Health Care Thoughts: Employer Responses
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
Health Care Thoughts: Employer Responses
The Urban Institute and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation published a paper (October 2011) about the potential responses of employers and employees. The paper tends to take an optimistic view on the responses of employers, although warning of possible short term thinking by some employers.
Now the SCOTUS uproar is resolved, it was worth rereading.
My own view is slightly different, focusing on:
1) Employers with high value employees will continue to provide benefits.
2) Employers with lower value employees will scrutinize the options.
3) Employer slightly below the 50 cutoff will not be hiring.
4) Employers slightly above the 50 cutoff will look to cut employees.
5) Some employers will try to build networks of independent contractors.
Read the UI paper, it is well written for a technical work.
Are there figures that might indicate the whether cutoff point of 50 is a of any significant number of businesses, and from a macro pov estimates about number of jobs ‘possibly’ might be impacted….
Dunno.
My focus on 50 is strictly because of the PPACA calculations.
We do know that at any given time many small businesses, the “mom-and-pop” variety, are at less than 50 and will always be less than 50.
We know that some entrepreneurial ventures move past 50 very quickly.
I think the biggest issue will be type of job, employing 50 CPAs is different than employing 50 waitresses.
Rusty,
As usual we, the US, are running another vast experiment. It will be interesting to have a review of your predictions in 2015.
Just to add to STR post. Employers who cut healthcare insurance plans will still have to subsidize employee plans ($2000). If one employee chooses the exchange over the company’s plan, the company will again have to subsidize that plan up to $3000. The employer does not walk away scot-free.