# Is Obamacare causing layoffs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 21, 2012, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685 "2012-11-21T03:33:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/41 "2012-11-23T01:48:20Z")
_Of course_ Obamacare is going to cause layoffs and shifts to part-time work. It raises the cost of health care coverage to businesses, and in some cases quite substantially. You guys are in complete denial as to the effect of this law, and you don’t want to admit that it might affect the economy adversely, so you’re just assuming that evil businessmen are taking advantage of this law to do evil things to their employees. The hardest-hit industries are those that have small white-collar office staffs with health care, and much larger, low-paid service workers who either get minimal coverage or no coverage at all. Fast food chains are a perfect example of this. [Franchises warn that Obamacare could halve profits](http://washingtonexaminer.com/franchisors-warn-obamacare-will-halve-profits/article/2507920#.UK7P3obhfX8) > [@](#): > > Barr has 23 stores with 421 employees, 109 of whom are full-time. Of those, he provides 30 with health insurance. Barr said he pays 81 percent of their Blue Cross Blue Shield policy, or $4,073 of $5,028 for individuals, more for families, for a total bill of $129,000 a year. Employees pay $995. > > Under Obamacare, however, he will have to provide health insurance for all 109 full-time workers, a cost of $444,000, or two and half times more than his current costs. That $315,000 increase is equal to just over half his annual profit, after expenses, or 1.5 percent of sales. As a result, he said, “I’m not paying $444,000.” > > Providing no insurance would result in a federal fine of $158,000, $29,000 more than he now spends but the lowest cost possible under the Obamacare law. So he now views that as his cap and he’ll either cut worker hours or replace them with machines to get his costs down or dump them on the public health exchange and pay the fine. “Every business has a way to eliminate jobs,” he said, “but that’s not good for them or me.” > > But that’s not all. His experience tells him that most low-wage workers he would have to cover under Obamacare won’t take it because their $995 share is too high, meaning those the program was set up for won’t see any benefit. And those who do will because they have major health issues, likely resulting in higher premiums to him. Because health insurance costs a lot more than the penalties, a lot of businesses are going to opt for the penalties and drop their employee’s health insurance entirely. I mentioned this repeatedly back during the original Obamacare debates, and thought it was such a gaping loophole in the law that it must have been intentional - a backdoor way to get to single payer over time. And if you think it’s just those evil businessmen… [Health care law brings double dose of trouble for part-time professors](http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/health-care-law-brings-double-dose-of-trouble-for-ccac-part-time-profs-662697/?print=1) > [@](#): > > To Community College of Allegheny County’s president, Alex Johnson, cutting hours for some 400 temporary part-time workers to avoid providing health insurance coverage for them under the impending Affordable Health Care Act is purely a cost-saving measure at a time the college faces a funding reduction. > > But to some of the employees affected, including 200 adjunct faculty members, the decision smacks of an attempt to circumvent the national health care legislation that goes into effect in January 2014. > > “It’s kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don’t have the money to pay for it,” said Adam Davis, an adjunct professor who has taught biology at CCAC since 2005. > > Temporary part-time employees received an email notice from Mr. Johnson on Tuesday informing them that the new health care act defines full-time employees as those working 30 hours or more per week. > > As a result, the college as of Dec. 31 will reduce temporary part-time employee hours to 25 per week. For adjuncts, the workload limit will be reduced from 12 to 10 credits per semester. Really people… Instead of just denying that this is happening, why don’t you just take the extraordinary step of googling “Obamacare layoffs”? There are plenty of stories out there, and from reputable sources. [Michigan company plans Obamacare layoffs](http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/976066#.UK7SjIbhfX8) > [@](#): > > Stryker Corporation, a Michigan-based medical device company with operations around the world, is laying off five percent of its employees in order to offset the cost of a tax passed as part of Obamacare in 2009 and scheduled to take effect in 2013. > > “The targeted [employee] reductions and other restructuring activities are being initiated to provide efficiencies and realign resources in advance of the new Medical Device Excise Tax scheduled to begin in 2013,” Stryker announced in a November 10 press release, “as well as to allow for continued investment in strategic areas and drive growth despite the ongoing challenging economic environment and market slowdown in elective procedures.” This set of layoffs isn’t due to health insurance coverage requirements, but to an astoundingly stupid part of the plan: part of the revenue raised to offset the cost of Obamacare comes from a new tax on medical device manufacturers. Got that? To help lower the cost of health care, the government is putting a new tax on the companies that provide health care services. Only the federal government could be this stupid. Last year another medical device manufacturer moved