A Trillion Dollars And 800,000 Jobs Gone Because Of Obamacare

A Trillion Dollars And 800,000 Jobs Gone Because Of Obamacare https://t.co/5YYtEV0Hpv pic.twitter.com/Nbm96WFsNJ

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 28, 2016

...These new findings cast a new light on Obama’s recent assertions that the U.S. has seen job growth in the wake of the ACA. While it is technically true that there has been growth, the study found that the ACA has hurt growth in work hours per person.

“If, instead, jobs had been able to grow at even half the 2014 pace, there would have been 800,000 more full-time-equivalent positions by now,” Mulligan wrote....

Wait–Did Hillary Just Say Obamacare Hurts Workers?

Wait–Did Hillary Just Say Obamacare Hurts Workers? - The war room at the Republican National Committee found th... https://t.co/okyAEDLOAA

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 23, 2015

The war room at the Republican National Committee found this interesting exchange between Hillary Clinton and a voter at a campaign event in Iowa City December 16, where the former first lady seems to admit that Obamacare is partially to blame for creating scores of part-time employees. In other words, President Obama’s signature domestic achievement is hurting businesses and workers.

56,540,000 women not working... 94,513,000 Not in Labor Force...

JOBS! JOBS! https://t.co/vcj1IXiyaF

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 6, 2015

Labor force participation at 38-year low... https://t.co/m0YJhKSxV6

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 6, 2015

94,513,000 Not in Labor Force... https://t.co/oJ1PcuCJ9W

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 6, 2015

56,540,000 women not working... https://t.co/soSgytmrng

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 6, 2015

First-Time Homebuyers Now at 28-Year Low... https://t.co/S6Ednf66dr

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) November 6, 2015

Can they muster the votes?

◼ Senators introduce bill to counter Obamacare's 40-hour week - Sean Higgins/Washington Examiner

The Affordable Care Act requires businesses that employ 50 or more full-time employees to provide them with healthcare. The law considers anyone who works an average of at least 30 hours a week to be full time. The provision was included to keep employers from circumventing the requirement by giving some employees less than the standard 40-hour work week.

The Senate bill's co-sponsors, Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; Susan Collins, R-Maine; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Joe Donnelly, D-Ind.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said the provision had resulted in an even more perverse incentive: to reduce employee hours to just 29 a week.

...The bill will put some Democrats in a difficult position, forcing them to choose between local and state businesses that say the Obamacare mandate is squeezing them and the White House, which does not want to see a part of President Obama's signature initiative undone.

The White House said Tuesday it would veto any such legislation. Spokesman Josh Earnest said, in reaction to the House version, that it would make it easier for businesses to avoid the 50-employee requirement. "This proposed change would actually do a lot of harm, not just to the Affordable Care Act but to a substantial number of workers across the country," Earnest said.

Bi-paritsanship? Obama wants to veto that http://t.co/Sk7X6K8hss

— Red Alert Politics (@RedAlert) January 8, 2015

An Angry Dad's Reaction to Dr. Gruber

◼ Of course, this grand scheme of yours is crashing and burning, as the daily headlines demonstrate. The rollout was a disaster; more people have lost their current coverage than have signed up as new enrollees, and prices and deductibles are skyrocketing. There are looming doctor shortages of massive proportions. - C. Edmund Wright/American Thinker

If you know what’s good for you Jonathon Gruber, you’ll stay the hell away from me. Why? Because you have done the unpardonable in the eyes of any father – you have brought havoc unto the finances of my youngest daughter – and her newlywed husband.

You see, Dr. Gruber, what you did not only harmed millions of Americans – many of them young – you did so based on arrogance. This is you on all of those videos – glibly counting your fellow citizens as fodder for your tortured contrivances that will ruin, or end, their lives in many cases – without any remorse or perspective whatsoever. This is a damnable quality held by many who hang out in the faculty lounge. And you are obviously eaten up with it....

I submit that you’re detestable with no business whatsoever making grand plans for your planned utopian society. And yet, due to many flaws in our political system – some escalated in just the past six years – you can and you do. These plans never work, and yet, you are paid grotesque sums of money to dream them up.

As you told the Committee Tuesday – in a Lois Lerner-esque tone -- millions of people losing their current coverage was merely “part of the calculation.” Part of the calculation? That’s all this is to you, a mathematical projection?

You arrogant bastard!

These are real lives we are talking about here. And in the case of Congressman Patrick McHenry – whose question prompted your telling response - we’re talking some 473 thousand real lives in his state of North Carolina alone! If the ratios hold, that’s some 12 million nationwide! And that’s before the wave of cancellations that are taking place right now.

