>> hello again everyone i'm tony harris. here are some of the stories we are following for you. in washington signs of a possible compromise in the president's plans to strike syria. john mccain and lindsay graham both met with the president this afternoon. they wanted a broader plan from the president they walked away encouraged but still a long way to go. further crack downs by egypt's government against the muslim brotherhood, invoking as a nongovernmental organization. the brotherhood was registered as an ngo.

attack on u.s. military base near the pakistan border. the attacked happened this morning, afghan and u.s. forces exchanged gun fire with the attackers with nato helicopters joining the fight. a district official says no members of the afghan security forces or receivables were killed or wounded. and stay with us here at al jazeera and aljazeera.com for the very latest on the stories we are following. the next newshour in an hour's time. i'm tony harris in new york. inside story is next on al jazeera. >> a growing number of companies say the nation's new health care law will force them to cut benefits and jobs. we'll examine the facts on the ground and what the changes made for you.

from washington, this is inside story. >> hello i'm libby casey. to say the least the affordable care act passed by congress and upheld by the supreme court is a complicated game-changing law. in the past few months companies like papa john's denny's and ups says the law known as obamacare is forcing them to eliminate families, spouses and cut full time to part time. richard trumka head of the afl-cio recently told david shuster on talk al jazeera is having unintended consequences on workers. >> the affordable care act does need some modifications.

what's happening now is you have employers that the law says if your employers work 30 hours a week or more you got to give them health care. they're restructuring to give 29 and a half hours so they don't have to provide them health care. they're also doing some taxing the nonprofit plans to pay for fosh for-profit plans. so the idea is sound. the country shurlt needs something done with health care. the millions of people who don't have health care should have health care as a matter of right and the act is a good first step. it just needs to be tweaked right now to make it better. >> do you wish that the administration was doing a better job articulating that? i mean you in 30 seconds have done a very clear explanation as to why this is a good thing and yet for whatever reason the white house can't seem to break through that easily. >> i don't know the answer to that. i think on some things the president is very, very, very articulate. when he makes up his mind to be able to explain things he does so. i don't know the answer to that. i get a lot of people trying to

fuzzy up a message out there. you got a plot of people with the state level, at the federal level, that refuse to recognize that it is the law of the land. they're still pretending like it isn't and they can do away with it. its message gets stepped on a lot and i have some empathy for that. >> that was richard trumka talking to david shuster on, talk al jazeera. coming up, whether businesses and unions are warranted. for more on how businesses are dealing with the affordable care act we're joined about from sacramento by michael weinberg, for the bay area council a group of 250 businesses including google and facebook and he's helping them navigate the changes ahead. first the facts. the health care law hits a major landmark in the coming months. open enrollment to buy insurance through exchanges or marketplaces, starts in october. then, in january, insurance

companies will no longer be able to drop people or deny coverage for preexisting conditions, gender, annual limits or because they're in clinical trials. also in january, americans must have insurance, or face fines. the following year in 2015 the focus turns to large companies. they'll face fines of $2,000 per employee if they don't offer insurance. so michael weinberg, take us through this. people must have insurance next year. but businesses don't kick in until the year after. square those two. >> well, the individual mandate is a fundamental tenet of the law. people have to have health insurance if you're going to tell health insurers that they have to provide it. the employer mandate just acts as a fee to raise money for the law rather than as a fundamental structure of it. >> how will businesses be

affected, what size businesses and what happens in 2015? >> sure, this part is pretty duplicated. businesses over 50 full time equivalent employees will have to offer some kind of health insurance to all their employees or pay as you mentioned the $2,000 fine. if that coverage doesn't cover a certain part of people's million expenses or isn't affordable or if a person gets a subsidy for these new marketplaces they have to pay $3,000 so that kicks in in 2015. >> other companies pay heals insurance to the tune of 90% of big sized companies. so how will this change the playing field for both workers and the companies that give them jobs? >> yeah. so the overwhelming majority of businesses including basically all the members of the bay area council provide health insurance. it's only a few businesses who don't but a lot of people work for those businesses and it is true that this is going to increase the cost of labor and

therefore you might expect that it would reduce the number of jobs. but that's only looking at one piece of this law in isolation. >> you work with companies like we mentioned google and facebook also wells fargo bank of america, as they look towards implementation how do you advise them? what challenges are they facing? >> yeah, so the thing is that a lot of the challenges that these companies are facing really don't have to do much with the affordable care act. the affordable care act is targeted at providing insurance to individuals who don't have it because they lost a job or for whatever reason. the companies that i work with are interested in controlling health care cost and the affordable care act didn't create the problem but didn't solve it for businesses either. >> :00 for a short break. when we come back, the myth vs. the fact. federal health care law, stay with us.

