Posted on 08/14/2013 7:57:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
No surprise here for Hot Air readers, but perhaps NBC News viewers experienced some shock to hear the results of the perverse incentives of the Affordable Care Act. Long after the trends toward part-time work developed, NBC confirms that employers are indeed looking to avoid the costly mandates of ObamaCare by transforming their staffs into part-time workers:
Employers around the country, from fast-food franchises to colleges, have told NBC News that they will be cutting workers’ hours below 30 a week because they can’t afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“To tell somebody that you’ve got to decrease their hours because of a law passed in Washington is very frustrating to me,” said Loren Goodridge, who owns 21 Subway franchises, including a restaurant in Kennebunk. “I know the impact I’m having on some of my employees.”
Goodridge said he’s cutting the hours of 50 workers to no more than 29 a week so he won’t trigger the provision in the new health care law that requires employers to offer coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week. The provision takes effect in 16 months.
Actually, the law puts it into effect in just four-plus months. The only reason it’s 16 months is that the Obama administration insists it can just ignore statutes, even those it pushed through Congress. The courts may have something to say about that, but either way, businesses aren’t waiting around for the enforcement effort to start.
The White House pushed back, calling NBC’s report “anecdotal”:
The White House dismisses such examples as “anecdotal.” Jason Furman, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, said, “We are seeing no systematic evidence that the Affordable Care Act is having an adverse impact on job growth or the number of hours employees are working. … [S]ince the ACA became law, nearly 90 percent of the gain in employment has been in full-time positions.”
Since the beginning of the year, though, that number has flipped entirely. In the first six months of the year, 97% of net job growth has come from part-time positions, according to the former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That comes from businesses reacting to the approach of the mandate, whether that’s in four months or 16. Businesses plan for jobs and costs on a year-to-year basis, so it should be no surprise that hiring in 2010 and 2011 would have disregarded the implications of the ACA. Starting in 2012, though, businesses had to start taking the costs associated with ObamaCare more seriously, and this reaction is the rational result of those incentives.
Speaking of incentives, guess which full-time workers don’t want ObamaCare? The same ones whose unions pushed it in 2009 and 2010:
A new survey of 2,500 federal employees and retirees found that 92.3 percent believe federal workers should keep their current health insurance and not be forced into ObamaCare. Only 2.9 percent say they should become part of the new health insurance exchanges.
I suspect a similar percentage of private sector employees would also like to keep their coverage, but most won’t get that option. What I’d like to know is how many of those federal employees so eager to avoid ObamaCare themselves supported forcing everyone else in it.
There’s more. The survey, conducted byFedSmith.com, “an information portal for sources of information impacting the federal community and those interested in the Federal Government’s activities,” found that 96.1 percent think federal retirees should be able to stay with their retirement health insurance. Only 3.9 percent think they should get “Medicare in lieu of their current option.”
To put it simply: Federal employees and retires almost unanimously prefer to stay in their generous taxpayer-funded health insurance program, known as the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP), rather than being dumped into liberalism’s two greatest monuments to government-run health insurance, ObamaCare and Medicare.
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
It does prompt questions about who works for whom in this republic.
hat most people refuse to accept is that the progressives KNEW that everyone was playing a game of semantics with the public.
They actually love it when liberal politicians change the meaning of words, because the meaning of words is outdated and old fashioned.
The left doesn’t care about hours getting cut, they think people work too much! They want a reduction in work and an increase in leisure time.
In the Era of Baraq, being a “29er” is the “new normal”.
Last year liberals would smugly inform me in Facebook that the cut hours thing was all a right-wing myth.
The Roberts decision on Obamacare relegated all of us to subjects and soon to be serfs.
“They want a reduction in work and an increase in leisure time.” for the same wages....
Kinda like France! Pretty soon it will be impossible to fire an incompetent employee, again like France.
Small businesses understand what the Progs promise. Their goal is to be flexible in able to respond to such distortions in the marketplace.
If I were starting another business, it would be in Temporary Staffing.
I would love to work 3, 10-hour days each week
I would be thrilled to be home 4 days with my family, even if i made less money
I could make up for it by having an awesom garden and my mental health would be certainly worth it- I could pursue my hobbies and perhaps make a side business out ot them that I enjoy
Of course, in ProgWorld, that’s because employers are evil and greedy.
So here’s an idea. Say there’s a Walmart and a Target in a town. Each has 50 full-time workers. Why not give them an option to all become part-time workers and have them alternate between the two stores? Monday at Walmart, Tuesday at Target, Wednesday at Walmart, Thursday at Target, Friday at the lake, fishing. Hey, If I thought of this... Surely greater minds will figure something even better and cooler out.
Bottom line: FUBO!
We need more government intervention to fix the problems government intervention caused.
Idiots.
Obama will NOT be able to allow this, or his party will be toast next November.
Look for him to soon make examples of some companies.
Think “Flying J” or “Gibson Guitars”.
“Now,Even The MSM Starts To Notice”?Yeah,because THEY’RE NEXT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Businesses reduced full time workers to under 30 hours to avoid the provisions of Obamacare - check
Young people opted out of getting their own insurance because their premiums were going to increase to help pay for older people - check
This is the problem with Liberals -- they want their vision of a Communist "utopia" with a "status quo" market, and until they control it all, that will not happen.
"You can't get a little bit pregnant." Obamacare is doomed to failure, and good riddance.
0bamafraud was passed with back-room deals, lies, deceptions, bribes, arm twisting.... And it had the support of a single party with a socialist agenda. That certainly isn’t a recipe for good legislation.
The economy is great; based on the government stats, all this talk of a bad economy is just "anecdotal"
We have an "anecdotal" economy now.
The bad news is nobody will be working more than 29 hours a week. Except for the 15,000 new Democrat Operatives IRS agents.
Another gift from the democrats.
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