The Heritage Foundation has an informative guide to the differences between the Senate and House health-care bills. It includes this eye-catching explanation of the employer mandates:
The Senate bill imposes a $750 penalty per worker on employers of 50 or more who do not offer federally qualified coverage. Even if the employer does offer federally qualified coverage, if a worker obtains the federal subsidy to buy coverage in the health insurance exchange, the employer would have to pay an annual penalty of $3,000 for each worker who obtains a subsidy (up to a maximum of $750 times the total number of full-time workers). The House bill imposes a direct requirement on employers to offer federally qualified health care coverage to their employees and pay a specified percentage for single and family premiums or pay a payroll tax of up to 8 percent.
Well, it’s a good thing we don’t have double-digit unemployment and widespread reluctance to hire new workers, because this is going to really make each new hire expensive. Oh, wait. Well, yes we do have a problem here. And this highlights the inanity of the president’s pitiful “jobs summit” and other small-potatoes measures to induce hiring. All of that — limited tax credits and weatherizing schemes, for example — pales in comparison to the expense we are adding to each additional hire and the incentive we are providing to either increase the workload of existing workers or use overseas labor (or both).
And then there are the tax provisions:
Financing for the House bill depends on a heavy new income tax targeted at “wealthy” income taxpayers and small businesses. The House-passed bill would impose a 5.4 percent tax on individuals with incomes above $500,000 and on families with incomes above $1 million, and would yield $461 billion in new revenues (according to CBO) over 10 years. As noted by analysts at The Heritage Foundation, the tax is structured in such a way that over time more and more Americans will be hit by this tax, and small business owners would be particularly affected.
In short, if the president really believes the private sector is where the jobs are, he should be concerned, because we are placing very significant financial obstacles in the way of those on whom we must depend to create jobs. When the president “pivots” to the issue of jobs in January, conservatives would do well to point out that his “historic” health-care bill is (now that cap-and-trade appears nearly dead) the single greatest legislative impediment to job creation.