This is how ridiculous the rollout of ObamaCare has become. In what amounts to a high-stakes chess game between small businesses and the government, the Obama Administration is now informing business owners that it won't let them get away with hiring part-time workers as a method of avoiding the employer mandate. In order to ensure that as many companies as possible fall under the mandate, the government plans to add up the hours of part-time workers and count them as "full-time equivalents."
The administration has popped the bubble of hope some small business had that switching to part-time staff would let them escape the high costs of Obamacare.
The Small Business Administration on Thursday created a website to explain to businesses that the government will simply tally up the number of part-time employees firms have to determine if enough hours have been worked to essentially create a "full-time equivalent."
Some smaller businesses had thought that if they could get under the 50 full-time employee cap that activates Obamacare by cutting full-time workers and hiring more part-time workers they would escape having to provide costly health care insurance — or pay a federal fine.
Several business organizations have been warning smaller firms of the provision in Obamacare, but many were confused and waiting for the administration to finally explain the so-called employer mandate calculation.
This may not be a case of Obama unilaterally changing the law as he did by delaying the employer mandate a year, and by exempting Congress and its staff from subsidy limits. But what it is, without a doubt, is the latest clear evidence that no one can figure out how this damn thing works. The 2,000-page law that Democrats rammed through using procedural tricks, without bothering to read it, is confusing the business community, infuriating members of Congress and causing all kinds of unintended consequences from soaring premiums to doctors leaving the profession rather than deal with the new economic realities that ObamaCare presents.
The administration is struggling to find the money for implementation. They're struggling to convince people to sign up. And now they're in a tussle with small employers who are trying to do what the law seems to allow, only to find out the administration is going to interpret the law in a different way than they thought because it needs businesses on board.
What a fiasco. You don't suppose Democrats will learn from this that when you foist a legislative monstrosity on the nation in order to satisfy your ideological dreams, it just might have consequences that are not so good for the country - do you?
