#Obamacare to cost employers more than $5,000 per employee

**Posted by Phineas

"Obamacare has arrived"
“Obamacare has arrived”

The American Health Policy Institute did something unusual: rather than estimate the effects of Obamacare from the outside, they went to 100 large employers and asked the directly what their expected costs would be over the next ten years. The results were eye-opening — and disturbing:

Obamacare will cost large companies between $4,800 and $5,900 more per employee and add hundreds of millions to their overhead, according to a newΒ survey.

(…)

Factoring in the health care law’s added mandates, fees, and regulatory burdens, employers anticipate cost hikes between $163 million and $200 million in 2016, a 4.3 percent increase. By 2023, employers will be paying 8.4 percent more than β€œwhat they would otherwise be spending” for their employees’ health care.

In the next 10 years, the total cost of Obamacare to all large American employers is estimated to be from $151 billion to $186 billion, according to the study.

β€œThis study is a c-suite diagnosis of how [the Affordable Care Act] ACA is shaping large employer behavior,” Tevi Troy, president of the American Health Policy Institute, said. β€œWe don’t know yet precisely how employers will react, but the study shows that employers will have to make real changes or incur heavy costs, which means that the ACA will have a significant impact on those in employer-sponsored health care.”

While noting that some will say the results will β€œlead to more economical use of health care dollars,” the study questions whether the increase in health costs could bring the β€œend of the employer-sponsored health care system.”

I don’t think there’s any “may” about it: the perverse incentives of Obamacare scream at employers to save money by dumping their insurance plans, pay the fines instead, and let the employees try their luck on the exchanges. (And luck is what they’ll need.)

This, of course, is what was intended all along, part of the Obamacare Trojan Horse that Harry Reid admitted we’re all supposed to ride to the land of single-payer, state-run healthcare. Blowing up the existing health care and insurance industries, which most people were satisfied with, was all part of the plan.

We shall have a chance to comment on said plan next November. I, for one, am looking forward to it. Aren’t you?

Read the rest at the Free Beacon.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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