The New York Times rubes self-identify:
Farm labor contractors across California, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, are increasingly nervous about a provision of the Affordable Care Act that will require hundreds of thousands of field workers to be covered by health insurance.
While the requirement was recently delayed until 2015, the contractors, who provide farmers with armies of field workers, say they are already preparing for the potential cost the law will add to their business, which typically operates on a slender profit margin.
“I’ve been to at least a dozen seminars on the Affordable Care Act since February,” said Chuck Herrin, owner of Sunrise Farm Labor, a contractor based here. “If you don’t take the right approach, you’re wiped out.”
The effects of the law could be profound. Insurance brokers and health providers familiar with California’s $43.5 billion agricultural industry estimate that meeting the law’s minimum health plan requirement will cost about $1 per hour per employee worked in the field.
Of course, there’s a good chance that if you take the right approach you’ll also be wiped out. There is no getting around the fact this is one massively expensive bill, that will force us to spend more for worse service. But don’t let that distract you from the fact that we had to pass it in order to find out what was in it.
We’re finding out what is in it. Can we stop it already?
The alternative is hiring a lot more of grey market workers and illegals. If that’s not what the bill’s sponsors wanted they did it wrong.
And as for the NYT — fine time to wake up, and perhaps you should stop pretending there is some way to avoid the problems this bill brings.
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