Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make significant changes to the employer mandate provision in President Barack Obama's 2010 health-care law, changing the definition of a "full-time employee" from one who works 30 hours a week, to one who works 40 hours. The effect of this bill is going to be negligible, because Republicans won't have enough votes to override a presidential veto. Even as a bit of political theater, it was puzzling.
The employer mandate is more popular than other elements, like the individual mandate, that Republicans might have attacked. So it's not clear what Republicans gain from going on the record in favor of quasi-repealing it.
Of course, Republicans might rejoin that they had an obligation to pass a good bill, even knowing that it would be unpopular and that President Obama would never let it take effect. That brings us to the next question: Why did they think this was a good bill?
I'm not arguing that Republicans now have an obligation to fix the bloated mess they've inherited from the Democrats; if they think that they can fatally damage a bad program, they have every right to do just that. What I am arguing is that weakening the employer mandate is not going to get them any closer to repealing Obamacare. Indeed, the reverse is true. If they actually succeeded in getting this bill passed into law, all they would do is further entrench the 2010 health-care bill.
After all, a weaker employer mandate will push more people onto the exchanges. Many of those people would be receiving subsidies. The more people who receive subsidies, the harder repeal of the whole law will be. And since the exchanges, and the associated regulations, are the law's most problematic part, it's hard to see why Republicans want to push more people into that part of the system, and hasten the sclerosis that makes programs so hard to kill or change once they have accumulated a lot of users. We haven't even discussed the extra cost of providing subsidies to millions more people.
Republicans seem to like taking votes against Obamacare so much that they'll vote for anything that undoes what Democrats put in place--even if that thing costs a bunch of money, and takes them further from their stated goal of repealing the whole bill. They need a better hobby.
Might I suggest they take up finding a viable replacement instead?
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-09/republicans-are-making-obamacare-harder-to-repealAs they were masquerading like they were doing something meaningful to combat aspects of Ocare they were actually making matters worse. This is the type of shit that goes on behind the scenes and then sold by the media to certain groups giving them hope.
