Thread: First Republican Obamacare vote: Taking insurance away from 1.5 million workers

TUE JAN 06, 2015 AT 07:30 AM PST
First planned Republican Obamacare vote: Taking insurance away from 1.5 million workers

by Joan McCarter

The Republican Obamacare repeal assault will begin this week, when both chambers are expected to vote to exploit workers and take employer-sponsored insurance away from as many as 1.5 million people.

What Republicans say they are doing is restoring full-time work, what they're really doing is giving incentive to employers to make people work an almost 40-week without health insurance benefits. The employer mandate in Obamacare kicks in this year. It requires companies that have 50 or more employees either provide insurance to 95 percent of their full-time employees or pay a fine, and defines full-time work as 30 hours per week. Republicans want to change that definition to 40 hours.

"I call this the 'send people home a half hour early on Friday and deny them health insurance' bill," says Tim Jost, a health care law scholar at the Washington and Lee University School of Law who has consulted with the Obama administration on implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that it would mean half a million people losing insurance immediately, and the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that it would force one million onto Medicaid—increasing the federal deficit by $73.7 billion over 10 years. That's just one reason some on the right don't like this idea.

Writing this weekend in National Review, Yuval Levin, a conservative popular with House Republicans, said the legislation "seems likely to be worse than doing nothing." His rationale is that there are many more people who work 40 hours a week than just over 30, and that it would be easier for an employer to cut their hours to 39 a week to avoid offering them insurance than to 29.

House Republicans previously tried to force this legislative change through a spending bill, but the Democratic-controlled Senate stripped it. They could do it again this year, passing it with a Republican Senate. That could force President Obama's hand, if a potential government shut-down was at stake. But that's if this change is enough for the tea party contingent in congress which is still spoiling for full repeal.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...n-nbsp-workers

Sometimes I wonder if some of these folks are even capable of thinking long term.
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Americans first in this magnificent country

American jobs for American workers

Fair trade, not free trade

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/0...n-nbsp-workers

The Daily Kos - extreme propaganda from the Socialist left

http://www.alipac.us/f19/1-million-e...proves-316576/

Opening Republican salvo on Obamacare draws fire on both sides

18 hours ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first congressional Republican attempt to weaken Obamacare with some Democratic support appeared to be headed for trouble with both parties on Tuesday, only days before an expected vote.

The bill, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, seeks to reduce the law's burden on companies by requiring them to offer private health coverage to full-time employees who work 40 hours a week rather than the 30 hours stipulated by President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act.

But two days before an expected House vote, the legislation is already facing a conservative call to block its passage and a potential White House veto threat.

Companion legislation is due to be introduced in the Senate on Wednesday. It was not clear when a Senate vote might occur.

But congressional aides, lobbyists and analysts say the measure represents the opening salvo for a Republican strategy of chipping away at Obamacare by altering or repealing narrow segments of the law that are unpopular with Republicans and some Democrats. Those include taxes on medical devices and health insurers as well as penalties that await businesses and individuals who fail to comply with insurance requirements.

Republican aides say the aim is to produce "bipartisan" bills that Obama might sign into law.

But White House officials said on Tuesday the president would likely veto the 40-hour legislation if it landed on his desk, a threat likely to dampen any enthusiasm for the bill from congressional Democrats.

Republicans have long complained that the current Obamacare definition of full-time work as 30 hours a week was causing workers to lose hours and discouraging businesses from hiring new employees.

But administration officials have pointed to reports, including a February 2014 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, showing that more people could be affected by a change because more employees work 40 hours a week than 30 hours.

The same point has been made by some conservative commentators who would prefer to see Republicans repeal Obamacare's requirement for employers altogether.

Bill Kristol, influential editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, on Tuesday questioned why Republicans should try to "fix" Obamacare instead of dismantle the law and urged conservative lawmakers to resist the measure.

"Conservatives in House could show clout by blocking this ill-advised 'fix' of Obamacare," he said on Twitter.

http://news.yahoo.com/opening-republ...194739356.html

Obamacare vote to test Democrats’ resolve under Republican majority

House GOP seeks to change Affordable Care Act full-time work definition from 30 hours to 40


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Obamacare vote to test Democrats’ resolve under Republican majority

Washington Times



By Tom Howell Jr. - The Washington Times - Monday, January 5, 2015

Republicans took control of Congress on Tuesday promising to whittle down Obamacare but still struggling to figure out how far to go — and whether any of their efforts can succeed with President Obama still in the White House.

