“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you. First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” – President Obama.
Verus
“You know, we said from the start that…that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your…if you want to keep the health insurance you’ve got, you can keep it; that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.” – President Obama.
A mandate requires business with more than 50 full-time equivalent employees offer “affordable” health insurance to their employees or pay a fine ($2,000 per employee), but the cost of paying the fine is cheaper than the cost of providing health insurance.
Of the 71 companies that responded, savings of $28.6 billion would be achieved in total from all of the companies in 2014 alone by simply paying the fine instead of offering “affordable” health insurance. From 2014 through 2023, the savings would extend to an “astounding $422.4 billion” simply by paying the fine.
After taxes, the average individual employer (of the 71) would save $5.9 billion during the same time period (2014-2023.)
The report states that the employers have “overwhelmingly concluded increases in cost will accelerate in the years after the Democrats’ health care law is fully implemented.”
The 71 employers spent an average of $5,197 on health insurance benefits, after taxes, for each employee in 2011. In 2014, that number would increase to $6,487, far exceeding the $2,000 fine.