Okay, I am a fan of healthcare. Established.
I have heard (and have no facts to support, but considering the source was the president of my company, I'm inclined to think he knew what he was talking about...) that companies who fail to offer full-time employees a certain level of healthcare coverage will be penalized. We're talking fined per employee. However, for the first few years, paying the fine will still be cheaper than the rates employers would have to pay to provide the coverage.
I do know that we used to offer decent coverage to MINIMUM WAGE employees. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible, and was affordable. I know that changed and we now only offer crappy pseudo-coverage for hourly employees (which was apparently done so the salaried employees would be able to keep our affordable rates and good(ish) coverage.
We were also advised that because of this, we would have to stop hiring full-time and only offer part-time, as we are not required to have coverage for part-timers. So instead of a full-time job with some coverage, we are looking at people working one or more part-time jobs, and still having to find their own coverage.
I don't know if all my facts are right, but this is what I understand, making it kind of crappy for my small company's business, and really sucks for the employees who will have to find second jobs to make ends meet, AND pay for their own coverage.