Feb 20, 2010

Health Care Reform's Fatal Assumption
Fortune | Somebody left the door unlocked while you were asleep

Companies that drop their plans face relatively minor penalties under the provision that's won the most Congressional support, an annual fine of $750 per worker.

Most big industrial companies are already paying around $15,000 per family in health-care costs. Hence, they could shoulder the fine and reduce their costs by 95%, simply by dumping their workers into the subsidy pools the plans mandate.

Using the CBO numbers, the government's subsidy per person comes to $3,200 in 2016. Say just half of all employers cancel their plans, throwing 80 million Americans into the pools. That would cost an extra $256 billion.