Hawaii’s 1974 law required employers to pay for part of the health insurance of employees who worked over 20 hours per week (no matter the number of employees). As a result, there were many people with 2 or more >20/hours per week jobs ... and no employer paid health insurance.
The people who came up with O-care only had to study Hawaii’s plan to see what would happen.
I’m not sure how they meshed Hawaii’s plan with the O-care plan which requires employers to provide health insurance to people who work over 30 hours per week (but only applies to 50 or more employees). Seems like that would be a mess to sort out.
Due to the ‘74 law the number of uninsured in Hawaii was very low when compared to other states. There were not enough people shopping for coverage on the exchange to generate enough revenue for it to pay for itself. They were toying with ideas on how to do that. One was to tax the network of brokers who had sprung up around the existing law to fund their new competitor. That, as you can imagine, went over like a lead balloon.