its operations out of the country because of the tax. The additional costs of Obamacare are not trivial. One franchise said that its accountants estimate that Obamacare will result in a cost increase of $72,000 per year per location. Trust me - as someone who has been involved with a franchise in the past, $72,000 per year is often more than the franchise owner earns. Many of these franchises will go through flips and twists to avoid this, even if it means laying off employees, switching to part-time workers only, or investing in automation. Consider this: A minimum-wage full-time employee in the U.S. earns about $13, 000 per year. Providing health insurance coverage for that person amounts to a 50% pay increase. There is no way businesses can absorb that. So they’re going to pay the penalty instead, but even that amounts to a 15% pay increase. That means that any worker whose is on the marginal productivity line is at risk of being laid off or converted into a part-time worker. This is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the health care act hasn’t even been written into final legislation yet by the bureaucracy. Wait until the end of the first year of implementation, and then we’ll see just how much damage it’s done. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/42 "2012-11-23T03:14:25Z")
A tip of the iceberg? The way I see it we do have to indeed wait for the implementation of the law instead of being chicken little, specially when, as pointed before, the reality is that the costs were rising even before the reforms are in place. > **[U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad attacking Tim Kaine says health care law 'will...](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/feb/15/us-chamber-commerce/us-chamber-commerce-ad-attacking-tim-kaine-says-he/)** > > In a recent television ad, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- the nation’s leading group representing businesses -- jumped > [@](#): > > A March 2011 analysis by the Urban Institute – an independent research organization – concurred, concluding that, on balance, the health care law is “unlikely to have major aggregate effects on the U.S. economy and on employment, primarily because the changes in spending and taxes are very small relative to the size of the economy.” > > The NFIB report doesn’t appear to take into account the subsidies in the health care law, only the costs. Specifically, the Urban Institute report noted that firms with fewer than 50 workers will receive $4.5 billion in employer subsidies in the form of tax credits. Taking both premiums and assessments into account, “small businesses would save 8.7 percent compared with their current premium contributions,” the report said. This means that smaller firms would actually have “lower costs of labor and should be more willing to expand employment.” > > Medium-sized firms, for their part, would find their premium costs drop modestly, though individual companies that do not already offer health care coverage could see notable cost increases. And large firms would see an increase in premium costs by about 1 percent overall. > > Aaron added that employment decisions are not as cut-and-dried as critics suggest. “To the extent that workers are part of a team or group or division that is judged on its overall performance, such computations may be done on a group basis,” rather than an individual basis, he said. > > Finally, Aaron noted that increased usage of the health care system because of the law should create jobs within the health care industry itself. These job gains would should partially offset potential job losses elsewhere. > > Given all of these factors, “the rhetorical hysteria explicit in the term ‘job killer’ is enough to make one despair for rational public debate,” Aaron said. > > Our ruling > > The ad said that “Obamacare … will kill jobs across America.” The chamber of Commerce has failed to prove that it will, and the best projections we’ve seen, based on how the law is actually written, do not suggest that the law will “kill” jobs. A close look at the studies cited by the Chamber of Commerce in support of the ad – as well as other independent analyses of the health care law – provide little, if any, evidence that the health care law will result in a significant net number of job losses. We rate the statement False. So, looking once again at the irrational (there is no other way to put this) increases in medical care costs in the USA, it is very illogical to not realize that the back of the camel was going to break soon, and reform was the only way forward. IMHO the back was breaking already and one big factor (as I noticed in the previous discussions) was that health care costs also have been a drag in creating new jobs. I do have to blame big companies for not being more proactive in telling the American politicians that were in their pockets to do a better job in controlling health care costs, unfortunately the job they have been very active was to continue to increase the profits of many like the pharmaceutical industry, so we got the ACA as a result of not having any other good plans coming from the Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![AndyLee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@AndyLee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndyLee)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/43 "2012-11-23T15:33:31Z")
