview.com...BhNzgzMmQ5Zjc=
Quote:
Yet there's another reason to reject this legislation that should unite NOW and free marketers: It would discourage companies from hiring lower-income workers, particularly those with dependents, which especially would disadvantage single moms.
Section 4980H (under Title 1, Subtitle F, Part II, Section 1513) of the Senate's bill stipulates large employers that fail to provide employees and their dependents access to insurance meeting the government's “minimum essential coverage” definition face penalties if at least one full-time employee obtains insurance using a government subsidy. As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein explains (while calling the provision “the worst policy in the bill, and possibly in the world”), the penalties could be considerable, and will create disincentives for hiring poor parents. Rather than a simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee, the free rider approach penalizes employers for hiring low-income workers who are eligible for subsidies. That will create an incentive to do one of two things: Don't hire low-income workers (hire a teenager looking for a job rather than a single mother, or hire a housewife looking for a second job rather than an unemployed breadwinner), or hire illegal immigrants.
And it actually gets worse. The employer pays more if the low-income worker needs subsidies for his family as opposed to just himself. So it not only discriminates against low-income workers, but it particularly discriminates against low-income parents. Single mothers will get the worst deal, as they have lower incomes, and as you might expect, children who need health care.
Surely legislation penalizing the hiring of single moms meets NOW's definition of “anti-woman.” Defenders could argue the intent is not to penalize hiring, but to encourage companies to provide benefits to employees. Yet these are the kinds of unintended consequences inevitable in a bill that tries to micromanage so many aspects of a very complicated system. Mandates are supposed to ensure adequate coverage, but inevitably drive up costs. Cost-cutting measures are supposed to encourage efficiency, but will inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of care that's available. Expanding health-insurance coverage helps the uninsured, but means that as a nation we'll be consuming more health care and paying more for it.
NOW has its own reasons for opposing the health-care bill, and that's fine. A little more digging, though, and it might uncover other ways this legislation would — and big government regularly does — fail the women NOW claims to represent.
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In other words, if employers don't meet the Government-mandated 'minimum essential coverage' they face expensive penalties. However, that is only if that employer has a SINGLE employee that uses subsidized health-care (Poor people in general, minorities, single mothers, etc.).
The idea is to force employers to establish a minimum acceptable amount of coverage (Through the same channels Government typically does--through force and coercion). Anyways, by doing so, the Government has effectively created an incentive to NOT hire lower-class workers.
Unintended consequences of Government 101.