employer mandate | Health Beat by Maggie Mahar

That House Speaker John Boehner would ask this question shows either:

a) how little he understands about the Affordable Care Act; OR

b) how committed he is to making sure that the American public does not understand the purpose of health care reform.

I would pick “b”.

Republicans are now suggesting that if the employer mandate (requiring that businesses offer benefits to their workers or pay a penalty) is being postponed until 2015, the Obama administration should postpone the individual mandate as well.

“Is it fair for the president of the United States to give American businesses an exemption from his health care law’s mandates without giving the same exemption to the rest of America?” Boehner asks.

What he ignores, of course is that under the Affordable Care Act, .middle-income as well as low-income citizens would receive generous tax credits to help them purchase insurance. Not long ago, I wrote about those subsidies, and a new “subsidy calculator” that will let an individual estimate how large his subsidy would be).

More than 26 million Americans will be eligible for these tax credits next year–though most dont know it. And by attempting to delay the individual mandate, the GOP is trying to make sure that they don’t find out.

The Individual Mandate and the Employer Mandate Are Not Connected

Meanwhile Boehner pretends that the two mandates are somehow connected, In fact, they have nothing to do with each other.

The individual mandate exists because, under Obamacare, insurers are required to cover people suffering from pre-existing conditions. Aetna will no longer be able to shun the sick, nor will it be able to slap them with sky-high premiums.

This part of the law is extremely popular. Most Americans understand that any one of us could be diagnosed with cancer tomorrow. The goal of the law is to protect all of us against the vicissitudes of fate by ensuring that we have access to affordable insurance.

But if there were no individual mandate requiring that we all purchase insurance (or pay a penalty), a great many people would wait until they became ill, and only then buy insurance.As a result the insurance pool would be filled with folks who need expensive care, and everyone’s premiums would spiral.

If we want to insist that insurers cover the sick, we also must insist that everyone join the insurance pool. We all share in the risk of becoming sick, and so all must share in the cost. Ultimately, insurance is all about “pooling the risk.”

(Those who believe that they shouldn’t have to join the pool because they are young or because they don’t smoke, exercise regularly and generally “take care of themselves” are ignoring the most basic fact about the human condition: “all flesh is grass”. )

The requirement that insurers must cover a 30-year-old suffering from MS cannot be separated from the individual mandate. We cannot have one without the other. The architects of health care reform understood the connection

By contrast, the employer mandate has little to do with the individual mandate. The phrases sound alike, that’s about it. The individual mandate and the employer mandate do not depend on each other.

If some employers decide that they will wait until 2015 before offering comprehensive, affordable health benefits, their employees will be eligible for subsidies to help them purchase their own coverage. Postponing the employer mandate in no way affects their ability to obtain coverage at a cost they can afford. Alternatively, if an individual decides not to purchase insurance, next year, he will be asked to pay a penalty of just $95.

This is what Fox News calls “a hefty fine.”

The administration has announced that employers with more than 50 employees will not be required to offer insurance to their employees until 2015.

Originally, reform legislation said that these employers would have to offer affordable, comprehensive insurance next year—or face penalties of $2,000 to $3,000 per worker

Proof that Obamacare is Not Working?

Without missing a beat, Republicans have stepped forward to say that the delay is evidence that Obamacare is faililng.

What they apparently doesn’t know (or doesn’t want you to realize) is that a delay in the employer mandate will affect only a fraction of employers, and very few employees

First, the majority of large companies already offer health insurance that includes the benefits that the Affordable Care Act labels “essential.” (The only exceptions tend to be large restaurant and retail chains)

The mandate will have the biggest impact on small companies that today, may offer insurance, but often don’t provide “comprehensive” coverage. The postponement means that these firms will have another year to think about whether they want to expand coverage—or pay a penalty,

But their employees will not be hurt by the delay. If either a restaurant chain or a small firm doesn’t offer benefits next year, both full-time and part-time workers be able to buy their own coverage in the Individual Exchanges where the majority will be eligible for generous tax credits. The coverage available the Exchanges will be just as good as the insurance their employers will be required to offer in 2015.

As former White House health policy adviser Zeke Emanuel pointed out today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “The delay of implementation of the employer mandate will impact a limited number of companies. I actually don’t think this is that big a deal,” .

Emanuel went on to point out that the “the provision only applies to employers who have 50 or more employees. He estimated that there are ibkt 200,000 total employers in the U.S. [who would be] impacted and that “94 percent already offer health insurance” to employees.

Emanuel’s estimate may be high: “You’ve got 5.7 million firms in the U.S.,” says Wharton’s Mark Duggan, who served as the top health economist at White House’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010. “Only 210,000 have more than 50 employees. So 96 percent of firms aren’t affected.

“Then if you look among those firms with 50 or more employees, something on the order of 95 percent offer health insurance. So it’s basically 10,000 or so employers who have more than 50 employees and don’t offer coverage. Those companies probably employ around one percent of American workers.”

To Judge the Success of Obamacare , Don’t Over-React to Day by Day Headlines

Emanuel also urged taking a long-term view of what the Affordable Care Act is going to accomplish, saying: “We need to look for 2020 rather than moment to moment for changes in the system.”

I couldn’t agree more. Reforming U.S. healthcare is an enormous undertaking. As I have said in the past, it will be a process, not an event. Along the way, there will be glitches. Each time, reform’s opponents will jump up and down, insisting that the End is Nigh. Obamacare is dead. We must ignore them—take the long view, and forge ahead.

I am hopeful that by 2020 reform’s goals will be realized. Even then, we will continue to modify and improve reform legislation over a period of years, just as we have revised Medicare.

The notion that we must “rush” to implement every aspect the ACA is misguided. When attempting to enforce the employer mandate, an emphasis on “speed” could lead to the “train wreck” that Republicans predict.

What is crucial is that the “Patient Proteciton and Affordable Care Act” protects as many Americans as possible, as soon as possible, while making medical care affordable by giving those who must buy their own insurance the subsidies they need. In 2014, this will be happening.

In the meantime, we already have begun to rein in health care costs, slowing healthcare inflation from 7% or 8% a year to roughly 3%. This is only a start, but a very good start.

How Will the Delay Effect the Mid-Term Election?

Predictably, some conservatives are crowing that the delay represents a “huge set back” for Obamacare. “The Obama administration has undermined its sole claim to greatness and delivered a blow to Democrats on the ballot in 2014,” writes Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin. /

In truth, this is far from a major setback for reform. Apparently Rubin doesn’t realize how few employers will be affected, and perhaps she doesn’t understand that without the employer mandate, even if these employers don’t offer benfits, the majority of their workers will be eligible for tax credits in the Indivudal Exchanges,

As for the effect on candidates running in 2014, even Fox News recogizes that Republicans, not Democrats are most likely to be hurt.

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