Linking basic* health care to employment as a default is ridiculously stupid. There is no real relation between a person's health and their job.<p>You can either view basic health care as a benefit to society as a whole, like a highway or a fire truck, and socialize it, or you can view it as a product for sale.<p>Viewing it as a benefit of a particular employment is not logical. This is like trying to mandate that your employer pay for your car insurance... there is no connection of mutual benefit.<p>Basic health care needs to be connected to the individual, while "extended health care" (or additional options, etc) can certainly be offered as a benefit. The employer <i>does</i> have an interest in you getting back to work faster, being in better health than the average, reducing the stress of your medical issue, etc, etc.<p>Interestingly enough, a socialized (single payer/universal, etc.) system of basic health care with privatized add on's and extras is <i>basically the way every civilized society on the planet operates except the USA</i>.<p>*You can define "basic" differently, but for my argument I mean a level of care that ensures a respectable level of heath is maintained... usually it is simply seeing health care as a human "right" and therefore not subject to withholding by the state or other actors.
Yet another example where perverse incentives lead to unintended effects.<p>The problem with Obamacare is that it doesn't address the primary problem: health insurance is tied to employment.<p>Until we get past that we are going to have a broken system where the customer is not the customer. The insurance company and then your employers are the customer.
Which conveniently hides the fact that many state and local governments are cutting hours to do the same business is doing. Wal Mart gets called out because of past activities amongst major unions to denigrate them because of their anti-union stance. The idea being, get the biggest retailer and the rest fall into line.<p>However they merely reflect what many other type of employers do, they just are more noticeable because of their size.
Why on earth would anyone think tying healthcare to your employer is a good idea?<p>Surely care should be available to all - if you are the CEO of a fortune 500, a temp at Walmart or even unemployed.
The title is completely unsupported by the content of the article, which presents no evidence that Obamacare is prompting the practice of hiring part-time workers. In fact, it clearly states that Walmart supported Obamacare because it fit with their part-time worker strategy, <i>which was already in place.</i> The article also states<p>"The recovering economy could also help force Walmart, and other like-minded employers, to back off this policy and hire full-time workers with benefits."
Actually, there are a lot of companies being forced into this, not just Wal-Mart. Most full-time jon vacancies are being simply deleted or relegated to two part-time employees because of the mandate in this legislation.<p>There's nothing political about the truth. To not recognize (or admit) the connection between the two is serious head-in-the-sand syndrome.