Friggin' OBAMAcare again!

[ksen]

Because that's exactly the same.

It's more appropriate than the first alternate scenario. People and business wil respond to incentives and how much it's going to cost for either solution. Using more temporary workers to avoid the bigger bills with full health care is an alternative.

Except that before obamacare health care bills were rising much faster than they are now. So I guess obamacare is a net job saver.

 

[coloradoatheist]

It's more appropriate than the first alternate scenario. People and business wil respond to incentives and how much it's going to cost for either solution. Using more temporary workers to avoid the bigger bills with full health care is an alternative.

Except that before obamacare health care bills were rising much faster than they are now. So I guess obamacare is a net job saver.

We'll see long term, but that mandates keep getting pushed out because the Obama team was finding out that with the mandates in place, the economy was only adding part time jobs.

 

[Bomb#20]

The prohibition analogy fails hard.. almost as much as that school for failing to provide jobs for the community.

Where on earth did you get the notion that the function of a school is to provide jobs for the community? The voters finance public schools so their children can go to school, not so more would-be teachers can teach instead of mowing lawns.

Some people are dicks, especially people who have a vested interest in something, like ideology or a profit making company.

Assuming you feel that the function of a school should be to provide jobs for the community, and assuming you want those jobs to be good full-time jobs (after all, the OP school districts weren't failing to provide jobs; they were just providing cruddy part-time jobs), and assuming you feel people who do what the voters hired them to do instead of what you wish they'd do are dicks, then what does that make the elected officials who passed the law that gave the following command to two school districts:

"If you two districts hire two teachers to teach your residents' kids, then you must spend $30/hour on their compensation and benefits if you hire one teacher apiece; but you must spend $20/hour on their compensation and benefits if you both hire both teachers and twice a week you make the two teachers swap which district they teach in."​

?

 

[Toni]

Except that before obamacare health care bills were rising much faster than they are now. So I guess obamacare is a net job saver.

We'll see long term, but that mandates keep getting pushed out because the Obama team was finding out that with the mandates in place, the economy was only adding part time jobs.

The tactic of hiring part time workers instead of full time workers is not a new strategy but has been the go-to business plan of most of the businesses in my small city, including all of the light manufacturing industry, in addition, of course to the usual Walmart/Target/big box strategy.

In fact, this has been a major part of Walmart's business plan for many years now.

I know what the profit margins are on local businesses and even some of the bonuses paid to CEOs. They pale in comparison to Walmart's compensation for high level employees, but certainly rival Walmart for the bottom tier which comprises most of their paid workforce.

Obamacare is just an excuse to justify a long standing terrible business practice.

 

[SimpleDon]

Except that before obamacare health care bills were rising much faster than they are now. So I guess obamacare is a net job saver.

We'll see long term, but that mandates keep getting pushed out because the Obama team was finding out that with the mandates in place, the economy was only adding part time jobs.

Pretty much not supported by the evidence. There are two categories of part time workers kept by the BLS, part time workers who want to work full time and are unable to find full time jobs. And part time workers who work part time because they want to work part time. The empirical data shows the first category of part time workers has actually dropped since the ACA came in. Not because of the ACA of course, it is because of the improving economy. See the explanation here in Forbes.

However, when the opinion-leaders who seek to guide your point of view away from a fair, reasonable and rational assessment of the law by feeding you false arguments and half-stories easily disproven by readily obtainable data, it defies reason that anyone—whether for or against the law—would believe anything else these people are trying to peddle.

Or here for a more recent one from the Center for Economic and Policy, with the current data. Once again, empathizing that the increase in the number of part time workers has been in the voluntary part time workers, many of whom are able to now work part time because of the ACA. They don't have to work full time in order to get health insurance since they can buy it now relatively inexpensively in the exchanges.

 

[Malintent]

I got into a conversation with the kid that cuts my grass about his efforts to secure a job as a teacher, now that he has graduated from college (undergrad).

He said, with original emphasis his, "no school district is hiring new substitue teachers because of friggin' OBAMACARE, so I can't get a job for more than 4 days per week..."

When I asked him to explain what he meant, he said that new healthcare regulations require schools to provide benifits to employees that work more than 4 days per week.. so they are not hiring full time teachers, but instead only subs for one or two days per week, and he has to go to multiple school districts to get enough hours to support himslef (and still cut people's grass for that added income).

I asked him what he would think if there was a new regulation, informally called "SuperFair", that said that whenever a new teaching position was opened, that they must consider black teachers for the job, as well as non-black teachers... and if the school then decided by policy to not hire ANY new teachers because they didn't want to consider any black teachers for any new jobs, if he would be saying the same thing about "Friggin' SuperFair being the reason I can't get a job".

No, it is the school district using loopholes to avoid their responsibilities.

I am not sure he understood. It seems the social networking that the anti-American tea partyists have been doing has been very successfull. People are so goddamned gullible and manipulatable it is discusting. This kid (and so many others) are convinced that the bad behavior of those trying to skirt the rules are the reason the rules are bad.

