Report Questions Impact of Employer Insurance Mandate
"Ensuring that Americans have health insurance requires approaches that go far beyond dumping the responsibility on business," a Riverside Press-Enterprise editorial states.
The editorial cites a Public Policy Institute of California report on the potential effects of SB 2, a repealed state law that would have required some employers to provide health insurance benefits to employees or pay into a state fund to provide such benefits. According to the editorial, the report found that "two-thirds of employers' increased spending on health care" under SB 2 "would have been for people who already had insurance" and that the mandate would not have provided coverage to 40% of uninsured state residents because the residents do not work enough to qualify for coverage.
The editorial states that employer "[m]andates might be part of a solution," concluding, "But as the PPIC study should remind legislators and voters: Fixing the health care system is not as simple as taking a pill" (Riverside Press-Enterprise, 10/23).