Next year the big scam is going to be everyone only works 29 hours. Because at the 30th hour the corporation has to contribute towards health care.
The problem is that for some jobs that is almost impossible (for example, Call Center... you need someone that is not retarded, not blind, not deaf, not quadriplegic, leaving you with paraplegics, but paraplegics, specially those willing to venture shit sidewalks, are nowhere near 5% of the population).
So we have lots of companies with 999 employees. When someone want to expand their company, they instead create a new company (with more 999 employees), and have them both work as contractor to something else or something like that.
> Although there are differences in the details, with penalties for firms that fail to comply higher under the ACA than in Massachusetts but fewer firms likely to be affected nationally, the broad similarities between the ACA and Massachusetts’ reform suggest that we can expect to see patterns in the response by employers under the ACA similar to those observed under health reform in Massachusetts.
In fact by reducing everyone to 29-hours, they could in theory claim to hire MORE people, while carefully saying nothing about them making a living wage or the state paying for their insurance vs the employer.
That PDF is actually depressing when you look at the graphs, uninsurance was only reduced by a little over a third for all that change in policy.
From the text:
"To capture potential changes in hours worked in response to health reform, we also examined trends in full-time and part-time work over time."
> uninsurance was only reduced by a little over a third for all that change in policy.
this reduction occurred on top of a trend of great increases in uninsurance nationwide at the same time:
> Between 2008 and 2010, Massachusetts, the four comparison states, and the rest of the nation all experienced sharp drops in employer-sponsored coverage, reflecting the impacts of the recession. However, it would appear that health reform mitigated the effects of the recession in Massachusetts on employer-sponsored coverage to some extent, as the level of employer- sponsored coverage in Massachusetts, which was below that of the four comparison states prior to health reform, moved above the level in those states after health reform and has remained at a higher level.