Senate Finance Committee Bill would make spouse's income a factor in hiring/firing.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/is_this_health-care_reforms_wo.html

Is This Health-Care Reform's Worst Idea Yet?

by Ezra Klein

The Senate Finance Committee does not want to propose an employer mandate to promote health-care coverage. But it doesn't want to let employers entirely off the hook, either. So it has come up with one of the worst ideas in recent memory: A so-called "free rider" tax. Under the proposal, employers with more than 50 workers would have to pay the subsidy costs for low-income workers who seek coverage in the Health Insurance Exchanges. But they wouldn't have to pay a dime for higher-income workers who did the same.

You can pretty much see where this is going: workers from low-income families become more expensive than workers from high-income families. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains, "Employers would have strong incentives to tilt hiring toward people who have a spouse with a good income (or have health coverage through a family member), teenagers whose parents make a decent living, and people without children (since the eligibility limit for the subsidies in the new health insurance exchanges will increase with family size). Low-income women with children in one-earner families would be particularly disadvantaged."

This would also happen on the back end. The free-rider proposal "would likely influence employer decisions about which of their employees to let go when they trim their workforces to cut costs...