I would be there are people getting laid off, but so what? I know darn well the company I worked for used 9-11 to lay off people as an excuse to clean out the dead wood. There was no need to do that. We had a slight business loss, but not only did we recover, by the end of Oct 2001, we made up all the lost business. I think businesses see this as an opportunity to trim the deadwood in companies. Having been out of work for awhile, I’ve worked a lot, I mean a lot of part time jobs over the last year and as much as I hate to say it, there is so much deadwood. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/44 "2012-11-23T15:49:59Z")
People, I think you’re grossly overestimating the PR aspect of layoffs, if that’s what people mean by “businesses will just use this as an excuse.” Businesses by and large don’t need an excuse. If laying off people produces a strong benefit, they lay people off. I agree with Sam (already did). It would defy basic economic principles to assume there won’t layoffs resulting from this law, as it’s defined. It would be akin to saying that demand for something will increase if you raise the price. That’s not how it works. If you set thresholds that determine material costs, businesses will find ways to not hit those thresholds if they can. It is predictable. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/45 "2012-11-23T16:14:15Z")
In fact, businesses don’t like laying people off - it’s bad for morale, and it’s unpleasant for the managers. The best explanation for why they waited until after the election is that they were holding out hope that Romney would be elected and the law would be either repealed or heavily modified. Those layoff plans were probably sitting in a folder titled, “Implement if Obama wins.” The real bottom line here is that Obamacare is a massive tax increase on businesses employing over 50 people. But it’s actually worse than a tax increase, because taxes only kick in if you make an actual profit. This is an increase in before-profit costs, which really raises the risk factor for businesses. Gigobuster’s link is highly misleading in that it looks at the size of the new regulatory burden as compared to the entire economy, and therefore concludes that it will have minimal impact. But that’s not the way to look at this, because the effect of the taxes and regulations are not distributed evenly across the economy. In particular, there are large swaths of businesses that won’t be affected at all. Those that already have ‘gold-plated’ insurance plans will see no change. Businesses that mostly hire college-educated white collar professionals will not be greatly impacted, because they generally already provide good health insurance coverage. Where you have to look is at that portion of the economy that hires low-paid, low-skilled workers who typically do not have health care coverage now or who have cheaper plans that will not pass muster when compared to the exchanges. We’re talking about the service industry: Small chain stores, large franchises, etc. Radio Shack, Target, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, etc. These are the companies who are most responsible for the jobs created in the past 15 years, and they’ll be the ones responsible for the most job losses due to Obamacare. Again, the people who will be hardest hit will be poorer workers who this law was ostensibly supposed to help. Many of them are going to see what little health care coverage they have through their employers dropped completely. Then they’ll be facing fines that start at about $800/yr and go up to $2,000/yr for not having coverage. For some who can’t afford the coverage available through the exchanges, the net result of Obamacare will be that they not only lose whatever insurance they have now, but they’ll also have to pay the fine for not having health insurance. Other workers are going to to find their full-time positions reduced to part-time. Employers don’t have to pay for health care if a person works less than 30 hours per week, so you’re going to see a lot of jobs with 28 hour work weeks in the future. These people face a triple whammy: They lose income, they lose their employer health care, AND they have to pay a fine because they no longer have health care. A lot of them will wind up having to work two part-time jobs to make ends meet, and they _still_ won’t have health coverage. The third group of people will be those who are simply layed off because of the law. The good news for them, if you want to call it that, is that they’ll get their health care through Medicaid. But they’ll be unemployable. Finally, there’s another major effect on job creation that is totally unseen: Businesses that have fewer than 50 employees now have a disincentive to expand. I imagine we’ll also see a lot of ‘creative’ avoidance. For example, if you have a chain of 10 stores that hires 500 people in total, it’s going to be awfully tempting to restructure so that each store is its own separate business, and they’ll be tied together through licensing fees, consulting fees, or whatever. It will be less efficient, and slow the growth of the economy, but it will be cheaper for the business owners. And they are the ones who make the decisions. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/46 "2012-11-23T16:19:57Z")