Well let me tell you about this damned calculation. My 23 year old daughter, like many others, is facing a tripling, or maybe a quadrupling – or her contribution to her work place provided coverage. Calculate that you smarmy SOB. Yes, I said tripling or maybe quadrupling. The figures are not final yet. She cannot afford this, as the increase alone will swallow about 20% of her take home pay. She is not alone.

And why is this? Well, it is all just part of the calculation. You see, the magnificent bureaucrats who slither to and from government cubicles every day have deemed that the former coverage isn’t up to Obama Care standards. Never mind that the boss liked it, the employees liked it – the doctors and pharmacies liked it – all of this is academic.... KEEP READING

◼ GRUBER’S COMMENTS REVEAL BROADER LIBERAL DECEPTION ON TAXES - Patrick Hedger/Human Events

Gruber’s comments confirm most of the worst fears about ObamaCare held by its critics from the beginning, not just the fear that it had been written by someone like Jon Gruber—a man that fancies himself an intellectual yet apparently is stupid enough in his own right to pull off the heist of a century and then get caught on video confessing to it about a half-dozen times. Yet as illuminating as Gruber’s comments are about ObamaCare, one of his statements in particular offers a glimpse deep into the intellectual liberal psyche and reveals something astonishing: they know they’re wrong....

In polite political discourse, amongst family, friends, or colleagues, we may fiercely disagree with those across the aisle, however we assume that they truly believe in what they are saying and are only trying to attack society’s problems from an opposite angle shaped by a different perspective. In some of our most heated disagreements in politics, the truth is often that the debate is not between the correct and incorrect method, but instead between which is the most efficient and least efficient. Following Gruber’s comments, it may be time to throw out this assumption of innocence when dealing with the liberal political and intellectual elite.

Young people are looking for another way – because the economy they’ve experienced for the past 5 years just hasn’t been working.

◼ 8 Graphs Show Why It’s No Surprise Young America is Turning on Obama - IJ Review

Remember the President’s repeated assurances that his bailouts and Obamacare would revive the economy? Those claims probably sound pretty hollow to the President’s one-time supporters, young adults.
These eight graphs, which examine adults under the age of 25 who have moved out of their parents’ home, via PolicyMic, show that this group is suffering the worst from dwindling incomes and long-term unemployment.

1. Annual household income is at shockingly low levels for families headed by someone under the age of 25. Forty percent of these households get by on only $10,000 a year.

2. Compared with older households, under-25 poverty rates are extremely high.

3. Young unemployment is over double the national average. It peaked in spring 2010 at 19.5%, but still remains higher than it was at the onset of the recession.

4. Despite an increase in the national minimum wage in 2009, and several states across the country raising their minimum wages, median hourly wages for people under 25 are lower than they were 10 years ago. Some economists argue that the minimum wage increase actually contributed to these lowered hourly wages and higher unemployment.

5. Almost 90% of under-25 households rent, as oppose to own their living space. This lowers their equity and oftentimes their credit scores.

MORE, at the link...

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary: ‘The Wealth in America Doesn’t Come from Government’

◼ In this clip, successful investor Kevin O’Leary from ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank” eloquently and persuasively destroys many of the myths of the “1 percent” and describes in personal detail how many of the small businesses he works with have to spend nearly $20,000 to $30,000 a year complying with federal regulations. - Heritage

500 economists, including three Nobel laureates, on Wednesday urged Congress to junk President Obama's proposal to boost the minimum wage to $10.10, claiming it will cut jobs and raises prices.

◼ Over 500 economists slam minimum wage hike as a jobs killer - Paul Bedard/Washington Examiner

...“One of the serious consequences of raising the minimum wage is that business owners saddled with a higher cost of labor will need to cut costs, or pass the increase to their consumers in order to make ends meet. Many of the businesses that pay their workers minimum wage operate on extremely tight profit margins, with any increase in the cost of labor threatening this delicate balance,” they warned.

Among the signers were economists from major schools, including Obama’s alma mater, Nobel laureates Vernon Smith, Edward Prescott and Eugene Fama, and George Shultz, who was secretary of State, Treasury secretary, and a former top budget chief.

It was timed to coincide with a Senate hearing on legislation to boost the minimum wage, which the Congressional Budget Office warned could lead to thousands of job cuts.

“To address the very real concerns of out of work and low-wage workers, many of our nation’s policymakers point to raising the minimum wage as a ‘silver bullet’ solution,” the economists wrote. “Although increasing wages through legislative action may sound like a great idea, poverty is a serious, complex issue that demands a comprehensive and thoughtful solution that targets those Americans actually in need.”

