Please enjoy the latest installment of the "it's working" chronicles. Sorry, American workers (via The Hill):
ObamaCare will force a reduction in American work hours — the equivalent of 2 million jobs over the next decade, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper said Monday. The total workforce will shrink by just under 1 percent as a result of changes in worker participation because of the new coverage expansions, mandates and changes in tax rates, according to a 22-page report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “Some people would choose to work fewer hours; others would leave the labor force entirely or remain unemployed for longer than they otherwise would,” the agency said in its latest analysis of the now five-year-old law.
This assessment largely confirms the bombshell February 2014 analysis from the nonpartisan entity, which also projected that Democrats' $2 trillion healthcare scheme would slow economic growth and slow job creation. Take it away, 2011 Nancy Pelosi:
"Four million jobs will be created by the legislation when it is fully in effect."
In 2010, she said Obamacare would create 400,000 new jobs "almost immediately." Last year, the law's defenders were reduced to arguing that the reduction in worker hours was a positive development, offering Americans more time to spend with their families, and freeing them from "job lock." CBO's findings determined that Obamacare disincentivizes work, shifting the burden of subsidizing health coverage for people who choose to work less or leave the workforce altogether onto the backs of middle class taxpayers. Democrats' frantic "liberation from job lock" spin worked out...about as well as one might have expected. Obamacare's cheerleaders have been wrong about virtually everything: Their law was not a job creator. Their law has not bent the national health spending "cost curve" down. Their law has not even approached lowering rates across the board. Their law has not made healthcare more affordable. Their law has not secured access to care. Their law has not reduced emergency room visits, or decreased uncompensated care. Their law did not guarantee that satisfied consumers could keep their preferred doctors and plans. And their law has not attracted nearly as many enrollees as they expected, largely due to lack of affordability. Their law has not signed up as many young and healthy consumer as they'd anticipated, raising new fears of an adverse selection spiral. And their law has not become popular post-implementation. Meanwhile, the string of high-profile failures among Obamacare co-ops is inflicting more chaos onto an already-strained system:
Health care providers could get stuck with unpaid bills in a half dozen states where co-op plans have collapsed. That's because there's no financial backstop in those states if the failed nonprofit startups backed by Obamacare loans run out of money before paying off all of their medical claims. That messy scenario is already playing out in New York, where the state's co-op shut down at the end of November after its financial situation proved direr than originally known. The Greater New York Hospital Association estimates the co-op, Health Republic Insurance of New York, owes its members at least $165 million. And the Medical Society of the State of New York found that of more than 900 doctors surveyed, 64 percent reported being owed money by the co-op plan. For most insurers, a state's guaranty fund - bankrolled by the industry - will cover unpaid medical claims if they become insolvent. But in some states, like New York, that fund doesn't support plans that are licensed as health maintenance organizations, which is typically how the co-ops were set up. The other five states where providers could end up with unpaid bills if the failed co-ops run out of money: Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon and Utah...Just over half of the 23 co-ops seeded with $2.4 billion in loans have collapsed, with most set to cease operations at the end of this year. That's left roughly 600,000 individuals scrambling to find new coverage.
On Capitol Hill this week, Republican lawmakers are demanding answers about how the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on state-level Obamacare exchanges that ultimately collapsed, and have since been abandoned. Here's Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) grilling acting CMS administrator Andy Slavitt about whether or not he agrees with the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office's (GAO) recently-announced verdict that zero of the remaining state-level exchanges are "fully operational," after five years and $1.45 billion in IT spending, courtesy of taxpayers:
Senate Republicans used a budget maneuver called reconciliation to vote to repeal vast swaths of Obamacare last week, approving a bill that would gut the law. Once it passes the House, President Obama is expected to veto the legislation in order to protect his unpopular, harmful law. Hillary Clinton, who invented Obamacare, asserted last week that the law is working.