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Employer Mandate
As Congress considers comprehensive health reform, an employer mandate to provide health insurance coverage should be avoided. A legal mandate to force employers to provide health insurance to their employees, while well-intentioned, would actually hurt American workers and health insurance coverage by decreasing jobs and economic growth. It would also do little to reach the current uninsured population. Position Statement Opposing an Employer Mandate to Provide Coverage NAHU believes in the employer-based system of providing individuals with health insurance, and is very supportive of voluntary market-based incentives for employers to provide such coverage. Issue Summary on an Employer Mandate This paper outlines NAHU's key talking points in opposition to mandating that employers provide benefits to their employees. Position Statement in Support of Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance NAHU believes that the employer-based system, which effectively provides health coverage to over 170 million Americans must be at the core of any health reform effort. National Federation of Independent Businesses February 2009 Study This NFIB study published in February 2009 shows that an employer mandate would cause the American economy to lose 1.6 million jobs within the first five years of implementation. Smaller businesses would be disproportionately affected and would account for approximately 66 percent of the lost jobs. The job loss would impact virtually all employment sectors and cause the real GDP to contract by $200 billion. Employment Policies Institute February 2007 Study This study found that although an employer mandate may successfully increase the number of newly insured individuals, it would do so at the cost of over 995,000 jobs. In addition, over 1.5 million employees would find themselves unwillingly shifted from full-time to part-time employment status. This would result in 1.2 million fewer hours worked per week and decrease aggregate annual wages by nearly $71 billion. Who Gets What From Employer Pay or Play Mandates In September 2007, researchers Richard Burkauser and Kosali Simon of Cornell University examined who would benefit from an employer mandate and found that it wouldn't be lower-wage workers. Looking at a pay-or-play mandate, they found that, among workers making $15 per hour or less, the mandate would still leave 54% of uninsured workers without insurance. Similarly, 46% of those workers earning below the Federal Poverty Level would still be left uninsured.
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