New York Times: the Obamacare employer mandate is basically useless.

Via @BrianFaughnan comes this tale of yet another thing about Obamacare that doesn’t work as intended, or indeed at all. The New York Times walks us through the math (Math. What a concept!). So why are a lot of employer-mandate health plans getting single-digit percentage signups? Well…

The annual premium for individual coverage through the Golden Corral Blue Cross Blue Shield plan is $4,800. [Golden Corral owner Billy] Sewell pays 65 percent for service workers, leaving them with a monthly cost of $140.

The health care law defines affordable employer-sponsored insurance as that priced at 9.5 percent or less of an employee’s annual household income for individual coverage. (Because employers do not know how much money their workers’ relatives make, there are several “safe harbors” they can use for compliance, including basing their calculation on only their own employees’ wages.) Mr. Sewell’s insurance meets the test, but $65 per biweekly paycheck is more than most of his workers are willing — or able — to pay for insurance that still carries steep out-of-pocket costs, including a $2,500 deductible.

Continue reading New York Times: the Obamacare employer mandate is basically useless.

So. They’re delaying the #obamacare employer mandate.

Delay that for a year, keep putting in the screws with the individual mandate, and everybody has an explanation as to why this was announced now, and what Barack Obama’s eventual goal is.  Personally, I don’t think that he has a goal at this point, and I don’t think that there any special reason for it being announced now.  If there was a goal, he’d have had his pet journolists parrot it; and if there was a reason that it’d be announced today, they would have been prepared.  As it was, the best part of this afternoon was watching all the Lefty pundits flail about.

Sorry, guys: this administration simply just doesn’t have any control over its own operations anymore.  …Which is a frightening thing; I’d rather not believe it’s true, honestly.