What's good for the goose is rejected by the gander

By this time in the battle for and against the Affordable Care Act, to wit ObamaCare, most people are resolved to the fact that we are going to have to take our medicine no matter how we feel about it.

Certainly, there has been much ado about this law starting with Nancy Pelosi’s admonition that we had to “approve it to find out what is in it.” That is the same sort of rationale that goes into the thought processes of buying a pig in a poke. To me, it reeks of Caveat Emptor, buyer beware.

Now, as we are getting down to the nitty and the gritty as it relates to the health care law, which by the way I don’t really understand, we have those pulling the cart who are expressing concern and a lack of desire to change their own insurance elections.

Take for instance, Danny Werfel (wasn’t he a really bad quarterback in the NFL?), the acting IRS Chief who, while speaking in front of the House Ways and Means Committee had the nerve to utter this: "I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I'm pleased with rather than go through a change if I don't need to go through that change."

Despite the GOPers who immediately jumped on the statement, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Werfel doesn’t want ObamaCare, it could just mean he doesn’t want to go through the change required to get there. He may just hate change. Who wants that change, really? I mean, other than those who do not currently have health care.

So things change as the result of actions taken and not taken by congress. Recently, one of my doctors told me that he has already seen a change in his practice as a result of changes being made in the work place. Some companies, he said, are cutting worker hours to a point below that which would require them to provide health care (30 hours). What that meant to him was that patients he had been seeing on a regular basis for years now did not have the insurance coverage to continue seeing him.

Businesses change how they go about business all the time, right? So this has nothing to do with the changes being made to the health care system. I am reasonably sure that these businesses are just reacting to market pressures to make more profit. The biggest cost for business is employees and employee benefits. Get rid of one and you get rid of the other, right?

But in this case, get rid of most of one and you get rid of the other. If an employee works 30 hours or more per week, the employer must pay benefits through the Affordable Care Act.

Not true? Tell it to NBC News reporters Lisa Myers and Carroll Ann Mears. They recently reported that employers around the country—from fast-food franchises to colleges—have told (them) they will be cutting workers’ hours to below 30 a week because they can’t afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

“To tell somebody that you’ve got to decrease their hours because of a law passed in Washington is very frustrating to me,” said Loren Goodridge, who owns 21 Subway franchises, including a restaurant in Kennebunk. “I know the impact I’m having on some of my employees.”

Goodridge said he’s cutting hours for 50 workers to no more than 29 a week so he won’t trigger the new health care law provision requiring employers to offer coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week.

And yet, here we have those who are the very pinnacle of government who are not willing to make that change. That other smaller businesses, like Goodridge’s, won’t follow suit by cutting hours seems hard to believe. Small businesses run on thin margins; margins that often cannot withstand the kind of tampering anticipated by the enacting of the Affordable Care Act in September. How many of these businesses will take that approach is very hard to say, but if it’s the difference between keeping the doors open or closing the business it’s not a hard choice. What kind of an effect that will ultimately have on the populace and the economy no one can really say right now, I guess we just have to see what’s in it.