>> welcome back to inside story. we're talking about the federal health care law, the affordable care act and its impact on businesses an workers, there are a growing number of companies that say the health care law is changing, how they do business. papa john' john's ceo jan sn rarvetiontter says it would cost the company 15 cents a pizza. applebee's said it would cease hiring. denny's says it would have to raise prices. hards says it plans to hire more part time workers. jimmy john's changes to part

time to reduce cost. whole foods ceo john macy says, it's like fascism. we're joined by steve early, a labor worker for the communications workers of america. author of a recent report called obamacare evaluation project access to care and the physician shortage. and still with us from sacramento, michael weinberg, senior policy director of the bay area council a business group helpings companies navigate the new health care law. >> steve early, these companies and they're ceos are saying they're having trouble getting ready for the law known as obamacare, go into their justifications. >> well i think this is a problem that you just cited of not just fast food chains and retailers saying they're going ocut back on the hours of their

employees so they're not covered by the mandates of the affordable care act, this is a problem with unionized employers foop i was at a labor day event earlier today in the san francisco bay area with a nurse at sutor health she sutter health, has been involved in communications for many months at sutter, one of the sticking points is the employer wanting to remove, eliminate health care coverage for 50 part time nurses and thea their dependents. and sutter is a hugely profitable employer health care and hospital chain. and it stands to benefit from it by getting more subsidized patients into its doors. so this is a very, very serious and spreading problem and why there's an emerging labor backlash against bowxg and how it's -- obamacare and why it's being implemented. >> we are not talking about mom and pop operations that have

only 50 employees and are right at that tough threshold. how can they justify the changes they're talking about making? >> one thing you've got to understand in a lot of these cases these are franchises. the denny's you mentioned a lot of them are smaller franchises in the florida area. in the case of applebee's a lot of times they will franchise out their stores. they may be dealing with a relatively smaller group of work thears might be just under the cusp or just over the cusp. they might limit it to 49, if they're already over the cusp they're going to reduce worker hours to try avoid it. >> michael weinberg, the talk we're hearing about full time to part time, is anecdotal, the number of workers between down in 2013 from the prior year. is this just talk are are we really seeing a trend? >> i don't know that there's a

trend. everybody likes to talk about the affordable care act and saying it's having a massive impact but there are way bigger trends that are affecting employment, are coming out of the great recession and so on. it's a mistake to look too closely at this particular requirement and saying it's having a big impact. >> steve early, this is the reason we're having to change our model, do you buy it? >> well i spent many years negotiating with request employers in both the private and public sector large and small about medical benefit issues, who was going to pay what about health insurance for their employees. its an attractable problem. i think that's why we have to get this whole issue off the bargaining table, get it away from employment based provision of health care and onto the model that's proved successful in other countries which is a medicare for all single payor kind of system. >> yevgeni freeman tell us about the size of businesses and

whether or not they already insure businesses, is this a chance for them to tweak and use the federal health care as an excuse? >> you are right, many large companies use very expensive health care, for many of them health care costs are a big problem as michael mentioned but they've been trying to deal with those costs by moving to hsas and more consumer driven plans. for the smaller companies that are going to be affected some of them have legitimate concerns about offering health care to new workers or existing workers, others will use it as an excuse. i think when it comes to looking at the data there are other variables to take into account. we have a huge economy, 15, $16 trillion. many times these relatively

small companies and the changes they make will not be visible in the aggregate national data,. >> michael, maybe companies that have 45 employees looking to expand their business to over 50 employees if they do they'll get caught in the requirement to provide health insurance. what are you hearing from exoans on -- companies on that threshold and what do they face? >> this marginally increases their cost for labor and certain businesses at the margin will decide to not hire and keep them part time. this law provides all sorts of things, we did an analysis last year that i co-authored that showed while the employment requirement will decrease jobs somewhat, overall the law decrease he employment by 100,000. >> what are some of the other challenges that are coming up at that intersection of employees and businesses? >> well, i mean, the biggest challenge is getting everybody

enrolled because there are a lot of people connected to businesses. whether it's part time employees or their families dependent full time employees that may not have health care coverage and health care, health insurance in particular is difficult to get people to acquire. they don't necessarily see the value of it so selling health insurance to millions of more americans is the businessest challenge now. >> steve early, we heard from head of the afl-cio. how are unions looking at some of these requirements a little bit different now than they are looking at requirements a couple of years ago? >> well the concern that union members have and workers who are not union represented above the value of insurance that's now being mandated is that some of these insurance policies that people are going to be required to have are barely worthy of the name insurance. they're going ohave huge deductibles, huge requirements of out of pocket expenses when utilized in the form of co-payments.

and other charges. and these are going to be very, very costly additions to many household budgets. now i worked as a union rep in massachusetts.. we have six or seven years of experience with romney care now which is the is example of obamacare, nationally. people with insurance are still deterred from seeking medical care, because of the out of pocket costs that they face under the insurance policies that they're required to have now or that they get through their employer. >> what's your perspective on those businesses that are right at that 50-employee threshold and what it means in terms of being able to grow your business and see a future? >> i think that this system is just fraught with all kinds of actual and potential gaming. i think there's many incentives for employers to ratchet down the cost of their health plans, to shift more of the burden to their employees, the so-called

cadillac plan excise tax is already having that effect even though it doesn't go into effect for the next four years. and you have this trend of more part time jobs being created so the mandate won't apply to those workers and then smaller employers, in some industries, competing against unionized employers who provide decent benefits getting a free ride. >> yevgeni, i wanted to talk to something we talked about earlier, small businesses and what will happen to them. you said the potential for chains to swallow up businesses at that point. explain. >> so what could very well happen is big chains that maybe don't franchise or where the franchise is already relative large, can buy up the relatively small business that might offer insurance now or might offer insurance that is below the affordable care act requirements and they'll be able to swallow

them up because these businesses might find themselves unprofitable but suddenly when they get swallowed up by another company that offers group insurance it suddenly become more profitable and the own are comments out with a decent payout. >> gentlemen, stay with us. how do we get here? why companies offered health care benefits to their workers to begin with.

