Obamacare is flawed, and here’s how: it isn’t affordable, or could potentially be unaffordable due to glitches in the law that would make the health care policies companies are legally obligated to offer too steep for low-paid workers. The companies would be safe for having offered a “reasonable” policy, but the workers could even be fined by rejecting it. What’s worse, those same employees won’t be entitled to new tax credits if they decide to choose potentially more affordable private health care.
The potential for this loophole is not something that has manifested yet, but it is possible that employees of big chain restaurants and other such low-paying businesses could scheme to deliberately choose to offer “reasonable” health care calculated to be rejected by employees.
There’s no “grand scheme to avoid responsibility” among employers, says the National Retail Federation’s top health care expert, according to the Associated Press, “That is a little too Machiavellian,” but it is indeed possible. And it qualifies Obama’s rhetoric on the success of the plan:
“Let’s make sure that everybody who is out there working hard and doing the right thing, that they’re not going to go bankrupt because they get sick, that they’re going to have health care they can count on,” Obama said during his last presidential campaign. “And we got that done.”
Well it’s far from done, but neither is it hopeless; the law merely needs to be tweaked, ironed-out, and corrected.
“Some people may not gain the benefit of affordable employer coverage,” said Ron Pollack, president of Families USA. “It is an imperfection in the new law. The new law is a big step in the right direction, but it is not perfect, and it will require future improvements.”
The current law defines a “reasonable” coverage as costing no more than 9.5 percent of an employee’s income; but considering that some employees make $20,000 a year, that’s $1,900 in insurance, not including up to $3,000 extra in annual deductable, making such “affordable care” seem the opposite.