that's the nice terms.. lawless, not consulting Congress.... all the usual

It is so nice that the administration helps the GOP with their campaigning. I guess they want a Republican and Senate majority leader.

Delays to the employer mandate can matter politically. But as for what they mean for who Obamacare covers, this delay will likely amount to a relatively small, if non-existent, change.

And which is worse, they are doing that in so many steps that each time people think it is done, there is something else coming.

When you're in a hole, stop digging. Apparently nobody ever mentioned that to POTUS re: the ACA.

its employees have to buy insurance on the exchange and will pay a penalty if they do not?

Because the employer mandate has several parts. First, it requires the employers to offer certain levels of coverage (which can be excruciatingly crappy 60/40 but does at least get us past mini-meds). Second, it requires employers to offer it to all employees working at least 30 hours a week, and third, it requires employers to offer it to the employees while charging them no more than 9.5% of their wage or salary.

The last point is extremely significant, because for many lower-paid workers the coverage is offered, but only technically so if they want to eat, and few employees have mastered the 400 calorie a day diet thang.

As for numbers of employees affected, ADP's survey gives an easy way to estimate:
http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/2013/December/NER/NER-December-2013.aspx

You can download the historical data. The only employees not affected are in the less-than-50 group, which is 45 million out of more than 113 million. So the rules have changed for about 65 percent of employees, which is a pretty big deal. Basically, the handwriting is on the wall for all the "disposable" workers.

This will have a very direct effect on many, many employees.

It's more Nth Dimensional chess I'm sure of it.

insist that it is carried out as written in the law. They are against it, and want it to hurt as many people as possible so it can be repealed.

I'm confused. You are saying implementation of the ACA as written would hurt people?

if it's not expected to hurt people or business?

It wont hurt anybody and it will help the Dems politically.

It IS a good law? Right?

instead of 95%. What the fuck?

You know who's going to get screwed here - the lower paid employees!!!

I still don't think either suspension of the employer mandate is legal - neither last year's or this year's.

The reason this pisses me off so badly is that the law was passed to generate funding for the exchanges and to protect the most vulnerable employees, which is precisely those who get kicked in the asses once again here.

The beatings will continue until morale improves....

The President has the best legal and constitutional minds and professors at his disposal. Do you really think he would do anything unconstitutional and risk having this overturned or thrown out.

in court. Plus when you do temporary one-year stuff like this, there often isn't time for the matter to even be TAKEN to court.

Before it goes into effect, there's a question of standing. And after it goes into effect, the court cycle means that in one year you can lose in one court and appeal to another with a stay by December, so practically speaking, timely court review in such cases is an impossibility.

And believe me, they know this. They've argued both the standing and temporary perspectives in court cases involving the ACA multiple times.

So yeah, I think they'd roll the dice on this one quite cheerfully, even if they knew they would lose eventually. Two years later. Once the interim rule expires, you can then argue to get the case thrown out as being moot, although the courts won't always grant that.

I'm thinking that a challenge would win in court, but it would win in 2017. So they don't give a crap about whether it's constitutional or not, to put it mildly. I'm guessing they care about corporate donations!!!

Same as it ever was.

eom

Liability reasons.

I owned my own business for 35 years, so I am aware of liability. I was an S-corp. Totally different from a .corp
I only had 9 employees. I kind of get rankled when I read anti-business stuff on DU, since I paid my people really,really well.
Almost to my own detriment.

My bro employs that many people, operating one business 24/7. He is no corporate raider, he provides health insurance to his employees and he's a Dem.

He told me he's covered employees over the years with every type of private health insurance you can buy, and they're all all the same---thieves and scoundrels, basically.

In essence, this is a massive liability transfer from corporations to the public purse. It's a closet tax cut for businesses. GE wins again.

And we all notice that the individual mandate is staying, no respite for the lowly citizens.

The hope is that many will find adequate coverage in the exchanges, but that may not be so. But if they do, it will be heavily subsidized, and the employer mandate was meant to offset that cost. Now the employers skate, and at best the taxpayer will be paying for the bulk of the insurance coverage.

If a Republican president had done this, the country would be rising up in outrage. Further, we are laying a solid groundwork of precedent for future presidents to unilaterally contravene Congress.

I cannot see any good in this at all.

The CBO's current estimate is that ACA will raise the US deficit by over 1.2 trillion over the next ten years, and this measure surely increases that. So now are we going to have additional pressure to cut stuff like foodstamps, Medicare and SS to offset that?

I understand that the PPACA wasn't perfect, but the original act had a balanced scheme for covering non-Medicaid coverage and costs, and these measures are utterly disrupting that scheme.

This is unconstitutional, it's bad public policy, and it prevents us from dealing with our real social needs, which the original PPACA tried to do.

If this is impossible for corporations, they should lobby Congress, not the Executive. But it isn't impossible, which is why they are lobbying the Executive.

and since that's who writes the laws, and enforces them, ...

wanted from the government shutdown?

The small business mandate has been delayed.
The mid-sized business mandate has been delayed.
The full effect of the large business mandate has been delayed.
The individual mandate has been delayed.

Everything that is meant to actually help people has been delayed!

And this has nothing to do with the government shutdown.

back in December, the individual mandate included a "hardship exemption," where people who qualify can either ignore the individual mandate altogether or purchase a cheap, bare-bones catastrophic insurance plan that's typically only available to people under 30.

In any case, delaying the implementation gives court cases more time for appeal and makes the whole reason for changing health case to help people seem like a joke.

as painlessly as possible (for all involved). If it goes too fast, and hurts people, then the whole thing will blow up.

employers have had
................
FOUR YEARS
................
to figure out what to do.

patsies to be robbed without a gun.

-clip-
In general though, the employer mandate is not an especially important policy lever in the Affordable Care Act. The vast majority of large employers - somewhere around 95 percent - already offer health insurance. They did so before the Affordable Care Act ever contemplated requiring them to do so because, for one reason or another, they thought it was a good investment and way to compensate their workers. Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 99 percent of businesses with 200 or more workers offered insurance coverage in 2013. For businesses between 50 and 199 workers, the offer rate is 91 percent.
Delays to the employer mandate can matter politically. But as for what they mean for who Obamacare covers, this delay will likely amount to a relatively small, if non-existent, change. -end of clip-

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/02/10/the-white-house-is-relaxing-the-employer-mandate-again/

Progress can't be made unless we win at the polls, and it's not productive to have folks making difficult adjustments right before an election.

hmm.....

What a corporate scam from the very beginning...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4483862