[liberallarry]

Employers pass on mandated health care costs to consumers if they can. Competetion (and other factors) don't always allow them to. Think of the American auto industry.

If they can't their profitability is lowered and that, sometimes, leads to lower wages and/or fewer jobs. Other times investors simply have to live with smaller returns.

[chrisser]

If they can't their profitability is lowered and that, sometimes, leads to lower wages and/or fewer jobs. Other times investors simply have to live with smaller returns.

Or, more likely, the company will raise their prices meaning less consumers can afford their products. When prices rise, demand falls. Fewer workers are needed. Fewer workers benefit from the product.

In extreme cases, the company fails, all the workers are unemployed, nobody gets the products, and everyone whose retirement fund would have been invested in a profitable company suffers.

In less extreme cases, like the auto industry, and entire sector is on the brink of failure, only a cadre of elite employees get the benefits, everyone pays more for vehicles, 401(k)s appreciate less, innovation is stifled, and the social benefits of employee protection, environmental protection, community investment, and tax benefits to all levels of government are circumvented by either the company moving its operations to more favorable countries, or having sales replaced by foreign manufacturs with less restrictive environments.