Entrepreneurs will find inventive ways around a lot of the requirements established by Obamacare. The new law applies to full-time employees, which Barack defines as those who work 30 hours a week or more.
Suppose an employer currently has a worker making $12.50/hr who works a 40 hour week, for a gross of $500. A creative employer could change the worker to part-time status, have him work 25 hours on the books @$20, for the same $500, and work the additional 15 hours off the books. Yeah—no healthcare benefits. That will become a lot more common than it is now.
There may be some of that going on.
But I knew a guy back in the dark ages whose employer neglected to pay him the legally mandated overtime rate. Somebody reported the company to the government and as a result the employer got to write the guy a check for $1700 (probably $10,000 or more in today's dollars).
That was for just one employee. Businesses with many more employees could find themselves bankrupted by such payments.
It's much wiser, I think, just to cut the employee's hours back to 20 and hire twice as many people to get the work done. Even having to fire an employee will be less painful then.
More likely is this, especially in the entry-level service industries and food service.
Guy has 50 people working for him at $12.50 per hour. Total weekly payroll of $22,500.
If he adds one more person, he has to pay a ton of money to Obastard.
Instead, he wisely backs every one of the existing 50 down to 30 hours, then hires 18 more at 30 hours. Total weekly payroll is now $25,500; total hours worked per week went from 2,000 to 2,040, same as if he had added the 51st employee before ObastardDeathPanels took office. Of course, there is more turnover, training, retraining, admin and overhead, but all that is much less than Obastard demands in tribute.