TY  - JOUR
AU  - Burkhauser,Richard V.
AU  - Simon,Kosali I.
TI  - Who Gets What from Employer Pay or Play Mandates?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13578
PY  - 2007
Y2  - November 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13578
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13578.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard V. Burkhauser
Cornell University
Department of Policy Analysis & Management
259 MVR Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-4401
Tel: 607/255-2097
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: rvb1@cornell.edu

Kosali I. Simon
School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Indiana University
Rm 359
1315 East Tenth Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-1701
Tel: (812) 856-3850
E-Mail: simonkos@indiana.edu
AB  - Critics of pay or play mandates, borrowing from the large empirical minimum wage literature, provide evidence that they reduce employment.  Borrowing from a smaller empirical minimum wage literature, we provide evidence that they also are a blunt instrument for funding health insurance for the working poor. The vast majority of those who benefit from pay or play mandates which require employers to either provide appropriate health insurance for their workers or pay a flat per hour tax to offset the cost of health care live in families with incomes twice the poverty line or more and, depending on how coverage is determined, the mandate will leave a significant share of the working poor ineligible for such benefits either because their hourly wage rate is too high or they work for smaller exempt firms.
ER  -