{"id":20479,"date":"2014-04-05T21:15:40","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T01:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20479"},"modified":"2014-04-05T21:15:40","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T01:15:40","slug":"bipartisan-support-for-repealing-the-employer-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20479\/bipartisan-support-for-repealing-the-employer-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"Bipartisan Support for Repealing the Employer Mandate?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It sounds like there may be a growing bipartisan consensus to repeal ObamaCare\u2019s onerous employer mandate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRepublicans don\u2019t like the mandate because they oppose the idea of government telling private sector entities what to do, but they also don\u2019t support the lack of tax incentives for individuals who don\u2019t pay for health care through an employer,\u201d says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/story\/12620968\/1\/obamacares-employer-mandate-is-toast-and-democrats-are-ok-with-that.html \" target=\"_blank\">The Street<\/a>. For their part, \u201c[s]ome Democrats don\u2019t mind dumping the employer mandate because they would prefer to move away from businesses making health insurance decisions for individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The employer mandate is poised to hit small and growing businesses especially hard, since employing 50 full-time workers \u2013 defined as working 30 hours or more a week \u2013 triggers requirements to offer costly ObamaCare-compliant insurance plans.<\/p>\n<p>This creates an obvious incentive to cut hours for people already at the margins, in effect robbing them of extra work and extra pay. Because of this liberal pundits like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/07\/02\/obamacares-employer-mandate-shouldnt-be-delayed-it-should-be-repealed\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ezra Klein<\/a> have called for the full repeal of the employer mandate (and deplored the politically-motivated delays that have made ObamaCare\u2019s implementation so arbitrary).<\/p>\n<p>Of course, repealing the employer mandate isn\u2019t a painless option. While it would no doubt free countless human resources directors from nimbly trying to anticipate the next extra-legal maneuverings of the Obama administration, it would also be a huge hit on ObamaCare\u2019s financial scorecard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you take [the employer mandate] out the congressional budget score looks a lot worse,\u201d one academic supporter of ObamaCare tells The Street. That\u2019s because the buck for subsidizing health insurance would move from private employers to the public treasury via a massive migration to ObamaCare exchanges. The individual mandate, remember, would be still be in effect. If that happens, expect ObamaCare\u2019s price tag to soar.<\/p>\n<p>So while it may be tempting for Republicans to ally with Democrats and vote to repeal the employer mandate, doing so could be used to charge the GOP with willfully spiking federal spending. Better, it seems, to just get rid of the whole law and start afresh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It sounds like there may be a growing bipartisan consensus to repeal ObamaCare\u2019s onerous employer mandate. \u201cRepublicans don\u2019t like the mandate because they oppose the idea of government telling private sector entities what to do, but they also don\u2019t support the lack of tax incentives for individuals who don\u2019t pay for health care through an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4191,4192,3007,3308,1829,1009,35,1001],"class_list":["post-20479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-delay","tag-employer","tag-exchange","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-mandate","tag-obamacare","tag-repeal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20483,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20479\/revisions\/20483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}