Remove the bars from the bank vaults... too many bank robbers are hurting people trying to get into them.

Unless you are in the deep south, this has to complete BS. Health benefits, job descriptions and terms of employment are set by union contracts. No union would allow their workforce to made into part time players. This smells fishy.

This is happening in New York. I cannot speak fo rthe teacher's union (but I have an excellent resource at home), but the union is out of scope for these types of employees (non-tenured, non-fulltime).

 

[Malintent]

I got into a conversation with the kid that cuts my grass about his efforts to secure a job as a teacher, now that he has graduated from college (undergrad).

He said, with original emphasis his, "no school district is hiring new substitue teachers because of friggin' OBAMACARE, so I can't get a job for more than 4 days per week..."

When I asked him to explain what he meant, he said that new healthcare regulations require schools to provide benifits to employees that work more than 4 days per week.. so they are not hiring full time teachers, but instead only subs for one or two days per week, and he has to go to multiple school districts to get enough hours to support himslef (and still cut people's grass for that added income).

I asked him what he would think if there was a new regulation, informally called "SuperFair", that said that whenever a new teaching position was opened, that they must consider black teachers for the job, as well as non-black teachers... and if the school then decided by policy to not hire ANY new teachers because they didn't want to consider any black teachers for any new jobs, if he would be saying the same thing about "Friggin' SuperFair being the reason I can't get a job".

No, it is the school district using loopholes to avoid their responsibilities.

I am not sure he understood. It seems the social networking that the anti-American tea partyists have been doing has been very successfull. People are so goddamned gullible and manipulatable it is discusting. This kid (and so many others) are convinced that the bad behavior of those trying to skirt the rules are the reason the rules are bad.

Remove the bars from the bank vaults... too many bank robbers are hurting people trying to get into them.

If your grass mowing friend is that gullible and that unable to engage in critical thinking, then I believe he has found his caing. As a mower of lawns. Without pesky benefits like health care.

He is a child (22, 23 years old?)... and I am helping him see things more critically in this respect. Yes, kids these days are pretty dumb.

 

[Malintent]

It's not gullibility though, it's understanding how people respond to incentives. What would happen if the government passed a law that said if you use a babysitter for 4 hours or less you can pay them the normal wage but for the 5th hour or more you must pay $100 an hour?

An analogy that is more on point would be that you must pay minumum wage to babysitters, unless they work for under 1 hour... So you pop home every 45 minutes for 6 hours and claim they only worked 6 individual 45-minute sessions.

- - - Updated - - -

Kid that cuts your grass needs to stick to mowing lawns. Schools played this game with substitute teachers in grade school and workloads for adjunct profs in teaching colleges long before Obamacare. If he made it through college unaware of that fact then he wasn't very well prepared. So he's just buying the bullshit that comes through the radio while he's driving between jobs.

You just described about 80% of America

 

[coloradoatheist]

An analogy that is more on point would be that you must pay minumum wage to babysitters, unless they work for under 1 hour... So you pop home every 45 minutes for 6 hours and claim they only worked 6 individual 45-minute sessions.

- - - Updated - - -

Not quite since the law says that people working under 30 hours don't have to get the benefits, so the employer can decide to work them 29 hours or more than 30. In certain cases they are going to decide on 29 hours. It depends on the imposed costs compared to the productivity gains they get.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If your grass mowing friend is that gullible and that unable to engage in critical thinking, then I believe he has found his caing. As a mower of lawns. Without pesky benefits like health care.

It's not gullibility though, it's understanding how people respond to incentives. What would happen if the government passed a law that said if you use a babysitter for 4 hours or less you can pay them the normal wage but for the 5th hour or more you must pay $100 an hour?

- - - Updated - - -

This has nothing to do with Obamacare, but rather it's the usual game of blaming cost-cutting on Obamacare.

Teachers normally have insurance anyway so there's no additional burden. It's just they're being cheap and hiring part-timers to avoid benefits, a game that has been going on long before Obamacare.

But it's not just teachers, its a lot of business. The issue has been the impact and how many businesses have responded in the same way as the school district.

This has been going on for a long time, it's not anything new with Obamacare. As such there is no justification for blaming Obamacare.


It's also a fairly easy problem to fix: Mandate that part timers either get the same benefits as full-timers when it doesn't cost more (ie, vacation days), a pro-rated share if feasible, cooperation with other employers in order to deliver the benefit if feasible (ie, you work 20 hours/wk at two places, one of them provides health insurance, the other pays the first half of what they would have paid towards insurance) or the cash value of the cost to the company if none of these options work. (ie, you work 20 hr/wk, they pay $500/mo towards health insurance, you get $250/mo.)

Put part timers and full timers on a level playing field and companies will quit this game of keeping people part time.

 

[Toni]

It's not gullibility though, it's understanding how people respond to incentives. What would happen if the government passed a law that said if you use a babysitter for 4 hours or less you can pay them the normal wage but for the 5th hour or more you must pay $100 an hour?

- - - Updated - - -

This has nothing to do with Obamacare, but rather it's the usual game of blaming cost-cutting on Obamacare.

