Obamacare Backfires: Employer Mandate Postponed to 2015

Last year Obamacare cleared a big hurdle when the Supreme Court ruled that a healthcare “tax” is constitutional.

However, the Affordable Care Act has run into quicksand after the Obama Administration postponed the employer mandate to 2015.

Employers who don’t provide health insurance will be spared penalties of up to $3,000 per worker until 2015, a one-year delay of a major component of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, the Treasury Department announced Tuesday.

Under Obamacare, companies with at least 50 full-time employees are required to provide qualifying health benefits to workers or face financial penalties called “shared responsibility payments.”

Up until now, small businesses had been repositioning their workforce by FIRING FULL TIME WORKERS and HIRING PART-TIME WORKERS to avoid having 50 full-time employees on their payroll. This trend had been accelerating, as seen in recent BLS Employment reports.

With this delay granted, the pace of this work force repositioning will slow, possibly manifesting itself in lower hires of part-time workers.

Combined with developments like Aetna and United Health Group (the nation’s largest health insurer) leaving California due to Obamacare, it is obvious that this health care tax is a political failure for Obama.