Senator Lamar Alexander (R) wants you to know that Obamacare is the reason schools in his home state have let some teachers go.
Alexander said a requirement in the Affordable Care Act that employers provide health insurance to anyone working 30 or more hours per week is leading schools in his home state to cut teacher hours so that some educators don’t meet that threshold.
Alexander, who is ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said some school districts are being forced to employ more part-time workers, and to keep their hours low, to save on costs. That is also leading schools to use more substitute teachers, he said.
This doesn’t make sense for a variety of reasons, and if you think about it longer than Alexander did, which appears to be a very short time, you’d realize that teachers are not hourly employees. They are salaried employees of the state who already had insurance before Obamacare was even signed into law.
Furthermore, even if Alexander was referring to private schools, it still wouldn’t make sense because the employer mandate has been delayed.
Thousands of teachers have been let go in Tennessee in recent years, but it has nothing to do with “ObamaCare’s burdensome and expensive mandates” as Senator Alexander insists.