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Local Governments Reeling Under ObamaCare Costs
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| Contributor | Imperator |
| Last Edited | Imperator Jun 20, 2013 04:03am |
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| Category | Report |
| Author | JOHN MERLINE |
| News Date | Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | When Regal Entertainment Group (RGC) in April blamed ObamaCare for the fact that it was cutting some of its workers' hours, backers of the law mounted a furious backlash against the theater chain, among other things filling its Facebook page with boycott threats.
"Greed and selfishness make me sick," one of them said.
Darden Restaurants (DRI) felt this intense heat last year after suggesting it might shift to more part-time work to minimize the cost of the law's mandate that companies offer coverage to all their full-time workers. CEO Clarence Otis even blamed its lowered outlook for 2013 in part on "recent negative media coverage" over "how we might accommodate health care reform."
Yet while private companies are getting all this unwelcome and hostile attention, local governments across the country have been quietly doing exactly the same thing — cutting part-time hours specifically so they can skirt ObamaCare's costly employer mandate, while complaining about the law in some of the harshest terms anyone has uttered in public.
The result is that part-time government workers — many of them low-income — face pay cuts that can top $3,000 a year, and yet will still be left without employer-provided benefits.
Here is just a small sampling of local news reports about what local government officials are saying about ObamaCare, and the steps they're taking to avoid or minimize its costs.
Phillipsburg, Kan.: "School administrators here say they are alarmed and confounded by the looming new costs they face with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act," according to the Kaiser Health Institute News Service. Chris Hipp, director of a Kansas special education cooperative, warned that ObamaCare's costs "could put us all out of business or change significantly how we do business," adding that "we are not built to pay full health benefits for noncertified folks who work a little more than 1,000 hours a year."
Dearborn, Mich.: "If we had to provide |
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