Almost half the people in the U.S. have employer-sponsored health insurance. The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, taxes or fines employers with more than 49 employees if they don't provide health insurance to their employees. The financial penalty is set at either $2,000 or $3,000 per employee per year, depending on whether the employer offers health benefits. Both numbers are significantly less than the cost of the average employee health insurance plan.
A recent study by S&P Capital IQ, a division of McGraw Hill, predicted that up to 90% of large businesses would shift their employees to the individual market by 2020. (Here) These S&P 500 companies would potentially save $800 billion by 2025.
The study predicts that once large business stop providing employee health insurance, all employers would do the same, at a savings of $3.5 trillion. Employers, of course, would be forced to pay the Obamacare penalty, but it is not clear whether savings would be passed on to employees in the form of higher wages.
President Obama guaranteed Americans repeatedly that if we liked our current health insurance we would be able to keep it. It appears he and the architects of Obamacare didn't understand the perverse financial incentives in the law.
