Jobs and Insurance Coverage

The full impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, on employers is just more than a year away, but companies already are devising ways to circumvent footing the bill.

The bill, in part, is designed to tie adequate health care coverage to jobs. Starting Jan. 1, 2014, companies with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance to full-time workers or face a $2,000 per-employee government penalty.

Some companies already have announced plans to pass costs on to customers to accommodate the bill. But others are maneuvering to skirt the law by keeping a cadre of part-time workers so they won’t have to pay for their coverage.

Obamacare defines a full-time employee as anyone who works 30 hours a week. So, beginning a year from now, there will be a lot of restaurants and retail stores scheduling workers no more than 29 hours per week.

Rather than fix the problem of uninsured workers, Obamacare will result in a lot of people having to hold down two four-day-a-week jobs just to pay the bills. We will have a lot more people working service jobs in this country, but they won’t be better off regarding health insurance.