Jon Gansen said: That is how I read it Mel. I believe under 50 total employees it has no effect. I have maybe 2 PT that get 4o so will just add 2 more and spread the hours around. Not making anything political just wondering how many knew of this and concerned for the impact on our business. One thing that you said was full time equivalents did I miss something?
Jon, as I understand it, they used full time equivalent employees so companies would not do what they are trying to do to get away with not offering health insurance. So the number was 50 full time or equivalent, so you could have 100 part time employees doing the work of the 50 you had before, so you would have to offer them insurance as well. That's as I understand it, I might be wrong.
I do wonder on companies that are near the border line of having 50 employees, do they not hire the extra 5 or so to stay under and can they offer overtime, or/and does that count toward their 6000 monthly hours?
I know we haven't heard anything from our city as to seasonal or part-time employee changes. I would think the 120 days takes care of the kids we hire in the summer, I do wonder about those we hire for about 7 to 8 months, how that might affect them and will they have us cut them to under 30 hours.
Rick, thanks for that info, I applaud him for trying. I do wonder, what would the cost be for a basic policy that would cover the employee, what percentage does the employer/employee have to pay, what kind of tax break does the employer get for providing insurance, even with the split in cost. Of course I think of 50 employees as not being a small business, but I can see it in the restaurant business depending on how many hours the place stays open, but in a lot of those cases they are hiring high school kids who probably don't want more then 15 hours a week so they can still be involved in school activities and keep their grades up.
When we were back visiting for the holidays, family complained that their employers were only going to hire part time employees, (a bank and doctor's office) Also heard the complaint that the doctors office told schedulers only to take a couple of medicare patients a week because the pay .30 cents on the dollar. (to avoid an argument) I didn't question if that .30 cents was on the over inflated price for a procedure or not, but it was also funny that they stopped taking Blue Cross and Blue Shield patients because they weren't paying much either (better then medicare but not much). Eventually though the doctors had to start accepting them again because Blue Cross/Blue Shield held 70% of their market for those that were insured.
Lots of questions for sure, I have to say in my opinion we had to fix the health care issue, I think we are moving in the right direction but that's only from my prospective, but I understand there is a lot to fix. I just wish we knew the answers to tell our legislature so the special interest groups don't screw it up benefiting one against the other.
Mel