Eating their own ObamaCare words

◼ They’re not just eating their words. They’re choking on ObamaCare’s massive, inevitable, job-killing, life-threatening failures. - Michelle Malkin/NY Post

◼ 300,000-MEMBER UNION DROPS BOMBSHELL OBAMACARE REPORT - Wynton Hall/Breitbart

The 300,000-member union that was the first to endorse then-Senator Barack Obama has released a devastating Obamacare report that says Obama's controversial healthcare program will slash worker wages by up to $5 an hour, reduce worker hours, and exacerbate income inequality.

The report by Unite Here--a North American labor union that represents workers in the hotel, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, laundry, and airport industries--is titled: "The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse."

"Ironically, the Administration's own signature healthcare victory poses one of the most immediate challenges to redressing inequality," states the 12-page report. "We take seriously the promise that 'if you like your health plan, you can keep it. Period.' UNITE HERE members like their health plans."

The report features first-person testimonials and photos of union members describing how Obamacare is personally hurting them and their families--the same kinds of stories that Majority Senator Harry Reid said are "all untrue" and that progressive New York Times columnist Paul Krugman mocked as"nonexistent" in his piece "Health Care Horror Hooey."

This ObamaCare Report Card Is Really Disappointing To Way Too Many People

◼ A Rasmussen poll on Obamacare taken over the last three days has some startling facts: - IJ Review
33% say their insurance has changed.
40% view it “favorably” (down from 45% two weeks ago).
56% view it “unfavorably” (3/4 of these say it’s “very” unfavorable.)
58% say free market competition would do more to lower costs
14% say they’ve been helped.
50% say it has made no change.
33% say they’ve been hurt.
All of these numbers show an increase in negative opinions and a decrease in positive ones.

Harry Reid Denies All Obamacare 'Horror Stories'; 'All Are Untrue'

◼ Harry Reid spoke about the Obamacare "horror stories" on the Senate floor this morning. He said that "all are untrue."

"Despite all that good news, there's plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they're being told all over America," said Reid.

◼ Despicable Harry Reid claims O-care horror stories ‘all untrue’; Epic refutation ensues [videos] - Twitchy

@guypbenson So I haven't been cut to 25 hrs/wk? Awesome! @SenatorReid

— Benjamin Green (@BGreenAZ) February 26, 2014

It's amazing that Harry Reid can smear cancer patients by calling them liars and most of our media just ignores it.

— AG (@AG_Conservative) February 26, 2014

"All of them are untrue" - @SenatorReid http://t.co/VFP5uv0jGm

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 26, 2014

"All of them are untrue" - @SenatorReid http://t.co/qtjh0FQSa5

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 26, 2014

"All of them are untrue" - @SenatorReid http://t.co/9ucsUJWiB6

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 26, 2014

"All of them are untrue." - @SenatorReid http://t.co/7za97PNQmt

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 26, 2014

Public Rebellion Brewing...

POLL: Uninsured opposition reaches all-time high...

Obama kickstarts the ‘minimum wage economy’

◼ Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal came up with the perfect name for the Obama economy that you’ll be hearing a lot during this year’s midterm election campaigns.

“After more than five years under this administration, the Obama economy is now the minimum-wage economy,” the Republican governor told reporters after a meeting he and his gubernatorial colleagues held with President Obama at the White House.

With his anemic economy still unable to produce enough jobs to put millions of unemployed Americans back to work full-time, Mr. Obama is offering a threadbare idea to raise the nation’s minimum hourly wage above $10. Congress‘ budget analysts say it could result in the loss of at least a half-million jobs and possibly a million.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said forcing small businesses to raise their hourly wages would result in layoffs to keep their payroll costs down, or cause employers to hire fewer low-wage workers.

In a nation with a workforce of 160 million people, millions of whom are jobless or can only find part-time work, this is a poor excuse for an economic recovery program. In fact, it is pathetic.

IRS WARNS: OBAMACARE TAX MUST BE PAID

◼ IRS Warns: Obamacare Tax Must Be Paid with Tax Return - Americans For Tax Reform

President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service today quietly released a series of Obamacare “Health Care Tax Tips” warning Americans that they must obtain “qualifying” health insurance – as defined by the federal government – or face a “shared responsibility payment” when filing their tax returns in 2015. The term “shared responsibility payment” refers to the Obamacare individual mandate tax, one of at least seven tax hikes in the healthcare law that directly hit families making less than $250,000 per year.

