Support For Delay In Employer Mandate

by Stuart Shapiro

Much of the political rhetoric following last week’s announcement that the requirement that larger employers pay a fine if they do not offer health insurance was delayed for one year, was predictable.  Republicans called for an investigation and Democrats defended the move.  However, among policy wonks, there was nearly universal agreement that the delay was a good idea.  Conservative columnist, Ross Douthat:

As Avik Roy, one of the mandate’s conservative critics, wrote last week in Forbes, “if you like Obamacare, and you want it to work, you don’t need the employer mandate.” And if you don’t like Obamacare (as Roy doesn’t), and don’t expect it to work, then all the mandate does is delay a necessary reckoning with the new system’s flaws.

Either way, the White House’s decision is a step toward honesty in policy-making. It takes us a little closer to a world where politicians of both parties actually level with the public, and acknowledge that employer-provided health insurance is an idea whose time has passed.

The employer mandate was grafted onto The Affordable Care Act to make the costs look better.  It’s not a fundamental part of the act, and frankly there is a good argument for repealing it.  However, for that to happen, Republican politicians would actually have to engage in a realistic discussion of the act instead of repeatedly voting to repeal the entire act to score political points.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.