Obamacare Consequence of the Day

As reported by Yuval Levin at The Corner:

It seems that nursing homes are asking HHS for waivers from Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health coverage to their workers. Nursing homes, even though they are in the health-care business, often don’t provide insurance to their employees. They can’t afford to. And why is that?

Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage. "We do not have much ability to increase prices because we are so dependent on Medicaid and Medicare" for revenue, he said.

Yes, that’s right. They can’t afford to give their own workers health insurance because they are dependent on government-provided health insurance programs for their own revenue, and the arbitrary price controls in those programs don’t allow them to make much of a profit.

If Nursing homes can't profitably offer employee medical insurance -- because government price-controlled rates are too low! -- how exactly is Obamacare supposed to help? Never mind--so long as the nursing home made the appropriate campaign contributions, I'm sure some Democrat will procure a waiver.

(via reader Warren)