San Francisco’s two-year-old mandate requiring employers to boost their health insurance spending has had little impact on their operations, according to an analysis by Arindrajit Dube, economics, and two other economists. (Time, 7/26/10)
Health Reform: Weighing Up the Employer Mandate
By KATIE PICKERT
July 26, 2010But at least in San Francisco, where an employer mandate was instituted in 2008, most business owners are embracing the new rule and reporting it’s had little impact on their operations. A new analysis of the city’s mandate, written by three economists, reports that although three-quarters of employers were forced to bump up their health-insurance spending, 64% still support the law. “Employers have found that it’s actually become easier to pay for it than they thought,” says Arindrajit Dube, one of the authors and a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.