Republicans: It’s Income NOT Hours, Stupid: Staples
Republicans have taken a shot to their credibility with arguments supporting phony trickle down concepts where saving money for employers will encourage them to hire people, blah, blah, blah. I don’t know who believes it but I do know that most people in the real world don’t. This reasoning is NOT a justification to “repeal” Obamacare or the employer mandate regarding offering health insurance to individuals working a certain number of hours (currently 30) to qualify as full-time.
REPUBLICAN TEST OF CREDIBILITY: Instead, these Republicans who want us to believe in some “trickle down” theory should focus more on what Obamacare DOES for them in terms of an opportunity to be the good guys by AVOIDING THE EMPLOYER MANDATE BUT MAKING SURE EMPLOYEES EARN AT LEAST $11,670 to QUALIFY FOR OBAMACARE. INCOME NOT HOURS.
Eligibility for Obamacare and gaining coverage with entitlements of premium payment subsidies is based on INCOME NOT HOURS. And while Obamacare warns it “MAY” be available if an individual meets income thresholds, it also provides a CHART that could be used by employers to both avoid having to pay for health insurance for employees AND make health insurance available for them through Obamacare.
TIME FOR REPUBLICANS TO PROVE IT: The theory goes that without having to provide health insurance employers will likely be able to hire more people, increase wages…Yes, it will be a wonderful world. There’s little evidence of this and the only ones who seem to still believe it are those who expect to trickle down onto the rest of us. It’s past time for Republicans to PROVE IT because they’ve had the opportunity under Obamacare to stop lying and argue for INCOME (and it’s a low enough threshold) rather than HOURS.
$11,670 IS THE MAGIC NUMBER: On Healthcare.gov, you can look up, “Quick Check: Do I qualify to save on health insurance coverage?” That chart indicates INCOME levels as low as $11,670 for a single worker, one-person household in order to qualify for an Obamacare plan and specifically indicates that this is true EVEN in States without Medicaid expansion. This is the magic number for employers and Republicans who are serious about “Trickle Down,” but don’t want to pay for health insurance for their employees. It’s an INCOME test, not an HOURS test.
Employers and Republicans can STOP talking about the garbage how “they’re saving jobs by doing fill-in-the-blank” by focusing on INCOME not HOURS. Instead of trying to AVOID the law, work with it and pay people enough so that EMPLOYERS AVOID THE EMPLOYER MANDATE AND PROVIDE THEIR EMPLOYEES WITH ELIGIBLITY FOR OBAMACARE. This is done through WAGES and the threshold is pretty low.
It’s immensely important that people realize that Republicans have stated or implied that employment opportunities and wages would go up IF employers didn’t have to spend so much on health insurance. But the Staples example does not indicate this is so, not only for Staples but for Republicans.
For consumers, instead of listening to arguments about worker hours which are relevant to the EMPLOYER MANDATE, we must address the issue of WORKER WAGES which only need meet a very low bar ($11,670) which can be achieved with fewer than 29 hours a week and avoid the employer mandate while enabling workers to participate in Obamacare.
Obamacare: INCOME NOT HOURS
2/15/2015
