You said a policy costs the company $6000. Good health care policies cost a around $1300 per month per employee. My husband’s company has a top tier policy and it costs us $300 per month and the company $1000 per month (and there’s just the two of us, I don’t know what a family plan costs.
My company’s policy which has much higher deductibles, cost my employer about $1000 per month. Employer pays $900 employee $100.
So since I realize the cost of their healthcare is so high, I believe the incentive in the whole penalty being cheaper by far than what they pay is to drive them to drop employees from healthcare and force them to choose a government offered plan.
Agree, I’m just saying that the best we can hope for is a one time bump in salary to ostensibly cover the healthcare benefit, which then shifts the entirety of providing healthcare to the employee., and the assumption of inflation by the employee. That’s the best case, ratcheting that down , will be some employers who say, sorry folks, we paid $10,000 last year, but next year they want $12,000, so we’re done offering insurance, and they will pocket the $8,000 in savings after paying the $2,000 fine.
I suspect, that many employers will will go that “sorry folks” route, since it might mean a couple of quarterly earning improvements and bonuses for the C level executives.