Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day ”” or $36,500 a year ”” for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.
The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.
Under a central provision of the health care law, larger employers are required to offer health coverage to full-time workers, or else the employers may be subject to penalties.
Ah, the delights of capitalism.
And probably an unconstitutional exercise of executive powers.
I am an Independent with no political “rah-rah-rah-for-my-team” point to make or Party position to support.
I am also retired from the U.S. Navy and have taken an oath, by which I am ethically still bound, to “..uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America….”
By the way, I am not a member of the Tea Party. And I make this statement because in very recent years loyalty to the Constitution has been twisted by partisan political propagandists to somehow equate such a Constitutional loyalist with a particular political point of view.
But when the Executive Branch of Government consistently ignores the “checks and balances” of the Constitution in order to further the political agenda of an Executive who received his executive authority in an election at a particular point in time, that Executive arrogance threatens the traditional balance of power between our branches of government, Legislative-Executive-Judicial.
2, that is my question. Is this regulation allowed by the enabling legislation or is this bureaucratic fiat.
Right, #3, AnglicanFirst. We have a system here, or we had one.
I am grimly amused by the NY Times’ description of pushing people into the ACA pools as “dumping.” So, it’s not as great as they thought it would be, it seems.