What a lot of people fail to understand about Obamacare is that it limits employees to contribute only 9.5% of their earnings to the cost of health care insurance provided by the employer. This has resulted in employers looking for the cheapest plan available, which results in high annual deductibles, out of pocket expenses, and co-pays they cannot afford. A lot of employees choose to opt out of the employer plans because they view it not worth the expense of their share of the premiums because chances are they may never meet the annual deductible to begin with and the penalty is less than what their share of the plan would be.
The last company I worked for had a terrible plan for hourly employees and more than 90% of them opted out of the plan. Let's do the math. A full-time hourly employee making $10 and hour would be contributing $38 a week towards the cost of the plan. Keep in mind if they work overtime, they pay even more for that pay period because their earnings increased. Let's say that employee had 10 hours of overtime for the week: their gross pay would be $550. Their contribution to the health plan would be $52.25. For the sake of demonstration, the employee never works overtime. That puts their annual wages earned at $20,800 and if they opted into the plan their contribution for the plan totals $1,976. The plan contained a $6,000 individual deductible and $3,000 out of pocket expenses, and covered 80% once those were met. They would have had to pay a total of $9,000 before the insurance started covering anything. Also add to that the total cost of premiums for the year. This is what Obamacare provided for employees.
Now let's add to that the employer share of the premium cost. Let's say the total cost of the plan was $10,000 per employee and all employees participating in the plan make $10 an hour. Total cost of the plan is $500,000. Total contribution from the employees is $98,800 and the employer's contribution is $401,200. Now the insurance company informs the employer the rates are being raised 47%. The plan for the next year is going to cost a total of $735,000. The employees are not receiving a pay raise because of the insurance increase, so their combined annual contribution remains the same, but now the employer is going to have to pay a total of $636,200.
The employer realizes this increase is really going to hurt his bottom line - profit. He has to cut costs somewhere. He can increase the cost of the goods or services he provides his customers, but that could result in decrease sales and profit. He could lay off some full-time employees and replace them with part-timers (many companies have done this) or he could get a new plan that cost less because the deductibles, out of pocket expenses, and co-pays are much higher. Not only will this reduce the premium cost, but also make some employees opt of the plan as well, making more people uninsured in the country.
This example shows why wages have been stagnant over the past 9 years, why employers go with the least expensive plan they can find, and why many working people opt out of employer coverage.