◼ IRS' Friendly Reminder to Make Obamacare Payment (or Else) is Dripping in Leftist Language - Michael Hausam/IJReview

4. Your 2014 tax return will ask if you had insurance coverage or qualified for an exemption. If not, you may owe a shared responsibility payment when you file in 2015.

Fourth Georgia hospital closes due to Obamacare payment cuts

◼ The fourth Georgia hospital in two years is closing its doors due to severe financial difficulties caused by Obamacare’s payment cuts for emergency services. - Daily Caller

The federal government has historically made payments to hospitals to cover the cost of uninsured patients seeking free medical care in emergency rooms, as federal law mandates that hospitals must care for all patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Because the Affordable Care Act’s authors believed they’d forced all states to implement the Medicaid expansion, Obamacare vastly cut hospital payments, the Associated Press reports.

The Supreme Court ruled that states could reject the Medicaid expansion in 2012, as part of the decision that upheld Obamacare generally. Since that decision, the Obama administration has so far instituted 28 unilateral delays and changes to the health care law’s implementation without congressional approval, Fox Business reports.

From verifying eligibility for subsidies to enforcing employer requirements, the Obama administration has already taken a hacksaw to the health care reform law, but it has made no changes to the provision raising problems for half the nation’s hospitals.

◼ Health Law's Impact Has Only Begun... - Wall St. Journal

The law's true impact will play out over years. It will depend in part on whether backers overcome serious early setbacks, including crippling glitches in the new online insurance marketplaces and many states' rejection of the Medicaid expansion. But another obstacle the law faces is pushback from some consumers and industry over the higher costs, complex rules and mandatory requirements it imposes.

Thought Police: Firms must swear ObamaCare not a factor in firings

◼ Is the latest delay of ObamaCare regulations politically motivated? Consider what administration officials announcing the new exemption for medium-sized employers had to say about firms that might fire workers to get under the threshold and avoid hugely expensive new requirements of the law. - Chris Stirewalt/FOX

Obama officials made clear in a press briefing that firms would not be allowed to lay off workers to get into the preferred class of those businesses with 50 to 99 employees. How will the feds know what employers were thinking when hiring and firing? Simple. Firms will be required to certify to the IRS – under penalty of perjury – that ObamaCare was not a motivating factor in their staffing decisions. To avoid ObamaCare costs you must swear that you are not trying to avoid ObamaCare costs. You can duck the law, but only if you promise not to say so.

◼ The iron fist is getting stronger and stronger - PJMedia via Mark Levin

Companies Must Now Swear — to the IRS — That None of Their Layoffs Are Because of Obamacare.

This is one way to skew the Obamacare stats and turn the IRS into the Democrats’ personal political army in a stroke....Company officials will be trapped in a catch-22. They can lay off as many people as they want because of Obamacare. But because they’ll have to swear to the IRS that their decisions had nothing to do with Obamacare, they can’t speak publicly about what’s happening. What a great way to silence the people who are on the front lines of dealing with Obamacare’s horrific effects.

◼ President Who Lied About Obamacare Demands Businesses Not Tell Truth About Obamacare Firings - Soopermexican/IJReview (mage source)

In the normal world, this would be called “fraud.” In Obama’s America, it’s called a “snag,” and on a national scale, the Obama regime labels it “Shut up, Fox News!”

◼ Obamacare isn’t a train wreck, it’s a cancer. Put the president’s health care law out of our misery - Tammy Bruce/Washington Times

The Most Embarrassing Efforts to Spin CBO’s Obamacare Report as ‘Good’ News

◼ link - Noah Rothman/Mediaite

A bombshell Congressional Budget report released this week indicated that the Affordable Care Act Obamacare will result in the equivalent of 2.5 million workers voluntarily leaving the workforce by 2024, all taking their productivity with them. The report is politically devastating for ACA Obamacare supporters, and they know it. Their flailing reaction to that report speaks to the adverse impact it could have on Democrats’ political position ahead of the 2014 midterms.

The last 48 hours have produced some of the finest, most rarified examples of spin the political universe has been privy to in some time. It’s been a veritable windfall for consumers of political discourse who enjoy observing painful rhetorical contortions.

◼ Dem Rep. Gwen Moore’s Hilarious Defense of CBO Report: “People Don’t Want A Promotion, Because They Will Pay More Taxes”… - Weasel Zippers via Tom Del Beccaro

Then you have Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), who appeared virtually incoherent Thursday on MSNBC while trying to explain away “pathetic” Republicans accurately quoting the CBO.

