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The Save American Workers Act of 2013 () is a bill that would change how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act defines full-time worker in order to remove the incentive some companies may have to reduce their employees' hours in order to avoid the employer healthcare mandate.〔 The bill was introduced into the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. ==Background== (詳細はPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act's employer mandate is a penalty that will be incurred by employers with more than 50 employees that do not offer health insurance to their full-time workers.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Title 26 - Internal Revenue Code )〕 This provision was included as a disincentive for employers considering dropping their current insurance plans once the insurance exchanges began operating as an alternative source of insurance. Proponents of the reform law wanted to address the parts of the healthcare system they believed to not be working well, while causing minimal disruption to those happy with the coverage they have.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/data-note-americans-satisfaction-with-insurance-coverage ) (【引用サイトリンク】url=http://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7979.pdf )〕〔 Lawmakers recognized that approximately 80% of Americans already have insurance, of whom 54% (44% of the total population) are covered directly or indirectly through an employer, and 29% (23% of the total population) are covered by the government—mainly though Medicare and Medicaid.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://kff.org/state-category/health-coverage-uninsured ) (【引用サイトリンク】url=http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population )〕 While 73% of the total population reported themselves satisfied with their insurance situation, significant minorities, even among those that reported favorably, had medically-related financial troubles and/or dissatisfaction with aspects of their insurance coverage, especially among the poor and sick.〔 The intent of the employer mandate (along with a grandfather clause in the ACA) is to help ensure that existing employer-sponsored insurance plans that people like will stay in place.〔 As no company with fewer than 50 full-time employees will face this penalty, many are concerned that the employer mandate creates a perverse incentive for business to employ people part-time instead of full-time. Several businesses and the State of Virginia have clarified the contracts of their part-time employees by adding a 29-hour-a-week cap,〔 〕〔 〕 to reflect the 30-hour threshold for full-time hours, as defined by the law.〔 Some labor market experts claim such shifts are not clearly attributable to the implementation of the ACA: pre-existing, long-term trends in working hours, and the effects of the Great Recession correlate with part-time working hour patterns. The impact of this provision on employers' decision-making is partially offset by other factors: offering healthcare helps attract and retain employees, while increasing productivity and reducing absenteeism; and to trade a smaller full-time workforce for a larger part-time work force carries costs of training and administration for a business.〔〔 The amount of employers with over 50 employees is relatively small,〔 and more than 90% of these already offer insurance,〔 so changes in employer plans from this provision are expected to be small.〔 Workers who do not receive insurance from an employer plan would be able to purchase insurance on the exchanges.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=https://www.healthcare.gov/am-i-eligible-for-coverage-in-the-marketplace )〕 Regardless of the rationale for maintaining existing insurance arrangements for those happy with them, most policy analysts (on both the right and left) are critical of the employer mandate provision on the policy merits.〔 They argue that the perverse incentives regarding part-time hours, even if they do not change many existing insurance plans, are real and harmful; that the raised marginal cost of the 50th worker for businesses could limit companies’ growth; that the costs of reporting and administration—the paperwork for businesses and the state enforcement—are not worth the trade-off of incentivizing the maintenance of current employer plans;〔〔 and note that the employer mandate, unlike the individual mandate, is a non-essential part of the law.〔 〕 Some analysts have suggested that an alternate 'pay or play' version of the employer mandate would partially avoid these problems, by instead taxing business that do not offer insurance by a percentage of their payroll rather than using the 50-employee and 30-hour cut-offs.〔〔〔 Furthermore, many healthcare policy analysts think it would be better to transition away from the employer-based system to systems (whether state- or market-based) where insurance is more portable and stable, and hence think that it is a bad idea to even try to maintain existing employer insurance systems. The effects of the provision have also generated vocal opposition from business interests and some unions not granted exemptions.〔〔("Union Letter: Obamacare Will 'Destroy The Very Health and Wellbeing' of Workers" ), ''The Wall Street Journal'', July 12, 2013〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Save American Workers Act of 2013」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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