from the Wall Street Journal, Shunning Obamacare by Andy Puzder

excerpt:

After two constitutionally dubious delays, ObamaCare’s employer mandate took effect on Jan. 1 for employers with 100 or more full-time employees. The last open-enrollment date for our company, CKE Restaurant Holdings, Inc., was Dec. 4, 2014. As of that date, our company had approximately 20,000 employees, 6,900 of whom worked 30 or more hours a week and were eligible for ObamaCare-compliant health insurance. We elected to offer them coverage rather than pay the employer penalty, which would have sent workers to ObamaCare’s health-insurance exchanges, where those who qualified could receive federal subsidies to help pay for insurance.

Of the 6,900 eligible employees, 1,447 already had ObamaCare-compliant insurance through our pre-existing company plans. That left 5,453 employees eligible to sign up. A grand total of 420 actually enrolled. That’s a mere 2% of total employees, or 6% of eligible employees.

ObamaCare will penalize the 5,033 eligible employees who elected not to enroll, unless they have compliant health insurance from another source. For 2015, the penalty is the higher of $325 or 2% of annual household income above about $10,000. The 5,033 employees who declined insurance make $24,663 a year on average. As a result, the employees without insurance generally will pay the $325 penalty, as it takes $26,250 before the 2% penalty is higher.

The employee portion of the annual premium for our least-expensive “bronze plan” is $1,104. If you don’t believe you need health insurance, $325 beats $1,104. But employees compelled to pay the penalty still won’t have compliant insurance. For those who want insurance, then, we offer all our employees—full and part time—access to inexpensive group health-care coverage that is not ObamaCare compliant.

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