While the intent of ObamaCare - the so-called Affordable Care Act - was to help those without health insurance coverage get it, it turns out that the number of those without health insurance coverage will remain virtually unchanged once ObamaCare is in full force. I've heard the argument that ObamaCare will make sure everyone will have access to health care, but that argument is false as no one is barred from receiving health care even if they can't pay for it. Instead it was supposed to make sure that everyone had health insurance, with part of that effort making it illegal to not have it. (Like that's really going to make anyone go out and get it.)
Now that the reality of what ObamaCare means is striking home, a lot of Democrats who were all for it are finding out that it isn't the wonderful law that it was supposed to be. Instead, it is making them take a second look and what they are seeing is horrifying them. One Democrat in particular is finding that it may put him out of business if he doesn't cut costs once ObamaCare fully kicks in.
If you asked Link Christensen to describe his political beliefs a couple years ago, he'd say he was a liberal, a social activist and an Obamacare supporter.Raising his employees' pay to compensate won't help as his margin is razor thin now. If he raises pay he'll have to lay off some of his employees to make up for it. As he's finding out, ObamaCare should have been called the Unaffordable Care Act.
But today, things are less black and white for the small business owner, who operates Tennessee Awning Co.
Christensen was originally concerned with patients who go to the emergency room for minor ailments instead of seeking a primary care physician and felt that Obamacare would allow people to stay healthier and remove perverse incentives that clog up hospitals across the U.S.
The only problem? He didn't realize how much it would cost him, and he's horrified by how much it's going to cost his employees.
"Some of those regulations about what the costs of my employees are going to be are horrendous, and I can't understand the math," he said. "Listening to the insurance providers and people providing webinars on how to figure out what our costs are going to be in this program, it's gigantically troublesome to me."
Not only does the math make his accountant shudder, Christensen is fairly certain that his employees are going to totally lose all coverage, he said. That's because the economical CoverTN program that he's currently using doesn't qualify under Obamacare's rules, and will disappear at the end of the year. CoverTN costs employees and Christensen about $60 each per month, but Obamacare would double that, placing it out of reach for those at the low end of the pay scale.
Many other provisions of ObamaCare that were supposed to encourage employers to provide health insurance to their employees are having exactly the opposite effect. Any business that has under 50 employees is unlikely to hire any more employees that would bring them to that number because at that point the business would be obliged to start covering their employees with very expensive health insurance coverage. Even with businesses with less than 50 employees will find many of the plans they had for their employees will no longer exist and will be forced to drop health insurance for their employees, forcing them to go to the exchanges, none of which will provide coverage cheaply.
"We have a new term in America known as "49ers" where employers are trying to keep their staffs below 50 even when they would otherwise like to hire more workers," Corker said. "That is hurting American economic growth."So one of the other unintended bad side effects of ObamaCare is the move by employers to change some of their full time employees to part time so they won't come under the sway of ObamaCare. Some may fault employers for doing this, but it all come down to a matter of survival for the businesses affected. When the government mandates expensive 'solutions' to problems created by the government itself and businesses respond to those mandates by doing what they must in order to remain in business, the fault belongs not with the business owners but with the government.
Other employers are likely to shift more full-time employees, who must be covered with health insurance under ObamaCare, to part-time status under 30 hours of work a week so they don't have to offer such costly benefits.
Is it any wonder business owners, and particularly Democrat business owners are changing sides when it comes to their support of ObamaCare?