Employer Mandate Ping Pong Match

Well, as of today The Employer Mandate continues to be reality. As of tomorrow,it is highly likely The Employer Mandate will continue to be reality. As for several months from now, who knows? While naysayers continue to wait on the sidelines and cheer for the death of The Employer Mandate, they are actually rooting for their own demise.

While that sounds a bit dramatic, imagine the following scenario. The Employer Mandate stays intact. The naysayers have no Plan B. A few employees buy insurance through an Exchange and qualify for a subsidy. Uncle Sam finds out and sends over a fine for a few hundred thousand dollars. The CEO learns of this and makes the phone call you never want to get. Game over. Period, end of story.

Even though the recent court decisions bring a few noteworthy issues to the table, it will take many, many months to have yet another new decision which reverses everything that's been done to date. Given the importance of Healthcare Reform on so many levels, it is highly unlikely this will be reversed.

So, as the Healthcare Reform ping pong match goes on, we will continue to see both opponents accumulate points. At the end of the day, I speculate the Employer Mandate will ultimately win as Uncle Sam has no other way to realize the billions of dollars in fines and penalties that it desperately needs.