I get wary of burdening employers MORE.
If you are a small business owner, are you going to hire another worker if you are afraid that you are going to have to pay their health care long after you let them go?
I just think it is better to have straight-forward transparent services provided directly by the government, rather than unfunded mandates. This forces the government to actually raise the taxes to pay for it, and account for the costs directly. when it is just mandated, people (politicians) behave as though it is costless, but the direct numeric costs are exactly the same (just off budget) and the INDIRECT costs are much larger when it is an unfunded mandate. Lots of countries have a very serious problem of firms never wanting to hire anyone, because it is so expensive to fire them if they ever need to. It is a primary reason for why the US labor market is so much more dynamic than most other countries-- and the unemployment rate is USUALLY lower. (right now there are extraordinary circumstances... but the US unemployment rate will decline much faster than other countries when the economies start to heat back up)
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