New research that came out May 9 suggests that repealing the Obamacare employer mandate may lessen opposition by businesses, and have little effect on the overall insured rate, according to a report by CNBC.
The new analysis formulated by experts at the Urban Institute found that scrapping the employer mandate due to take effect in 2015 would reduce the number of people who as of 2016, would have some kind of insurance from 251.1 million to 250.9 million. This would amount to a reduction of just 200,000 people.
One of the researchers, John Holahan, said in the report analysis that the $200,000 is a particularly small number, especially when considering the amount of “noise” generated by Obamacare opponents, who claim on the basis of anecdotal evidence that companies are reducing staff and employee hours to avoid employer mandate-related fines.
He added that there are so many other things you could do to get the 200,000 people health coverage other than compelling employers to offer insurance. One of those things is having government increase subsidies available to people to buy insurance on Obamacare exchanges, as well as expanding eligibility for Medicaid.
The analysis in the report also concedes that abandoning the looming mandate would come at a cost to the federal government. There would be between $46 billion and $130 billion in extra, unexpected costs to the federal budget over the next decade, mostly from the elimination of fines on employers for not complying with that mandate. In addition to the lost fines, extra costs would come from the government having to subsidize coverage through the Obamacare exchanges or the Medicaid program when those people went on that program after their employer didn’t offer health coverage.
Holahan said in the report that although he and the other researchers concluded that getting rid of the employer mandate would be a good thing to do, however, they believe it’s going to be tough to actually get Congress to officially scrap the rule.