My understanding is that those who can’t afford coverage receive subsidized coverage. This invites the question of how the subsidies are paid for, of course, but in any case obviates the claim that people who lose hours or jobs because of ACA will be fined for not having insurance. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/47 "2012-11-23T16:22:04Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > People, I think you’re grossly overestimating the PR aspect of layoffs, if that’s what people mean by “businesses will just use this as an excuse.” Businesses by and large don’t need an excuse. If laying off people produces a strong benefit, they lay people off. > > I agree with Sam (already did). It would defy basic economic principles to assume there won’t layoffs resulting from this law, as it’s defined. It would be akin to saying that demand for something will increase if you raise the price. That’s not how it works. If you set thresholds that determine material costs, businesses will find ways to not hit those thresholds if they can. It is predictable. Of course it is predictable, even in the cite I referred to the economists already expected some layoffs to come, the conclusion is that this is not going to lead of the sinking of the economy ship, the chicken little part is in assuming that there is an avalanche (Tip of the iceberg) of layoffs coming because of this. The main reason still remains the rising costs of health care, and some asshole PR people that want to put the blame on the attempt at controlling the rising price beast. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/48 "2012-11-23T16:28:09Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Again, the people who will be hardest hit will be poorer workers who this law was ostensibly supposed to help. Many of them are going to see what little health care coverage they have through their employers dropped completely. Then they’ll be facing fines that start at about $800/yr and go up to $2,000/yr for not having coverage. For some who can’t afford the coverage available through the exchanges, the net result of Obamacare will be that they not only lose whatever insurance they have now, but they’ll also have to pay the fine for not having health insurance. And no sooner you accuse sources of being misleading that you reach for sources with true misleading points, people paying the fine will get health insurance, and the ones that can not pay will also have subsidies to help. > **[Buying Insurance vs. Paying a Fine: What’s the Tradeoff?](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/buying-insurance-vs-paying-fine-whats-tradeoff/)** > > Probably not what you think. > [@](#): > > There are a lot of numbers in this post. Sorry about that. And I don’t mean to imply that the mandate is meaningless: in fact, it probably has both an objective and a subjective effect. Objective because it makes the financial case for buying insurance stronger, and subjective because most people prefer to obey the law. Still, it’s not overwhelmingly important. My personal preference would be for true national healthcare, and failing that, for higher subsidy levels under Obamacare. Nonetheless, the truth is that Obamacare makes insurance available to all poor families and most working class families either free or at very small cost. It’s a pretty good deal. The mandate is a backstop, and it’s one I support both on a substantive policy level and as a matter of constitutional law. But the subsidies and the insurance regs are the heart of Obamacare, and they always have been. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/49 "2012-11-23T16:31:09Z")
^ Must be the least Canadian ‘Canadian’ in the history of … Canada; how anyone can experience UHC and post in defense of the US model is … beyond belief. Literally. The USA healthcare model is a ludicrous ripoff of working people, and the most successful con (‘socialized medicine’ LOL) of the capitalist era - bigger than the cigarette/nicotine con, better than the Wall Street con: beautiful marketing to wrap it up in the flag! And besides it just got approval of the Supreme Court and the electorate. Merry Christmas! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/50 "2012-11-23T16:40:11Z")
Indeed **BrokenBriton** , the sad reality is that to make some of the opposition points to work in the real world one would have to ignore the big elephant of the insane costs that appeared with no Obamacare in place, and also ignore that the elephants in congress still think it is a good idea to continue with this rip-off old system. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/51 "2012-11-23T16:42:02Z")
The U.S. health care system and Obamacare have nothing in common with the Canadian system. For example, Canada’s health act is about 6 pages long. Obamacare is over 2,000 pages. Canada almost completely relegates implementation details to the individual provinces. Obamacare is an attempt to micro-manage health care across the entire country from a central authority. Bad idea. In addition, Canada doesn’t pay for as much health coverage as you’d think. For example, prescription drugs are not covered at all by our public health care system. If I didn’t have private health care insurance through my employer, my family would be paying over $2,000/mo for our prescription drugs. In fact, the U.S. government already pays more per person for health care than does the Canadian government. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/52 "2012-11-23T16:48:27Z")
Lol. Usa! Usa! ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/53 "2012-11-23T16:52:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The U.S. health care system and Obamacare have nothing in common with the Canadian system. For example, Canada’s health act is about 6 pages long. Obamacare is over 2,000 pages. Canada almost completely relegates implementation details to the individual provinces. Obamacare is an attempt to micro-manage health care across the entire country from a central authority. Bad idea. Claiming that there is micro-management is also reaching for a very ridiculous point, the solution was compromised thanks to the fierce opposition to make it a better system, and not only Republicans, but some Democrats also prevented that. In the end there is no micromanagement, but even though this cite only implies it, the reality is that, once again, that micromanagement