It turns out that Ocare plus Amnesty generate a powerful incentive to replace citizen employees with immigrants and otherwise exempt workers, which will drive down employer funded insurance participation rates particularly for low wage employees.
Because the 6 million immigration beneficiaries aren’t eligible for Obamacare tax subsidies, hiring them reduces employers’ chances of triggering the employer responsibility tax. Employers have a powerful financial incentive to hire them in place of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The president’s unilateral grant of work permits, combined with the fact that these workers cannot trigger the employer responsibility tax, makes those workers significantly more attractive.
To make matters worse, recent reports indicate that millions of U.S. citizens and lawful residents — who are eligible to receive Obamacare tax subsidies — have opted to defy the individual mandate and forego buying expensive health insurance. Under the statute, that’s supposed to trigger a tax, too, but the president has effectively gutted this provision by unilaterally creating 19 categories of exemptions, including a blanket one for “general hardship.”
Because individuals who don’t buy health insurance won’t be claiming any Obamacare tax subsidies, they — like the 6 million immigration action beneficiaries — cannot trigger the employer responsibility tax. Both of these categories of workers are more attractive to hire, because they will not, by definition, have subsidized health insurance under Obamacare. The inevitable result is that more workers will lack employer-provided health insurance coverage.
My God what a bloody travesty.
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