Obama Admin delays Employer Mandate...again

[Chris0nllyn]

Last summer, the administration put the requirement on hold for an extra year. Now it’s tweaking the provision even further. Businesses with between 50 and 99 employees will not be subject to the employer mandate until 2016. The administration says it will require employers participating in the delay to certify that they aren’t cutting back on jobs strictly to fall under the 100-employee threshold.

The administration is also tweaking the coverage rules for larger businesses. Employers with 100 or more employees will now only have to provide coverage for 70 percent of their workers through 2016. Previously, those firms had been required to give coverage to 95 percent of their workers to meet the requirement.

To some extent this is just one of the many perils of attempting to make a law as complex and controversial as Obamacare work. The administration is attempting to please employers who don’t like the requirement and mitigate some of the potential economic destabilization that could come with the requirement. It’s a political move as much as anything. But it could further undermine the law’s already shaky policy foundations. As Obamacare’s supporters argued before the law was passed, the employer mandate is one of the key mechanisms the law relies on to keep costs down and coverage up. But the administration has now twice weakened that mechanism. (And at this point, you have to wonder if there aren't more tweaks to the provision coming down the line.)

At the same time, the administration’s pick-and-choose approach to implementation has destabilized the law politically. Because the Obama administration won’t be running the show forever. And future administrations, which might not be so sympathetic to the law or so tied to its fortunes, are likely to take advantage of the flexibility the Obama administration has made for itself here. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry might be overstating the case a little bit when he writes at Forbes that President Obama is “giving conservatives all the tools they need to transform the country.” But with legally dubious moves like this, the Obama administration is almost certainly setting a precedent that will eventually come back to haunt Democrats.

Obama Administration Delays Obamacare

 

[Gilligan]

I wonder if Barry thinks that any companies that were limiting new hires or at least being very cautious wrt their FT employee count, because of the looming impact of Obamacare, will care much that the requirement is still looming...just looming farther out in time.

In my business - and in many businesses - we would never hire anyone with even the slightest expectation that we might not want them on payroll in two or three years. It takes half that long just to get them fully trained up.

 

[Chris0nllyn]

Just realized there's another thread on this subject.

It's a purely political stunt trying to save the Senate next election.