If you like your 40 hour work week, you can keep your 40 hour work week. Period.
Obamacare could cost the University of North Carolina (UNC) system as much as $47 million per year starting in 2015 — and the universities may cut hours and jobs to comply, Campus Reform has learned.
The Affordable Care Act requires the system to start providing insurance for 8,586 non-permanent employees who work more than 30 hours per week — but UNC is considering just cutting their hours to avoid having to pay for the insurance, Marty Kotis, a member of UNC Board of Governors’ Budget and Finance Committee, writes on his blog, the Greensboro Observer.
Kotis told Campus Reform that UNC Chief Operating Officer, Charlie Perusse, said universities will “likely” cut the hours of 75 percent of eligible employees in order to lower the cost of complying with the mandate to between $11-$22 million.
Perusse confirmed the accuracy of the numbers in an interview with Campus Reform Monday morning.
UNC’s Associate Vice President for Human Resources Brian Usischon said he also wasn’t sure how the universities would handle the costs, but offered job cuts as one example.
“Campuses are going to have to make changes to their business model,” Usischon said in an interview with Campus Reform. “That may mean less temporary employees than they would otherwise have.”
The $47 million number comes from the current cost of health insurance at UNC — for which the 2014 cost is $5,435 per employee, according to Kotis — but those rates may be even higher in 2015.
“We don’t know what it will be next year,” Kotis said in an interview Campus Reform. “They told me [it would cost] $5,200 [this year]; I asked for a chart of the history and it showed $5,450 or something. And by next year it could be $6,000 for all we know. So the number could be higher.”
Anyone with a realistic knowledge of economics understands that companies are not going to absorb ever-increasing Obamacare costs. They will offset them by either lowering worker hours in order to avoid the costs, eliminating some jobs all together or passing the costs on to the consumer. Plain and simple. When businesses make money, they expand and hire more people. When businesses lose money, they downsize. Economics 101.
However, the liberal brain trusts over at Media Matters for America will tell you this is ludicrous! Obamacare is Amazeballs! The oceans will recede and we will all sing kumbaya. No, really.
“Health reform is encouraging employers to cut the hours of their workers below 30 hours to avoid the employer mandate.”
- We need to keep in mind which firms are affected here. The health care law exempts small businesses and requires only a tiny number of the biggest businesses to pay into the system if they refuse to offer affordable coverage to their full-time workers and force taxpayers to pick up the tab.
- Keep in mind that more than 96% of the bigger companies already offer health insurance to their workers, but some CEOs would rather give themselves bonuses and manipulate workers’ hours like Walmart than offer their workers decent pay and benefits.
- That’s the problem our leaders need to tackle, not our efforts to make sure big corporations do right by their employees.
- The bottom line is that the health care law provides health insurance tax credits for small businesses and makes quality, affordable health coverage available to Americans who wouldn’t otherwise have it — including part-time workers.
Reality (not their strong suit – obviously) begs to differ.
In just a few short months of this craptasic law’s implementation, millions have been kicked off the healthcare plan they liked. Thousands upon thousands have had the hours they needed to make ends meet cut. People are losing the doctors they like. Hospitals are closing, merging or being sold off. But, whatever haters – It’s. The. Law.
It’s. The. Law. #ObamaCareInThreeWords, pic.twitter.com/yCHSmuxkKj
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 16, 2013