Posted on 07/15/2009 8:28:55 AM PDT by reaganaut1
House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled sweeping health-care legislation that would hit all but the smallest businesses with a penalty equal to 8% of payroll if they fail to provide health insurance to workers.
The House bill, which also would impose new taxes on the wealthy estimated to bring in more than $544 billion over a decade, came as lawmakers in the Senate raced against a self-imposed deadline of this week to introduce a bill in time for action this summer.
Senators face a tougher battle because they are striving for a bipartisan bill. Key senators are weighing a combination of several more-modest fund-raising provisions, including some new fees on health-care industries.
Under the House measure, employers with payrolls exceeding $400,000 a year would have to provide health insurance or pay the 8% penalty. Employers with payrolls between $250,000 and $400,000 a year would pay a smaller penalty, and those less than $250,000 would be exempt. Certain small firms would get tax credits to help buy coverage.
The relatively low thresholds for penalties triggered the sharpest criticism yet from employer groups, who said the burden on small business is too high and doesn't do enough to help them expand insurance coverage.
"This bill costs too much, it covers too few and it has way too much government involvement," said Michelle Dimarob, a lobbyist with the National Federation of Independent Business, the main trade group for small firms. "Small business doesn't want any of those things."
According to 2006 data from the federation, businesses with between five and nine workers, representing about one million employers, had an average payroll of around $375,000 a year. A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only about half of firms with three to nine workers offered health benefits in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Business people know how to play this. You divide your business into two businesses. The “other pocket” game.
Three big guesses as to which course you will select.
Pay your taxes. :)
Someone has too...
The question I have is, assuming enough conservative Republicans are elected in 2010 and hopefully 0 is replaced in 2012, how much of this damage can be undone?
Shhhhhh. Don't want the mental giants in Washington to catch on to this and add pages and pages of rules forbidding this type of behavior.
That’s a good question.
Combine the cost of covering all full-time employees with insurance to the added energy costs of cap and trade, and you are looking at many small businesses closing and laying off or not hiring new employees. You think 9.5% unemployment is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I would ask “Do the Dems have any idea what they are doing?”, but I think they know exactly what they are doing.
How much of SS, Medicare and Medicaid has been undone in years of GOP leadership?
1. Providing health insurance for all employees
2. Paying an 8% payroll tax if you don't
3. Cutting payroll by 8% or more in order to pay the tax or provide health insurance . . .
Three big guesses as to which course you will select.
Patriotic Americans will choose #1 or #2.
Sincerely,
Joe Biden
It’s a question of guts. The 1994 Republicans actually got some real reforms in. The 2010 Republicans (wishful thinking) will have to have the same mindset.
I don't expect that Obama will permit this to occur. I expect that ACORN will make sure that conservatives are not elected, and more liberals are. Then, I expect that the unspent stimulus money will be released to create a Civilian Security Force that will be used to pacify the country when elections are canceled or stolen.
In 20 years, Obama will still be our Dear Leader.
If that’s not an option, I guess you could stop contributing to the employees 401K.
Aren’t RATS wonderful??!!!
Yeah, they will do the “if you have more than 1 business, the combined total is” or some nonsense.
Who knows? that may be in the bill. After all, nobody gets to read them.
I’m not quite as jaded (for once!) SS and Medicare are popular and don’t have organized opposition.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson
And don’t forget more contract workers. 1099s all over!
Small businesses are the backbone of America. This plan will cost millions of employees to lose their jobs! If they can't kill them with forced employee health care, this additional tax is going to do it.
looks to be the start of a Golden Age for Indian offshore outsourcing
Work harder, millions on welfare are depending on you.
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