Maybe Not So Unintended?
Published on February 18, 2013 By Daiwa In Health & Medicine

A patient who was in today happened to ask if/how Obamacare was affecting my practice.  Truth is it has had little impact on my day-to-day practice aside from a noticeable increase in bureaucratic hurdles & paperwork, as long as you don't count the headaches and hassles of adopting an EHR.  So far.  But it will starting in 2014.  Part of the plan to 'slow-boil the frog' (that's not a reference to Frogboy).

However, he related that it has already had a dramatic impact on his business, even before it is subject to it.  He owns a company that serves the construction industry.  He had about 150 employees roughly 3 years ago but had contracted to 48 employees by early last year, mostly as a consequence of the housing recession.

The housing industry and construction in general is starting to recover a bit here and he was considering starting to hire again to enable re-expansion of his business.  He convened a meeting of his legal & accounting advisors 2-3 weeks ago and learned that due to Obamacare's requirements adding a 51st employee would immediately increase his personnel costs by $140,000 per year, over and above that employee's direct compensation.

He's going to stand pat @ 48.

I know of damn few small companies that could 'afford' to be that successful.  A hurdle of that magnitude will guarantee that very few small companies grow any bigger than that magic number of 50 employees.  All they can hope for is to look attractive enough @ 50 employees to garner acquisition interest.

Social engineering legislation of this kind is seldom, if ever, really thought through before passage.  Of course, it should be no surprise since none of our Senators or Representatives even read the damn thing before casting their Yes vote.


Comments
on Feb 19, 2013

Progressives have adopted a strategy of breaking things irretrievably as a way to soften/eliminate resistance to what they really want to accomplish.  They don't mind at all that we suffer with 8%(15%) unemployment and economic stagnation, as long as it gets them in position to seize the control they want.  Obama has demonstrated by his actions that our economic circumstances don't bother him in the least.

on Feb 20, 2013

They will lower the limit on the number of employees.  The justification will always be the same.  The poor worker.  So your friend is fighting a losing battle.

on Aug 25, 2013

And, of course, I'm shocked, shocked I say, by this.

on Aug 26, 2013

It is all to do with the phenomenon i call 'tunnel vision'.

 

Those in authority focus on the problem at hand and ways of solving it. Their 'tunnel vision' does not let them see all the peripheral problems caused by the solution they came up with to solve the first problem which is the subject of their fixation.

 

There is a show on TV i watch called 'Air crash investigation'. It is amazing to see how many people have to die in plane crashes as a direct or closely indirect result of ill conceived 'safety' features which are ironically, actually supposed to save lives!! What is even more amazing is that multiple experts working at the airline must have also overlooked these obvious problems, and those people are probably allot smarter than politicians!

 

This is my remark of the year;

"It seems to be an inherent part of human nature to manage to be ignorant to blatantly obvious consequences to decisions/actions taken"