Up To 700,000 Lose Jobs Due To Health Care Reform

Health care reform will be a disaster for Americans. We already know this. What we are having trouble quantifying is HOW bad health care reform will be for the country.

Americans for Tax Reform the Beacon Hill Institute share a study using the assumptions of the CBO and Center for American Progress and the results are stunning. From ATR’s website:

From the Executive Summary:

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has urged passage of the massive health reform plan moving through Congress as a way to create up to 400,000 jobs. Speaker Pelosi bases her claim on a report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in which the Center estimates that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) would create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs per year over 10 years.

This estimate by CAP amounts to a hurried effort to add academic heft to the claim that national health care reform offers a collateral benefit in the form of an economic “stimulus.” It turns out, however, that its methodology, stripped of unsupportable claims about savings in health care costs, shows just the opposite of what CAP intended. PPACA is a job killer, not a job creator.

The result is a loss of between 119,000 and 698,000 jobs between enactment of the bill this year and 2019.

There is much more data at the link.

Far from being the job creator the left would like to imagine this bill being, the legislation is going to kill jobs overall.

And as extensive as this study is, it doesn’t include the losses, specifically from doctors leaving the profession.

A commenter on my site asked how this bill would affect innovation and growth in the American economy. He said this:

If a bill were passed, it would not create new and talented doctors.
It would not create more medical teachers, or degree-granting
institutions. These professions are already at or near full
employment. If the government did go through the effort of increasing
the number of doctors over a period of years, what professions do you
suppose would people not enter, and what would society lack? One
isn’t likely to be a practicing physician and invent an ipod and
design a water treatment plant and write software, etc. In a sense,
for the federal government to favor one profession with grants,
subsidies, etc., is to punish another.

Well, the problem here, again, is that with the government monkeying with business, the results are likely to be incentive based. That is, if doctors get reimbursed less, but work harder, but have more security, the person seeking this job will change. Ditto health related research and development, etc.

Where will incentives lay with health care reform? Well, government workers will increase to try to lower costs from the private sector.

And the incentives in private industry, during a time of economic stress, will be to cut workers. Workers will cost businesses more money, so head count will become increasingly important.

I can see many tiny businesses being set up, to keep the number of employees/business smaller. Also, more workers will be contract workers because businesses won’t want to take on the liability.

All in all, though, this bill will not help business. It will stifle business. It will make it harder to do business.

I’m guessing that 700,000 jobs lost is being generous. I suspect far more workers will lose employment.

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