The good news is they get to make much ado about nothing-as usual. The White House is delaying the employer mandate for a year and of course conservatives are declaring victory. The usual. It's a disaster. Now lets get rid of the rest of it.
"after news of the delay broke, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor responded on Twitter with a simple declaration. “Rather than simply delaying the pain, we should go ahead and scrap this entire law before any more damage is done.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/03/we-can-fix-the-problems-with-the-employer-mandate-but-the-gop-wont-let-it-happen/
"Already, conservatives like Erick Erickson are saying it's unfair to delay the mandate on employers without also delaying the mandate on individuals. Erickson won’t be the last to make this argument, just as he already has plenty of company citing this news as proof that Obamacare is a disaster."
Ok, so that's the good news. They have a new talking point. The bad news is this is pretty small beer. Indeed, according to Jonathan Cohn, the employer mandate is held by most economists to have a negligible effect on how many employers offer healthcare. There are plenty of good reasons why employers already offer their employees healthcare and this is unlikely to change much.
"I’ve always liked the employer mandate, largely for its symbolic value: It’s a way of making sure everybody contributes to health coverage, in some manner. But economists and health policy experts will tell you, almost universally, that the employer mandate is actually bad policy. As they see it, the requirement doesn’t have much effect on whether most employers decide to offer their workers coverage. For the most part, the experts say, employers will decide whether to offer coverage based largely on whether they think it helps retain employees. Today, well more than 90 percent of employers with more than 50 employees decide to offer insurance for that reason. Remember: That's with no penalty at all. As Timothy Jost, the Washington and Lee law professor, writes at Health Affairs:"
Indeed, if the GOP opposition weren't so utterly dysfunctional it would be possible to discuss the policy questions rationally. Ezra Klein and many others think the employer mandate even might be better scrapped-it's only a small part of Obamacare though.
"Truth is, delaying or modifying the employer mandate is exactly the kind of adjustment many experts expected the law would need–and that, in a less polarized environment, would happen through Congress without nearly this much fuss. But that’s one of the big problems with health care reform right now: It’s impossible to make those adjustments. As Klein writes, "the legislative process around the health-care law is completely broken."
Klein had made this same point regrading climate change. If the GOP didn't always play 'my way or the highway' they might gain at least something. By making it all or nothing, the Dems are forced to play this game and defeat them totally.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-gop-congress-is-mad-but-wheres.html
My way or the highway usually means the GOP ends up on the highway but they're too bad at math.
"after news of the delay broke, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor responded on Twitter with a simple declaration. “Rather than simply delaying the pain, we should go ahead and scrap this entire law before any more damage is done.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/03/we-can-fix-the-problems-with-the-employer-mandate-but-the-gop-wont-let-it-happen/
"Already, conservatives like Erick Erickson are saying it's unfair to delay the mandate on employers without also delaying the mandate on individuals. Erickson won’t be the last to make this argument, just as he already has plenty of company citing this news as proof that Obamacare is a disaster."
Ok, so that's the good news. They have a new talking point. The bad news is this is pretty small beer. Indeed, according to Jonathan Cohn, the employer mandate is held by most economists to have a negligible effect on how many employers offer healthcare. There are plenty of good reasons why employers already offer their employees healthcare and this is unlikely to change much.
"I’ve always liked the employer mandate, largely for its symbolic value: It’s a way of making sure everybody contributes to health coverage, in some manner. But economists and health policy experts will tell you, almost universally, that the employer mandate is actually bad policy. As they see it, the requirement doesn’t have much effect on whether most employers decide to offer their workers coverage. For the most part, the experts say, employers will decide whether to offer coverage based largely on whether they think it helps retain employees. Today, well more than 90 percent of employers with more than 50 employees decide to offer insurance for that reason. Remember: That's with no penalty at all. As Timothy Jost, the Washington and Lee law professor, writes at Health Affairs:"
The employer maintains basically like the individual mandate-neither mandate actually mandates that you buy healthcare just levies a small penalty if you don't. Both mandates don't hit those who can't afford the care-individuals beneath a certain level of income are required to buy and neither are those businesses with less than 50 employees.All of the reasons employers now have for offering coverage to their employees—significant tax subsidies, recruitment and retention of employees, and increased productivity and decreased absenteeism when employees are healthy—will continue to exist without the mandate penalty.
Indeed, if the GOP opposition weren't so utterly dysfunctional it would be possible to discuss the policy questions rationally. Ezra Klein and many others think the employer mandate even might be better scrapped-it's only a small part of Obamacare though.
"Truth is, delaying or modifying the employer mandate is exactly the kind of adjustment many experts expected the law would need–and that, in a less polarized environment, would happen through Congress without nearly this much fuss. But that’s one of the big problems with health care reform right now: It’s impossible to make those adjustments. As Klein writes, "the legislative process around the health-care law is completely broken."
Klein had made this same point regrading climate change. If the GOP didn't always play 'my way or the highway' they might gain at least something. By making it all or nothing, the Dems are forced to play this game and defeat them totally.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-gop-congress-is-mad-but-wheres.html
My way or the highway usually means the GOP ends up on the highway but they're too bad at math.
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