Saturday, February 12, 2011

Job losses with Health Care reform, not really job killer. People no longer prisoners of Employer insurance.

It all started innocently enough...
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Thursday that the health care law will reduce employment by 0.5 percent by 2021 because some people will no longer have to work just to afford health insurance.
Politico: “That means that if the reduction in the labor used was workers working the average number of hours in the economy and earning the average wage, that there would be a reduction of 800,000 workers,” Elmendorf said in an exchange with Rep. John Campbell (R-CA). 
Republicans gleefully seized on the admission, eagerly promoting it as evidence of what they call the law’s job-killing effect. “More bad news for American families,” was how Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s office described the report in a release.
“Since day one Republicans have opposed Obamacare for a simple reason: it would destroy jobs. Minority Leader Pelosi, Leader Reid and others said we were wrong. Guess not," said John Murray, deputy chief of staff for Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

If your head is starting to hurt over what could easily be described as mind bending illogic by these partisan Republicans, the following response should help control the anger:
Washington Post: House Republicans have spent weeks criticizing the CBO and its estimate that repealing the health care law would increase the deficit. But somehow this estimate--reached with the same assumptions the CBO has used before--met their approval.
But even this critical column, pointing out that Elmendorf never said that health care reform would destroyed or killed jobs, forgot to mentioned what the following two commenter's did:
It is also likely that any jobs lost through attrition this way would reduce the unemployment rolls with a similar number of replacement workers. I think the CBO should clarify their comments. The Republicans are real bone heads on this one. Any idiot knows that fewer people working is not the same as fewer jobs available. 
The bill won't reduce the jobs available it will simply give some people incentive to work a different work week. Or to leave the workforce if it is practical for them to leave it. This will make more jobs available for people who have a greater need for a job … Republicans make the most disingenuous politicians.

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