It's Obamacare fifth anniversary week, which means we'll be seeing a lot of stories about the law and
its detractors, including plenty of
long debunked Republican myths. Here's another one—Republicans insisted that the law would make businesses drop employee health insurance. They have been so insistent on this, they actually
have tried to redefine full-time work, saying that it was about making sure that employees' hours weren't cut so they wouldn't have to be insured, when it was really about making it easier for employers to cut their workers' hours.
As it turns out, employers are offering insurance.
According to "Health Care Reform Five Years In," a survey of nearly 600 employers conducted last month by Mercer, there was virtually no change between 2014 and 2015 in the average percentage of all employees—full-time and part-time—enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans.
While there was a 1.6% increase in the absolute number of employees enrolled, that was the result of a 2.2% increase in the size of the workforce, rather than the changes required by the ACA.
"Employers that had to offer coverage to more employees were braced for a bump in enrollment this year, but they didn't know how big it would be," said Tracy Watts, a senior partner and leader for health reform at Mercer. "While some did see increases, for the most part it seems the newly eligible either had coverage through a parent's or spouse's plan or through Medicaid—or are continuing to go bare."
So there you go. American business still thinks it's a good idea to offer benefits to attract and keep good employees. Not that keeping an employer-based health insurance model makes the most sense in terms of healthcare policy, but it hasn't been destroyed by Obamacare, and workers can still get their good insurance.