The 2012 US Election

[yovargas]

There will be companies opting to pay the penalty instead of offering insurance.

And there currently are companies who don't offer insurance at all, so I'm not sure what you're point is. That there's a chance you personally might lose the coverage your employer provides? With the law you'll actually have other options to pick from if your employer does that - something millions of people don't right now - so who cares?

[Holbytla]

Lol.

The companies that opt to pay the fine and save themselves money while forcing employees to pick other options that cost them money is a good thing why?

Cut your pay by 10k and then ask who cares?

[yovargas]

They don't have to offer you coverage right now. Why do you think they do??

[SirDennis]

That's another topic, I suppose--but it's one that the election didn't touch, likely because there's nothing to be done about it, politically. It will work its way out and we'll play catch up, as usual.

They could pass a law that ties a company's employment level to their footprint... the extent to which they rely on existing public infrastructure and the local population to generate income should be reflected in the number of employees they should hire. I suppose gross revenue would have to be taken into consideration. Isn't this the point of trickle down economics? I guess they forgot to set in place mechanisms that force businesses that benefit from operating in a given community to actual create jobs.

Just thinking out loud, and further off topic.


To Lali: Well said.

[Lalaith]

Thanks, SirD.

[River]

They don't have to offer you coverage right now. Why do you think they do??

My guess would be because, if they don't, they will look like utter jerks. The new law gives them a cover - they can yank the benefit because it further lines the pockets of the executives and then shift the blame and thus be greedy without, in their calculations, looking like utter jerks. That's the only logical explanation I can think of, really. I mean, they were offering coverage before it was mandated so why drop it because it's mandated? Especially in Mass, which already has a similar set of laws in place, doesn't it?

[tinwë]

If you get health care coverage from your employer it is, in effect, part of your salary. You get paid what you do based on what you are worth to the company. Cutting your health care coverage would amount to a huge pay cut, in effect saying you are worth less to the company than what they are paying you now. If it made sense for them to do that, they would already be doing it.

What's more, the company is currently getting something for the money they spend on health care - they are getting a good productive employee. By opting to pay the fine instead of the coverage the company would be getting nothing - they'd just be flushing good money down the toilet. It just doesn't make sense for them to do that.

I am not unfamiliar with the threat of losing coverage either, by the way. It has been hanging over my head for the last few years as my company's revenue has dwindled to next to nothing and health care costs have continued to go up. But if I do lose it it will be because of costs, not because of Obamacare. And I work for a small firm, so they would not have to pay fines anyway. But I presume that if I did lose my coverage my employer would refund some of that money to me in the form of a pay raise so I could buy my own insurance, and once the mandated state sponsored insurance exchanges go into effect I should be able to get it much cheaper anyway.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm not repeating anything from Romney.
I know what I know at work, and I know what I've read from the CBO.

And from your own link;

The CBO study was undertaken to estimate the impact of the health care law on the number of people obtaining health care coverage from their employer. CBO came up with a "baseline" estimate -- its best guess. CBO settled on a range of 3 million to 5 million fewer non-elderly people obtaining coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022 than would have been the case before the law was passed. Including those with individually purchased policies means a decline of an additional 1 million to 3 million Americans.

That’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s quite a bit lower than 20 million. So where did 20 million come from?

CBO supplemented its "baseline" estimate with four alternative, and wildly divergent, estimates. One resulted in a net gain of 3 million people with employer-sponsored insurance. The other scenarios resulted in a decline of 10 million, a decline of 12 million, and -- here it is -- a decline of 20 million.

Romney may have "cherry picked" the numbers to bolster his argument, but I doubt the CBO is. There will be companies opting to pay the penalty instead of offering insurance.

If you look further, it explains the 3 million number:

According to CBO’s "baseline" estimates, 3 million people will spurn their employer’s offer of insurance and turn instead to another source, such as the health insurance "exchanges" created under the Obama health care law. In many cases, they will do this because they consider the employer’s offering to be unaffordable or lacking too many features they need. For these people, it’s a stretch to say they will "lose" coverage that they "like," since they are leaving of their own volition for something that suits them better.

In no cases are employers compelled to stop giving health care; on the contrary, for the first time they are given incentive to do so. If employers stop giving coverage and say it is because the new law, they are just using it as an excuse. And even then, at least people will still have an option (much as people like me who are self-employed are finally going to get an equitable option. As the PolitiFact link points out.

[Dave_LF]

if Florida turns in yet another dazzling display of How Not to Do It the rest of the country can just point and laugh rather than agonize over who the victor is.

:points: :laughs:

[tinwë]

Joke heard on election night: There are three types of people in Florida - those who can count and those who can't.

