Max Baucus' Finance Committee has come up with perhaps the worst idea of the entire healthcare reform debate. Yes, worse than Kent Conrad's stupid and ineffectual co-op thing.
According to Ezra Klein, it's called a "free rider" tax. In short, if you own a company with more than 50 employees, you have to pay the subsidy costs for your lowest income workers.
Can you guess the effect of this?
That's right. Businesses will be incentivised to not hire low income workers. So the workers who need employment the most won't be hired as often because of this ridiculous "free rider" tax. Additionally, as Ezra observes, guess who would be first to be fired when cutbacks are needed. The lowest income workers. And most despicably:
It could also subtly work against hiring minority workers, because they are more likely to come from low-income families, and disabled workers, because they are more likely to need health insurance and subsidies.
Now, I don't know if Baucus is necessarily responsible for this craptastical idea. It's just so remarkably dumb -- it has to be a product of Grasshole's melting brain.