Or it could drive a stake deep into its heart, anyway. The most often cited rationale for employers providing insurance in the first place is the notion-- supported by data if I'm not mistaken-- that employee health increases productivity and profits, at least to a point. The point being the break even point, where those increases in productivity are offset by egregious increase in employee insurance costs, a point most businesses passed long ago.

But if the individual mandate passes, corporations will get to have their cake and eat it too. They'll get the covered work force whether they provide coverage or not because the law makes it the employee's responsibility to provide their own coverage if their employer elects not to. There will be few incentives left for employers to provide coverage if their savings from not providing it far outweighs the cost to them-- and the government will have transferred an obligation to pay that cost to the workers themselves.

Labor unions will grouse about it, of course, and some might even keep employer provided insurance alive, for a while, but as costs rise the same economic relationship will drive insurance costs closer and closer to the tipping point where paying them is not worth ANY gain companies might get from their labor contracts otherwise.

If that's not a stake in the heart of the last hope for health care for working people, I can't imagine a worse one.