could had been better (as in: we should had gotten a more efficient government health care system) (this cite is used only to point out that other conservative sources do not reach for misleading points.) > **[Is Obamacare a Government Takeover of Medicine?](https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolynmcclanahan/2012/08/28/is-obamacare-a-government-takeover-of-medicine/)** > > One refrain I’ve heard over and over is that Obamacare is a “government takeover” of medicine. This post explores that concept. > [@](#): > > So what really happens with the Affordable Care Act? The “government” currently pays about 43% to 46% of all healthcare costs, mainly through Medicare, Medicaid, and the armed services. When Obamacare is fully implemented, it is expected this amount will increase to 49.2%. It is a clear increase, but nowhere near a 100% government-paid program. **The private sector will still be responsible for over half of healthcare spending.** ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/54 "2012-11-23T16:52:36Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And no sooner you accuse sources of being misleading that you reach for sources with true misleading points, people paying the fine will get health insurance, and the ones that can not pay will also have subsidies to help. > > [Buying Insurance vs. Paying a Fine: What’s the Tradeoff? – Mother Jones](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/06/buying-insurance-vs-paying-fine-whats-tradeoff) Really? Mother Jones is your cite? I take it you won’t complain if I post a counter-cite from the CATO Institute or the American Enterprise Institute? How exactly will people paying the fine get health insurance? Yes, there will be subsidies for poor people. Hopefully, the law will be such that the difference between the subsidies and the penalty will be zero (i.e. the cost of health insurance with the subsidies will be about the same as the penalty, so people will opt for health insurance). But that still means people will be out of pocket by at least the amount of the penalty for their health insurance. It HAS to be that way, or the penalty would be meaningless as an incentive. That means, of course, that poor people who today don’t have health coverage will be coughing up at least $800 per person next year. This may not sound like a lot, but it will be a real burden on low income families. You could argue that they’re free-riding now and it’s only fair that they pay, and that would be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are now going to have to cough up a significant portion of their disposable income for health insurance. I’ll make a prediction: As this law comes into effect, you’re going to read many stories about the negative unintended consequences and the people who are hit hard by these regulations. There will be more layoffs, many people avoiding the payment of the penalty, etc. The result will be that the Democrats will ‘correct’ this by adding more subsidies and exemptions and complications to the act, and they’ll pay for it by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy even more. Or, it will all become so painful to administer and cause so many economic distortions and dislocations that they’ll use it as an argument to move to a single-payer system. And this time, they might just get there because single payer makes a lot more sense than the godawful mess that is Obamacare. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/55 "2012-11-23T17:01:08Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Really? Mother Jones is your cite? I take it you won’t complain if I post a counter-cite from the CATO Institute or the American Enterprise Institute? Killing the messenger attempt duly noted. And avoiding what the plan actually says also. The cite does link to a Kaiser calculator and to the reports or the CBO. [http://healthreform.kff.org/SubsidyCalculator.aspx#incomeAgeTables](http://healthreform.kff.org/SubsidyCalculator.aspx#incomeAgeTables) > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > How exactly will people paying the fine get health insurance? Yes, there will be subsidies for poor people. Hopefully, the law will be such that the difference between the subsidies and the penalty will be zero (i.e. the cost of health insurance with the subsidies will be about the same as the penalty, so people will opt for health insurance). But that still means people will be out of pocket by at least the amount of the penalty for their health insurance. It HAS to be that way, or the penalty would be meaningless as an incentive. > > That means, of course, that poor people who today don’t have health coverage will be coughing up at least $800 per person next year. This may not sound like a lot, but it will be a real burden on low income families. You could argue that they’re free-riding now and it’s only fair that they pay, and that would be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are now going to have to cough up a significant portion of their disposable income for health insurance. > > I’ll make a prediction: As this law comes into effect, you’re going to read many stories about the negative unintended consequences and the people who are hit hard by these regulations. There will be more layoffs, many people avoiding the payment of the penalty, etc. The result will be that the Democrats will ‘correct’ this by adding more subsidies and exemptions and complications to the act, and they’ll pay for it by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy even more. > > Or, it will all become so painful to administer and cause so many economic distortions and dislocations that they’ll use it as an argument to move to a single-payer system. And this time, they might just get there because single payer makes a lot more sense than the godawful mess that is Obamacare. Like if that was not also noticed in the previous discussions, moving to a single payer plan cold turkey would had been a disaster, the first battle IMHO was won, the idea is indeed to take a look at how the rest of the developed world manages to give health care to all at a cheaper cost, the next battle coming is indeed a lesson that most of industry in the USA should had learned a long time ago, unfortunately the only thing they did learn was to give money to congress critters that think that the current irrational system is the beesnees. