Obamacare is Good News for High Wage Earners

If you earn a better than average wage, Obamacrap might be your key to job security. But if you earn less than the average bear you might want to retrain for a better job.

One of the hidden traps in Obamacrap and the mandate to buy health insurance is a built in incentive for employers to not only keep total employment below 50 lives, but to jettison low wage earners.

Others will pay the $2,000 fine rather than continue to provide health insurance benefits. Doing so will save them a bunch of bucks.

Experts expect the cost of family insurance provided under a group health insurance plan to be in the $20,000 range by 2014. If that happens, and some plans are already in range already, the employee contribution cap built in to Obamacrap is bad news for low wage earners.

The folks at Employee Benefit News found this nugget.

assume that an employee, Bob, is married with a family and is the sole wage earner. If Bob makes $125,000 per year, his employer, Acme Enterprises, may charge him 8% of $125,000, or $10,000, for his share of the premium. This means that Acme and Bob will each pay half. And Acme will pay a manageable (and historically reasonable) 8% of Bob's salary toward his insurance.

Conversely, Bob's co-worker Clara is also married with a family and is the sole wage earner, but only makes $25,000 a year. Acme may only ask for a $2,000 contribution toward her $20,000 premium and would be compelled to pay the $18,000 balance.

So Acme will pay nearly twice as much for Clara's coverage as it will for Bob's. And instead of health insurance costing Acme 8% of Bob's pay, it would be 72% of Clara's pay.

Good news for Bob.

Bad news for Clara.

In attempting to mandate how much an employee can pay for health coverage and tying the test of affordability to a person's household income, PPACA creates a new, insidious discriminatory intent against lower paid individuals.

Furthermore, raising the question of annual household income unnecessarily invades an individual's privacy by compelling employers to make someone's annual tax return part of their benefits administration.

Change you can believe in.