Saw this article today in Bloomberg:
Obamacare Is Barely Causing a Ripple in Corporate America
So the argument that it will kill jobs and make companies reluctant to hire workers doesn't seem to be borne out.
IIRC, I don't think the expectation from my field is that it will "kill" jobs. Companies are more nefarious than that
First off, as sunmaster already pointed out, many of the provisions that affect corporate business weren't in effect in 2014. The imjplementation date got pushed back, and employer business in the 50+ employees range has only just now begun to roll in ACA impacts. The requirement to have minimum value compliant plans started for plan years with Jan 2015 effective dates. Employers with effective dates that don't fall on calendar year bases haven't even transitioned yet.
As for the actual impact... I'll be surprised if it is ever as big as it looked like on paper. The estimates of massive impact to employers is based on the assumption that they don't react, and the assumption that the amount of change required to their plans is significant.
In terms of the significance of plan-level impacts (the cost of providing coverage all else being equal), most employer plans were already above the 60% minimum value level, and most already covered the required benefits. So the change due to benefit plan changes is not all that large.
The large "OMG the world is ending" impacts would have to come from the requirement that all full time employees be offered coverage. Note a few key words in there: full time, and employees. For those companies that either did not provide coverage, or provided sub-par coverage, there are ways to work in the gaps. We have seen some companies handling turnover by re-designating a previously full-time position as two part-time positions. We've also seen some companies drop dependent coverage and only cover the employees. Or more insidiously, we've seen companies increase the contribution level for dependents, shifting more of the cost burden on to the family and off of their books.
The reality, however, is that *most* large companies don't do these things. Most large companies are either already compliant, or are very close to compliant. So in the end, the impact to larger employers is not all that big.
Smaller employers are a different matter. Many small employers (<50 employees) didn't offer coverage prior to ACA, so it's a material cost to them. Of course, it accounts for a small number of total covered lives... so it ends up getting lost. When the author of the piece focuses on the larger employers, and looks at total profit for the nation over all... all of the impact to small employers is washed out.
