Another Greater Boston Interfaith Organization .pdf, drawn up in conjunction with the Business Leaders for Real Health Reform, describes the employer mandate thusly:
- The $160 million employer tax is eliminated.
- Firms with 10 employees or fewer will see no change.
- Firms with 11-100 employees will be assessed a 5% health care surcharge on the payroll (only the first $94,200 of each employee?s payroll will be assessed). Firms with 101+ employees will be assessed a 7% surcharge.
- Each dollar that a firm already pays for employee health insurance will be deducted from this surcharge. If a firm already pays more than 5% (or 7%) of its payroll towards employee health insurance, then it will owe nothing. Firms who already cover their workers typically pay 12-15% of payroll for health insurance, so most firms will not be affected.
- Firms that already provide health insurance for their employees but pay less than this
percentage because of unusually high salaries (law firms, baseball teams, etc.) will not pay
extra.
This may be redundant to regular readers of this site, but I thought it would be convenient to have it neatly summarized.
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For anyone inclined to listen to talk radio…Marilyn Clement, Director of the national group HealthcareNOW, and the national campaign organizer for H.R. 676 (Medicare for All bill) will be on Air America 1190AM @ 9 p.m., Sunday night 11/20/05, along with Marilyn will be Diane Archer from the Medicare Rights Center.