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/56 "2012-11-23T17:02:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The U.S. health care system and Obamacare have nothing in common with the Canadian system. I thought reforms in the US system meant 97% of the population was covered - okay, it’s not quite ‘universal’, but it’s good enough for government work. Lets start with that basic principle; universality. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/57 "2012-11-23T17:02:57Z")
Though not everyone needs a car, the vast majority have them. There was a time, I think, when they wer not required to buy insurance, but now they are. What do we know about what the economic effect of this was on car owners? Did the number of people buying cars change as a result? Did the price of insurance or cars or some other related product change? Etc. Was there a differential between immediate economic effects and long term ones? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/58 "2012-11-23T17:03:57Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I’ll make a prediction: As this law comes into effect, you’re going to read many stories about the negative unintended consequences and the people who are hit hard by these regulations. Notice that this prediction would be true even if the effect is negligible. News sources love stories like this. ---
**Author:** ![sparkeyjames](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@sparkeyjames](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sparkeyjames)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/59 "2012-11-25T03:16:29Z")
Get enough of corporate America screaming for a viable health care option and all objections to single payer are going to go away. BTW I work for a small business with less than 10 employees so I’ll wind up on the exchange paying my own. I hope to hell I qualify for a tax break on it. ---
**Author:** ![apriori234](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e19b73/32.png) [@apriori234](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/apriori234)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685/60 "2012-11-25T04:18:31Z")
> [@El\_Zagna](#): > > The [conservative](http://www.redstate.com/jdrucker/2012/11/10/the-two-stages-of-obamacare-layoffs/)[blogs](http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/grusbf5/good-morning-america-heres-those-layoffs-you-voted) are ablaze with claims that Obamacare is causing layoffs and increasing - even doubling - the cost of health insurance premiums. Dozens of layoffs here, hundreds there, thousands over yonder. The main stream media is curiously silent about this news. > > Something’s wrong here. Either the conservative bloggers are making stuff up :eek:, or the MSM is as evil as they say. > > So what’s going on here? Is Obamacare really triggering mass layoffs? If so, why now? The parts of the bill are being phased in, so what has happened recently to cause the layoffs? **In particular, what sections of the bill will or MIGHT cause businesses, especially small businesses, to layoff employees?** I’m a health analyst for the federal government, and yes, Obamacare is causing layoffs. In particular, it’s the part with all the taxes to pay for the program. It’s fairly simple to understand: Taxes are a cost center for businesses, and increasing costs causes businesses to lay off workers. It’s hardly the result of “right wing lunatics” acting out of revenge. It’s simply makes business sense to compensate for the increased taxes by cutting worker hours to below 30 and laying people off. But this is only the beginning. The companies that are now laying off workers are the larger companies that can afford to employ CPAs and tax lawyers. These businesses have known what the impact to their bottom line would be when the bill was passed almost three years ago. Just wait until the vast number of smaller businesses that haven’t started laying off people start to see the Obamacare taxes eroding their profits. That’s when the stuff will hit the fan. And it’s not just that. Despite what Obama said would happen, the cost of health care is still increasing, not decreasing. People won’t be able to afford to buy insurance, and they’ll be penalized 2.5% of their adjusted gross income for not having insurance. Just wait until businesses no longer can count on having customers with the extra $1500 in spare cash to spend. That’s more layoffs. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum. And by the way, the country only has half the number of doctors available as is to treat those who are insured, and the health reform law did nothing to increase the number of physicians or allied health personnel needed to treat the estimated 12 million people who will swamp the system in the coming months. People will be forced to spend $3500 per family member on insurance that they won’t be able to use because they can’t get in to see a doctor. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-obamacare-causing-layoffs/641685.md?page=4)