[yovargas]

[Lalaith]

It's okay, yovi. I'm not happy about being an Ohioan right now, so I can sympathize.

[Frelga]

Lost the link, but SciAm had the best election headline, Math is Like Honey Badger: the Ascent of Nat Silver. (or something like that)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ironically, the one race that Silver got wrong was the North Dakota Senate race, in which he incorrectly predicted a narrow victory for GOP candidate Rick Berg over Dem. candidate Heidi Heitkamp.

He obviously was biased in favor the Republicans!

[N.E. Brigand]

And I believe in 2008 that Silver predicted Indiana going for McCain, but it ended up going for Obama. Biased for Republicans again!

In the last week of this campaign, when Silver showed Obama with 85%-90% chance of winning, Sam Wang's Princeton Election Consortium had Obama with a 95%-100% chance of winning. The difference was mainly that Silver's calculations allowed for the possibility that all the state polls were, for unknown reasons, biased in Obama's favor. (By the way, the most prescient analyst this season appears to have been Drew Linzer at Votamatic. Like Silver and Wang, he showed a 332-206 Electoral College vote as the single likeliest outcome -- but he did it in June.)

All three of these analysts, by the way, never showed Romney in the lead, and showed the period in which he shrank the president's lead, which started shortly before the first debate, ending at about the time of the second debate in mid-October, after which Obama more or less steadily regained the lead he held in September. Some commentators are now saying that Romney's "momentum" was only ended in the last week by Hurricane Sandy, but the numbers indicate otherwise.

This article in the Washington Examiner offers a little insight into the surprising confidence of Romney campaign and staunchest supporters, that held so firmly in contradiction to the evidence of the polls. Tolkienians may be interested to see that some of the "Project Orca" volunteers called themselves "orcs"!

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

I would bet if they can save anything, they will opt to pay the fine. Which apparently was not an option for them prior to Obamacare. We'll see.

I don't think there previously was any kind of requirement that companies HAD to provide health coverage for their employees. Most companies do, because it makes good business sense to treat your employees well and keep them healthy. But as far as I know, no company HAD to provide it if they didn't want to.

Now they DO have to provide it. Or pay a fine. My guess is that most will continue to provide it, as they have been doing.

I'm reminded of a story about a daycare. They had a problem with a small number of parents picking up their kids late. Nothing they said caused a change in the behavior of the parents.

So they decided to post a new rule, about paying so much extra if you pick up your kid late. It made sense. Except for the law of unintended consequences.

What happened was that more parents started picking up their kids late now that there was an acceptable way to do so without being rude.

[Frelga]

From the linked article:

“It makes me wonder who my fellow citizens are,” said Marianne Doherty of Boston.  “I’ve got to be honest, I feel like I’ve lost touch with what the identity of America is right now.  I really do.”

Curiously enough, that's exactly what analysts were saying about the Republican party after the election.

[River]

I've been reading about ORCA. While I can see how it would be a useful GOTV tool, it seems weird that, in an era when so many people vote early or by mail, they'd choose to deploy it only on Election Day.

[JewelSong]

So they decided to post a new rule, about paying so much extra if you pick up your kid late. It made sense. Except for the law of unintended consequences.

What happened was that more parents started picking up their kids late now that there was an acceptable way to do so without being rude.

Then they weren't charging enough.

I worked for an after-school program. It ended at 6pm. 5 minutes past that cost the parent $10. The next 5 minutes, $25. 15 minutes late was $50.

Most people picked their kid up on time.

[River]

Florida's finally been called. Its 29 electoral votes will go to Obama. It was a squeaker - 49.9% of the ballots went to Obama and 49.3% to Romney. Meanwhile, Allen West refuses to concede his House race.

Also, the conservative SuperPAC donors are, according to the press, raging mad at Karl Rove et al. All that money and their side failed to gain the White House or any seats in the Senate. They also lost seats in the house (but not the majority). And I can see why they'd be nailing the SuperPaC managers, or whatever you call them, to the wall. Billionaires don't become billionaires by throwing money around stupidly and they dumped millions into these campaigns for very very little in return. In fact, given that the House races were influenced by gerrymandering, it's going to be hard to deconvolute just how much influence the SuperPACs had in those, even though at the surface those races looked pretty successful for the GOP. This has some interesting implications for the post-Citizens United political landscape, namely that the relationship between money and votes isn't as linear as everyone thought (and wouldn't that be an awesome conclusion, if it holds up?). Either that or the Dems are learning how to conduct asymmetric warfare. I wonder what will happen at the 2014 mid-terms.