Editorial: "Employer mandate" attacks leave sour taste

• It's appropriate that all but the smallest businesses share the cost.

So far, the controversy over ObamaCare has focused largely on the "individual mandate" — the requirement, upheld by the Supreme Court, that uninsured people buy coverage or face a penalty. This has overshadowed another key part of the new health care law: the employer mandate.

Now, with regulations being written, some business owners have stepped up their complaints about the requirement that companies with 50 or more employees offer coverage to their full-time workers, starting in 2014.

Much of the resistance has been coming from restaurant chains. Papa John's CEO John Schnatter said companies would "find loopholes to get around" the requirement, adding that "it's common sense" for companies to reduce workers' hours so they no longer fit the definition of full-time. Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster, said it was experimenting with cutting workers' hours. The owner of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's chains said it would employ more part-time workers. And one angry Denny's franchise owner in Florida said he'd add a 5% "ObamaCare surcharge" to meal prices.

Let's cool the coffee before it scalds. Yes, the employer mandate will add to some companies' costs of doing business, and those costs no doubt will be passed along to customers. Papa John's says the price of a pizza could increase 11 cents to 14 cents per pie. But is that such a terrible price to pay to ensure that some of the nation's hardest working, lowest paid employees will get health coverage they've never had?

Even in the absence of any sort of mandate, most American workers already get their insurance through their employers. ObamaCare purposely didn't change that, despite critics' hyperbolic claims that it's a federal takeover. A real federal takeover — a single payer system such as Medicare for all — would be simpler and would let businesses off the hook. But it's a political non-starter.

So in a private, employer-based system aimed at getting as many Americans covered as possible, it's appropriate that all but the smallest businesses share the cost. The employer mandate evens the playing field for small businesses that already provide health coverage but compete with companies that don't.

Similar mandates have been working for years in San Francisco, Hawaii and Massachusetts. Once businesses have to comply, they figure it out. Some even have lower turnover when they offer health benefits.

Indeed, after a customer backlash, some companies and executives have backed off from their initial criticism of the employer mandate. Darden said last week that it would not reduce current employees' hours. Schnatter, of Papa John's, said that he couldn't speak for individual franchise owners, but that corporate workers' hours wouldn't be cut.

In fact, Schnatter wrote on TheHuffington Post, the "good news" is that all full-time workers will get insurance. Because nothing is free, "we're all going to pay for it." And Papa John's won't be at a disadvantage because "our competitors are going to have to do the same thing."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.