Even the small tweaks the GOP has planned for the near term face opposition, including a White House veto threat on a bill to roll back the part of Obamacare that defines a full week’s work as 30 hours rather than the traditional 40 hours.

But Republicans want to have bills ready in case a Supreme Court decision on Obamacare subsidies expected this summer throws the issue back to Congress.

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SEE ALSO: Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell equipped to succeed in tough job

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On Tuesday the House unanimously passed a bill aimed at trying to help veterans get jobs by exempting those still covered by military-related insurance from Obamacare’s threshold for businesses. Employers with fewer than 50 workers don’t face the mandate to provide coverage.

The chamber will follow it up this week by voting to define full-time work under Obamacare as 40 hours instead of 30. At least two Senate Democrats have backed an identical bill in the upper chamber, an early boon for Republicans who took control of both chambers Monday and have pledged themselves to sober and transparent leadership.

“I think you make the changes that you can, and you lay the groundwork and hopefully win the presidential election next time.

Then I think we’ll be in much better shape,” said Rep. Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican, looking ahead to the 2016 presidential contest.

Yet Mr. Cole said the GOP has made a mistake by failing to coalesce around an alternative to Obamacare.

The party is sitting on proposals from Rep. Tom Price, Georgia Republican, the Republican Study Committee and a blueprint forged last year by three GOP senators, but none of them have momentum, and the party hasn’t put any of them up for a vote.

Some Democrats say Republicans are unable to agree among themselves, so they’ll never be able to reach across the aisle either.
Lining up votes to chip away at Obamacare “is a lousy way to begin the Congress,” said Rep. James P. McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat. “If you really want to begin on a note where we’re going to try to develop consensus and work together, I would have begun with some less controversial items than the ones they’ve lined up.”

The Republicans’ 2016 timetable could be upset by the Supreme Court, which is hearing a case later this year on whether the government can continue to pay subsidies to customers in states that rely on the federal health exchange. Without the subsidies, customers in roughly two-thirds of states could be unable to afford their plans.

“If [Republicans] are able to build some bipartisan momentum for changes to the law now, it will help them make broader changes if the court ends up voiding broad swaths of the law with its decision,” said Lanhee J. Chen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who advised 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on health policy.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said there is a “better than 50-50” chance the justices strike down the subsidies and knock the law off-kilter, meaning the GOP needs to present an alternative. Asked if they’ll be ready, he said: “Don’t know.”
The Affordable Care Act continues to poll poorly. But the second go-around for enrollment on the exchanges has avoided major technical glitches.

And Republicans will need to grapple with budget implications of their changes, since even modest tweaks would cost the government billions of dollars. That’s true of the bill to define the work week at 40 hours.

“It is an extremely expensive proposal,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s second-most-powerful Democrat.

“Many of us — I didn’t say all of us — on the Democratic side are committed to the survival … of the Affordable Care Act,” he added. “It’s one of the most important things I have voted for in my terms in the House and Senate.”

Sen. Joe Manchin III, a West Virginia Democrat who teamed with Republicans to back the 40-hour legislation and frequently breaks with the White House, said Monday he has no desire to scrap the health law but wants to make changes.

“I’m looking for every repair I can,” he said.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...#ixzz3O9p9UCga

http://www.alipac.us/f9/republican-l...ations-316611/

11/6/2014

http://www.alipac.us/f9/republicans-...hanges-314130/

http://www.alipac.us/f9/republicans-...ything-314518/

Republicans who want to unravel ObamaCare need only do one thing, and that is remove the individual mandate, which is a an action that protects the civil liberties of all Americans, from the right to privacy, to the right to control one's own health and secure their own life their own way. There is no more basic fundamental freedom than that. For those who want assistance from the government, we have plenty of programs to do that as well as the right to expand those programs for more citizens who want it, but not at the expense, intrusion or manipulation of those who don't.

Furthermore, if you're going to whittle away at the employer insurance coverage, then why not delete the provision entirely? After all, employees who work 40 hours a week can more well afford their own insurance than some worker who only works 30 hours a week. It would make more sense to change the law to mandated coverage for workers who work 30 hours or less, than 40 hours or more.

But then politicians are just really stupid, especially when it comes to math and money. I guess that's why they're politicians to begin with and why they haven't passed the FairTax and instead have run up an $18 trillion and growing national debt hanging their shingles on a 102 year old failed income tax that runs our good jobs out of the country and hasn't paid the bills once in its Century Plus Two year history.