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April 4th, 2014 1:15 pm
Report: ObamaCare to Increase Large Employer Costs Up to $186 Billion

A new study by the American Health Policy Institute demonstrates that when it comes to ObamaCare’s disruption of the health insurance industry, the worst is yet to come.

The study looks at 100 large employers – defined as employing 10,000 workers or more – to estimate the direct and indirect costs of complying with ObamaCare’s costly mandates. (Due to extra-legal delays by the Obama administration, the employer mandate will go into effect starting in January 2015.)

When factoring in all of the direct mandates and fees – for example, covering children up to age 26 and accepting all enrollees regardless of preexisting conditions – as well as indirect costs – such as medical device companies and insurers passing on compliance costs to businesses in the form of higher prices – the total cost of complying with ObamaCare will be between $4,800 – $5,900 per employee. The net cost of ObamaCare for all large employers is projected to range from $151 billion to $186 billion.

Large employers employ about 52 million American workers, or about one-third of the nation’s workforce. You don’t have to be a Harvard-trained CFO to realize that companies “have a significant incentive to make fundamental changes to their health offerings” because of ObamaCare. The most obvious choice is to pay the $2,000 per employee penalty for not offering health insurance, and let employees try their luck on an ObamaCare exchange.

ObamaCare advocates insist that the law isn’t designed to separate workers from their health insurance, but the incentive structures buried within it tell a different story. Skeptics can be forgiven if the implementation phase looks like a coordinated effort first to get people into government-run exchanges, and eventually, under government-run health care.

H/T: Daily Caller

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