>> welcome back to inside story. and our look at the federal health care law. it's called the affordable care act, it's called obamacare, whatever word you use, it says companies must offer their workers health insurance by 2015. 90% of all workers are already offered health insurance. when did it become routine for companies to offer their workers health benefits? we'll continue our discussion with steve early, in san francisco, we have yevgeny and from sa sacramento, miecialg

weinberg, senior executive with the bay area council, helping businesses navigate the new health care law. how did this happen that companies started offering their workers health care insurance? >> well really our current now crumbling job based system of private health insurance can be traced back to the second world war period. during the war there were wage price controls imposed by the federal government. so all the unionized industries, their unions won fringe benefits, including the break through benefit of health insurance purchase ordered collectively in the auto and steel and other major industries. after world war ii, there wasn't a help of, covered everybody as medicare later did since the 1960s, that was unsuccessful so unions went back to continuing to try to negotiate

what you might call a private welfare state, coverage for their own members and of course many other employers that were not unionized followed that pattern of providing increasingly generous job based coverage for their employees and for their families and in some cases retirees. >> yecgeni you've called this the original sin of health care, why? >> it ensured going down the road we would have no free market health care or health insurance system. everything becomes tied to your job. companies have an incentive to offer insurance rather than cash wages because they don't pay payroll taxes on it and the federal government loses revenue on it. meanwhile having someone else pay for your health care costs ensures thatting health care can rise without much discrimination. >> michael weinberg, bank of america, wells fargo how do they

see offering heart insurance to their employees, is it a benefit expected now? >> well, it is, but the value of health insurance to companies they want to make sure that their workers are insured and have high quality insurance. that's one of the businessest benefits of affordable health care act. making the workforce more healthy and more productive. >> so steve early, what does that mean for workers? if we have this message for companies and businesses that it's in their business as well to have healthy protective workers do workers buy that do laborers buy that and do they benefit from that philosophy? >> well i think both labor and management would benefit more by a system of publicly funded national health insurance. it's worked well in canada where i worked with union workers, they had very few complaints about their access to health care and the cost and effectiveness of it, compared to

american unionized workers, some laid off retired early and couldn't afford to cover other members of their family even though they had job based employer paid for health insurance plan. so i think way to level the playing field, take this part of labor costs off the table. and enable employers to compete on other bases is campaigned our current med care plan, make it medicare for all. make it employers and employees contribute to the financing of it and we would no longer be wrangling to this workplace to workplace. >> yevgeny what would that do? >> i think it's a mistake to have employer based systems as a example of this system here. in canada you have a completely different population than in the u.s., outcomes and costs vary by

state. minnesota is one of the healthiest states with relative low costs. mchemassachusetts is healthy bus high health care costs. we haven't tried a market approach ever. it doesn't make sense to immediately jump to as much government regulation as possible without first letting the market try to sort it out. >> i want to get a sense from each of you about how we can measure the success of the affordable care act known as obamacare, steve early, how long will it take, if they are shedding some of the benefits they provided in the past? >> well there's clearly going to be a big shakeout over the next few years with the insurance exchanges that are being set up in every state. but i would agree with the previous speaker about the need for experimentation. one of the most interesting experiments that i'm aware of is the state of vermont trying to move to a state level single

payor system, everybody would be covered through a tax supported plan. unfortunately, obamacare forces them to wait another three years before they can fully implement that social policy change and requires them to go through the unnecessary intermediary -- >> i got to cut you off. let's get a quick coming from michael weinberg. when can you judge whether this is working or not? >> i think we'll be able to judge very quickly. a lot of employers will make their decision starting in the next year but in january all consumers in the united states will have dramatically more protections. we can talk about the ideology of the single payor or the ideology of the market but we've got to make it work. >> yevgeny freeman, is there absolute myth or actual substance under their concerns? >> well, the economy has been

sluggish so to measure impact of obamacare we need to watch for it to be fully implemented, 2018, 2019 when all the primary measures are in effect and we want to see the unemployment to follow to 6% to -- to trace the effect. >> thanks so much to all of you for joining us today. that's all from washington, d.c, on night story and from me, libby casey but you can keep the debate going by logging onto our facebook page or you can send us your thoughts on twitter. our handle is ajinside storyana, you can reach me why, directl dy

@libcasey. thanks for watching. >> gang rape, among the most shocking of violent crime is stirring a global outrage. throughout asia, it is believed to be far more common than most people think. >> rape is a major problem in all countries across this region. >> women's experiences of violence are well documented, but the motivations of men have been largely in the dark. >> when you speak to men and boys, they say nobody's ever asked us about thi