Teachers normally have insurance anyway so there's no additional burden. It's just they're being cheap and hiring part-timers to avoid benefits, a game that has been going on long before Obamacare.

But it's not just teachers, its a lot of business. The issue has been the impact and how many businesses have responded in the same way as the school district.

This has been going on for a long time, it's not anything new with Obamacare. As such there is no justification for blaming Obamacare.


It's also a fairly easy problem to fix: Mandate that part timers either get the same benefits as full-timers when it doesn't cost more (ie, vacation days), a pro-rated share if feasible, cooperation with other employers in order to deliver the benefit if feasible (ie, you work 20 hours/wk at two places, one of them provides health insurance, the other pays the first half of what they would have paid towards insurance) or the cash value of the cost to the company if none of these options work. (ie, you work 20 hr/wk, they pay $500/mo towards health insurance, you get $250/mo.)

Put part timers and full timers on a level playing field and companies will quit this game of keeping people part time.

My employer offers health insurance to those working half time. At a much greater cost to the part time ( <0.75)employee compared with full time or >0.75. I think the greater cost is unfair but it is better than most employers.


I am not in favor of single payer insurance only because I know what Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are doing to health care, not to mention the potential for politicization. But: there does need to be a better way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My employer offers health insurance to those working half time. At a much greater cost to the part time ( <0.75)employee compared with full time or >0.75. I think the greater cost is unfair but it is better than most employers.

Look at it from the employer's point of view--they don't care what the insurance costs per employee, they care what the insurance costs per hour of work. They get fewer hours of work from the part-timer, they contribute less towards their premium.

I am not in favor of single payer insurance only because I know what Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are doing to health care, not to mention the potential for politicization. But: there does need to be a better way.

Yup. The single-payer proponents should look at what's actually happening. We have three single-payer systems in the US, how are they doing? Pushing for single-payer for everyone makes no sense when we can't even fix the single-payer systems we have.

 

[ksen]

Our single-payer systems provide the best care for the best price in this country.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Our single-payer systems provide the best care for the best price in this country.

And which one is that since we have several systems. Hope it isn't medicaid.

 

[Playball40]

Unless you are in the deep south, this has to complete BS. Health benefits, job descriptions and terms of employment are set by union contracts. No union would allow their workforce to made into part time players. This smells fishy.

This is happening in New York. I cannot speak fo rthe teacher's union (but I have an excellent resource at home), but the union is out of scope for these types of employees (non-tenured, non-fulltime).

In my county, 'substitute teachers' are sub contracted from an employment agency.

 

[coloradoatheist]

This is happening in New York. I cannot speak fo rthe teacher's union (but I have an excellent resource at home), but the union is out of scope for these types of employees (non-tenured, non-fulltime).

In my county, 'substitute teachers' are sub contracted from an employment agency.

Not sure about everywhere. But a substitute teacher just needs to fill out paperwork and give it to the school district and they are put on the sub list. You can register with multiple districts.

 

[ksen]

Our single-payer systems provide the best care for the best price in this country.

And which one is that since we have several systems. Hope it isn't medicaid.

They are the VA, medicare, and medicaid.

 

[Bomb#20]

This has been going on for a long time, it's not anything new with Obamacare. As such there is no justification for blaming Obamacare.

That's the same as saying there's no justification for blaming the straw that broke the camel's back. Obamacare is just the latest example of an unfunded mandate that amounts to yet another special tax on full-time employment. The fact that there were already a pile of taxes on full-time employment doesn't mean Obamacare isn't contributing to the government-ordained incentive to substitute part-time work for full-time work. Obamacare deserves its share of the blame, along with all the other unfunded mandates; and if it happens to be the mandate that edged the total tax up enough to push the kid's employment market over the brink from "few school districts are hiring" to "no school district is hiring", then of course he's going to blame it; and why the devil shouldn't he? Claiming his perfectly normal human reaction to his situation is because he's brainwashed by the Tea Party is adding insult to injury.

It's also a fairly easy problem to fix: Mandate that part timers either get the same benefits as full-timers when it doesn't cost more (ie, vacation days), a pro-rated share if feasible, cooperation with other employers in order to deliver the benefit if feasible (ie, you work 20 hours/wk at two places, one of them provides health insurance, the other pays the first half of what they would have paid towards insurance) or the cash value of the cost to the company if none of these options work. (ie, you work 20 hr/wk, they pay $500/mo towards health insurance, you get $250/mo.)

Put part timers and full timers on a level playing field and companies will quit this game of keeping people part time.

Bingo. That's the simple easy fix to the simple little problem of the part-time/full-time trade-off.

But the unfunded mandates will remain and will continue to disincentivize employment in general. The complicated difficult fix to the complicated big problem is to sever America's idiotic link between employment and health care.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Our single-payer systems provide the best care for the best price in this country.

:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014

 

[Togo]

Our single-payer systems provide the best care for the best price in this country.

:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014

He provided evidence, you haven't.

It also tallies with the efficiency of universal single payer systems versus the US market.