Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
‘Okay, We’ll Pay:’ Business Owners Prefer Penalty To Obamacare
‘Okay, We’ll Pay:’ Business Owners Prefer Penalty To Obamacare
Mar 28, 2026 4:50 PM

, Debbie and Larry Underkoffler, owners of North Georgia Staffing, are considering paying government-imposed penalties rather than offering Obamacare to temporary employees. The couple offers excellent health care to their full-time staff, but with hundreds of temporary employees, the cost of offering health insurance could sink their business.

[U]nder ObamaCare, the pany now faces a tough choice — cover all of its temporary workers as well, or pay a hefty fine.

Aside from its full-time staff, pany also manages about 400 temporary workers, and is hoping to add another 200 in the next year.Those employees can buy into a separate health insurance program North Georgia Staffing signed up with. Under new ObamaCare rules, many of those “temps” will count toward the Underkoffler’s full-time staff. Larry Underkoffler calculates their full-time employee count will instantly surge from 18 to around 200.They will go from boutique operation to “major employer” overnight.

And that means, under the health care law, they’d have to provide insurance coverage to all, or pay a $2,000-per-worker fine.In the Underkofflers’ case, the fine might be the more affordable option.

“We would have to provide the same program for all the employees — including the temps — to everyone employed by us. And we just couldn’t do that,” Larry Underkoffler told Fox News.

Debbie Underkoffler says they may have to pay the penalties – $400,000 for the first year. However, that is far less than the $2 million Obamacare would cost them.

Read “Georgia business weighs paying Obamacare fine, instead of coverage” at .

[product sku=1007]

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Report: Mass Murder of Christians in Syria
(HT: Pravoslavie.ru. Also see the interview with Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) in the new issue of Religion & Liberty on the dire situation of Christians in Syria.) In his interview to the MEDIA, a Hierarch of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, Bishop Luke of Seidnaya, has disclosed the scale of persecutions suffered by Orthodox Christians of this region since the very beginning of the uprising against the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, reports Agionoros.ru. By now, 138,000 Christians have been banished...
Christians in the New Industrial Economy
In case you missed it when it came out, I thought it’d be worth posting a reminder that the Acton Institute recently partnered with the Christian History Institute to produce an issue of Christian History magazine. The issue (which you can download as a free PDF) examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact...
Video: Acton on the BBC
We’re continuing to round up clips of Acton involvement in the media coverage of the recent papal conclave and the election of Pope Francis, and today we present two clips from across the pond that our American readers likely haven’t seen yet. First up, Istituto Acton’s Kishore Jayabalan joins Father Thomas Reese, former editor ofAmerica magazine and current fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, DC, to discuss the conclave process as it progressed; the interview took place prior...
Freedom and the Insufficiency of Federalism
How free is your state? The Mercatus Center at George Mason University recently released its third edition of Freedom in the 50 States, a ranking of the states in the U.S. based on how their policies “promote freedom in the fiscal, regulatory, and personal realms.” Here’s a short, humorous video promotingthe report. While there are reasons to disagree with their overly individualistic definition of “freedom,” lets assume that most conservatives and libertarians (and even a few liberals) would broadly agree...
Florida’s New Jim Crow Education System
Martin Luther King, Jr. has to be turning over in his grave. Just when you think America may be on the path to no longer judging people on the basis of skin color, we run into nonsense like the decision last fall by the Florida Department of Education, to institute race-based education standards. According to CBS News in Tampa, the Florida Department of Education, passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian...
Public Education, Cheating Education
America’s children are in serious trouble when es to public education in munities. All over America, more and more schools would rather cheat on standardized testing than suffer the consequences of the truth that many of their students are seriously struggling. The widespread corruption in many public school systems that predominantly serve children of color is no less than a national crisis. It seems that many public educators, like politicians, are making decisions that serve their career advancement rather than...
Commentary: Buying Off Discontent
“There has always been a generous spirit in America towards the downtrodden, but it’s time to realize that we are no longer being generous: the government is leading us merrily along the path of fiscal fugue,” writes Elise Hilton. So why are federal officials advising benefit applicants that they shouldn’t be “discouraged by funding issues”?The full text of her essay follows.Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publicationshere. Buying Off Discontent: The Economic Wreckage of Disability...
Finding Blessings in Unwelcome Work
Most of us have spent at least a little time workingin jobs we weren’t thrilled about. For me, it peaked with McDonald’s (no offense, Ronald). For Trevin Wax, it was Cracker Barrel: I never wanted to work at Cracker Barrel. I had business experience as an office manager, plus five years of international missions experience tucked under my belt. But none of that mattered when the most pressing question was, How will you provide for your wife and son this...
In Christ Things ‘Hang’ Together
Anthony Bradley revisits the thought of Abraham Kuyper as a way of understanding the relationship between creation, Christ, and culture. Over at the Hang Together blog, Greg Forster follows up on a series of ruminations about the gospel described as both a “pearl” and a “leaven.” He proceeds to focus on the reality that so many place the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate in conflict by highlighting a couple of scriptural passages: Colossians 3:23-24 and Romans 12:2: Whatever you...
Cell Phones, Microfinance, and Poverty
A recent report by the United Nations states that out of the world’s seven billion people, six billion have a mobile phone, but only 4.5 billion have a modern toilet. In India, there are almost 900 million cell phone users, but nearly 70 percent of the population doesn’t have access to “proper sanitation.” Jan Eliasson, the UN Deputy Secretary General has called this a “‘silent disaster’ that reflects the extreme poverty and huge inequalities in world today.” Despite the lack...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved