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Frank Sinatra “owned” that song. As the song progresses you find someone who wants to be in New York, the city that never sleeps.

But the Fair Share Health Care Act could drive people away from New York if fully implemented.

The act is like the Maryland proclamation on steroids.

New York’s so-called “Fair Share for Health Care Act” imposes a pay-or-play health insurance mandate on firms with 100 or more employees. These firms employ more than 70 percent of New York’s workforce, and would be subject to a tax as high as $3 per hour for covered workers. As a consequence, a firm employing a full-time, full-year worker could be subject to an additional annual labor cost of as much as $6,000.

Ouch!

Beats the heck out of the neighboring Massachusetts penalty of $295 per year.

A firm could react to the mandate by adjusting hiring practices, relocating out of New York, raising output prices, reducing the quality of their product, accepting lower profitability, or going out of business. Previous economic work suggests wage shifting is a likely response. When such an offset is not possible (due to New York’s minimum wage of $6.75 per hour), the mandate is likely to destroy jobs.

It get’s worse . . .

For those close to the minimum wage, wage shifting is not possible and employment losses ensue. The estimates suggest that between 37,000 and 65,000 low-wage workers will lose their jobs

Don’t you just love it when politicians mess with a system and make it worse?