According to Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Executive Director Robert Greenstein, the Senate Finance Committee healthcare bill, which Max Baucus expects to finally publish to the public sometime soon, will include a mandate on employers to provide health coverage to employees, or pay the government an amount equal to the government subsidy under the public or co-op plan for every employee who qualifies for subsidies because of family income below 300% of the federal poverty level. Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights points to a powerful unintended consequence of such a mandate - the bill would encourage discrimination against just those people health care reform is supposed to help.
The proposal would create two classes of employees: class one, workers who have family coverage under the health plan a parent or spouse gets from a different employer; class two, single parents and low wage employees for which the employer would have to pay the subsidy amount to the government. So the "pay-for" which is supposed to reduce government health care costs below the trillion dollar mark will drive the poor and minorities reform is supposed to help out of the work force, to be replaced by the spouses and children of middle class or rich people who have health insurance through the employer of a primary breadwinner. Why hire an impoverished single mom to work as a flagger on your highway construction project, and pay the government fine for not giving her health insurance for herself and her kids, when you could give the same job to a college kid whose dad or mom already has family coverage from a job that pays him or her six figures? The danger signal is on the road either way.
These are the kinds of monumental mistakes that will get made in the headlong rush to push any kind of "health care reform" through a Congress feeling the need to act now or forget it, rather than giving careful consideration to all the social and economic effects of every provision in legislation numbering over a thousand pages long. No wonder angry citizens are getting on the bus to ride from one politician's town hall meeting to another, venting their frustration with elected representatives who seem to put political expedience above the real needs of the constituents they serve.
The proposal would create two classes of employees: class one, workers who have family coverage under the health plan a parent or spouse gets from a different employer; class two, single parents and low wage employees for which the employer would have to pay the subsidy amount to the government. So the "pay-for" which is supposed to reduce government health care costs below the trillion dollar mark will drive the poor and minorities reform is supposed to help out of the work force, to be replaced by the spouses and children of middle class or rich people who have health insurance through the employer of a primary breadwinner. Why hire an impoverished single mom to work as a flagger on your highway construction project, and pay the government fine for not giving her health insurance for herself and her kids, when you could give the same job to a college kid whose dad or mom already has family coverage from a job that pays him or her six figures? The danger signal is on the road either way.
These are the kinds of monumental mistakes that will get made in the headlong rush to push any kind of "health care reform" through a Congress feeling the need to act now or forget it, rather than giving careful consideration to all the social and economic effects of every provision in legislation numbering over a thousand pages long. No wonder angry citizens are getting on the bus to ride from one politician's town hall meeting to another, venting their frustration with elected representatives who seem to put political expedience above the real needs of the constituents they serve.
