Tag Archives: Obamacare

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CBO says that Obamacare will reduce employment by 800,000 workers

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The CBO director was being questioned by Republican Congressman John Campbell when he let something interesting come out about Obamacare.

Here’s the video:

And the transcript: (H/T The Weekly Standard)

Chairman [Paul] Ryan: “[I]t’s been argued…that the new health care law will create jobs and increase labor force participation. But if I recall from your analysis, it was quite the opposite. Is that not the case?”

Director [Douglas] Elmendorf : “Yes.”…

[…]

Rep. [John] Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we’ll — and Dr. Elmendorf — and we’ll continue this conversation right now. First on health care, before I get to — before I get to broader issues, you just mentioned that you believe — or that in your estimate, that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about 1/2 of 1 percent, given that, I believe you say, there’s 160 million full-time people working in ’20-’21.  That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in ’20-’21. Is that correct?

Director Elmendorf: Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that…employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade.  Half a percent of that is 800,000.

I noticed that the Blog Prof found of video of Nancy Pelosi promising that Obamacare would CREATE 400,000 jobs. Ooops.

I am sure that some of the 800,000 people who will be losing their jobs because of Obama’s socialist health care plan voted for Obama in 2008. What were those people thinking?

News

Obamacare struck down as unconstitutional by Florida judge

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Hans Bader again, writing at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Excerpt:

A judge in Florida just declared the health care law known as “Obamacare” unconstitutional, ruling it void in its entirety. Judge Vinson rightly declared the health care law’s individual mandate unconstitutional, since the inactivity of not buying health insurance is not an “economic activity” that Congress has the power to regulate under the Interstate Commerce Clause. (Under the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Morrison (2000), which I helped litigate, only “economic activity” can be regulated under the Commerce Clause, with the possible exception of those non-economic activities that harm instrumentalities of interstate commerce or cross state lines.)

Judge Vinson also rightly declared the law as a whole unconstitutional. The health care law lacks a severability clause. So if a major provision like the individual mandate is unconstitutional — as it indeed was — then the whole law must be struck down.

[…]As I noted earlier in The Washington Examiner, “To justify preserving the rest of the law, the judge” in the earlier Virginia case “cited a 2010 Supreme Court ruling [Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB] that invalidated part of a law — but kept the rest of it in force. But that case involved a law passed almost unanimously by Congress, which would have passed it even without the challenged provision. Obamacare is totally different. It was barely passed by a divided Congress, but only as a package. Supporters admitted that the unconstitutional part of it — the insurance mandate — was the law’s heart. Obamacare’s legion of special-interest giveaways that are ‘extraneous to health care’ does not alter that.” In short, Obamacare’s individual mandate is not “volitionally severable,” as case law requires.

The individual mandate provision also was not “functionally” severable from the rest of the law, since the very Congress that passed Obamacare deemed the individual absolutely “essential” to the Act’s overarching goals (as Judge Vinson in Florida correctly noted).

[…]Cato legal scholar Ilya Shapiro, who filed briefs against the law in Virginia, comments on today’s decision here, calling it a “victory for federalism and individual liberty

I also got two more opinions about what this means:

Not sure who to believe. An injunction would have been better.

News

Does Obama tell the truth about people who are denied medical coverage?

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Gateway Pundit gives you the facts that Obama leaves out of his speeches.

Excerpt:

Robin Beaton’s insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat.

In 2009, Barack Obama included the story of a Waxahachie woman’s breast cancer nightmare in his speech to Congress. Obama said the evil insurance company canceled her policy for failing to report a pre-existing condition: acne. As it turned out, Robin Beaton’s insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat. Obama forgot to mention this in his talk.

And another one:

Obama found another victim to report on in his State of the Union Address.

I’m not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that his treatment might not be covered.

But, as it turns out, Barack Obama forgot to mention a few things about Mr. Howard.

When James Howard was diagnosed with brain cancer in March he did not know how he would pay for radiation treatments costing $87,000 and $2,300 a week for chemotherapy.

At the time of his diagnosis, Howard was insured by UnitedHealth Group Inc, a policy for which he paid because his employer, Hennessey Performance near Houston, Texas, did not provide healthcare insurance for its employees.

After his diagnosis, UnitedHealth revoked Howard’s policy on the grounds that his was a pre-existing condition.

UnitedHealth said on Friday that Howard had failed to disclose an earlier initial diagnosis suggesting potential cancer from brain scans before he applied for coverage.

Of course, Obama forgot to mention this, too.

Oh, but I am sure the mainstream media will tell everyone the facts.