“You could say people don’t want a promotion, because if they make more money they’ll have to pay more taxes,” Moore said in false equivalence. This makes sense only to those who do not currently pay income taxes on their wages – which may, in fact, be her intended audience.

AOL CEO: 'Obamacare Is Additional $7.1 Million Expense For Us'

Via Drudge


◼ "We have to look at our benefits programs very seriously," said Armstrong. "In the CEO chair, let me give you an example of the decisions we have to make as a company: Obamacare is an additional $7.1 million expense for us as a company. So we have to decide whether or not to pass that expense to employees or whether to cut other benefits." - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard



◼ NY Hospital Turns Down Cancer Patient With Obamacare - Washington Free Beacon

When told the hospital did not take his insurance, Johnston was shocked. “It leaves me high and dry,” Johnston said. “I mean, this is nothing to fool around with. This is my life.”

The hospital said it currently does not accept any of the 8 plans offered by the New York state exchange, citing low reimbursement fees that “wouldn’t come close” to the cost of providing treatment. The hospital has had to negotiate on a case by case basis with the insurance companies to cover patients in predicaments like Johnston’s.

Obamacare enrollees hit snags at doctor's offices...
Subsidy Cliff: Earn $1 More in Wages, and You Could Pay $20,000 More for Insurance...
CBO Director: 'Creates a Disincentive for People to Work'...
Man says personal info stolen after using website...
'Anti-Obamacare' message pays off in campaign...
Cantor takes up replacement bill...
Iran pokes USA with 'Rouhanicare'...

◼ House Oversight Committee hearing exposes political influence peddling, wasted tax funds in Obamacare co-ops - Mark Tapscott/Washington Examiner

$25 million improperly diverted...Conflicts of Interest...

It's an Obamacare-inspired program that cost "only" $2 billion and has mostly escaped media attention, but that may be changing now

Another tidbit buried in that CBO report is that interest on the national debt will quadruple over the coming decade. The stack of bills dropped on our children grows higher; as the workforce collapses, the share of the population paying those bills diminishes. A great many opportunities for the next generation will be foreclosed by the need to cover the spending obligations and interest payments Obama left them. That sure as hell doesn’t sound like “freedom” to me.

◼ FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO DO - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

And as the Wall Street Journal observes, this CBO report is really soft-pedaling job losses from ObamaCare, because they didn’t model the job-killing power of the employer mandate at all. That’s right, Obama drones: you spent all night pushing idiotic White House spin about how the CBO didn’t say ObamaCare would cause anyone to actually get fired, but your masters didn’t tell you that’s because the report specifically avoided the subject

...We find ourselves forced into an ugly debate about the nature of freedom. Liberals, as explicitly stated by Carney, think work erodes freedom – you’re not really free unless you can say “the hell with it” and do whatever you want, fed, clothed, and medicated by the maternal State. To modify the old folk song, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to do.

But conservatives believe work is the essence of freedom....

Every other form of liberty tends to erode when work diminishes, a point Barack Obama’s tenure demonstrates with such clarity that I suspect future generations will study it in textbooks.

"...more freedom, to use a certain buzzword"

◼ White House spokesman Jay Carney sums up what the Obama presidency thinks about your freedom. - IJ Review

During a press conference on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary called ‘freedom’ a “buzzword.” He was discussing Obamacare’s effect in lessening work hours because it lowers the hourly threshold an American must work in order to obtain health care.

◼ FREEDOM’S JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO DO - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

Sometimes you can disagree with spin from this White House while still admiring its political craftsmanship. Yesterday was not one of those days. Rocked on their heels by a CBO analysis of ObamaCare that’s going to spark full-blown panic among Democrats up for re-election in 2014, White House spokesman Jay Carney ran a spin session that involved claiming unemployment is the essence of freedom – it’s great that people can quit their jobs because ObamaCare will subsidize their health insurance at everyone else’s expense, because they’ll have more time to work on their cowboy poetry or whatever.

Keep that in mind when you’re looking at your gigantic ObamaCare premiums and deductibles, young and healthy suckers. You’re paying three times what you used to pay so that older people who really don’t want to work can feel more free to quit their jobs....

Carney topped off his disastrous press conference by claiming that “freedom” is just a “buzzword,” a line that’s going to show up on T-shirts for years to come. Way to make the entire United States recoil in disgust from your Administration, dude.

We find ourselves forced into an ugly debate about the nature of freedom. Liberals, as explicitly stated by Carney, think work erodes freedom – you’re not really free unless you can say “the hell with it” and do whatever you want, fed, clothed, and medicated by the maternal State. To modify the old folk song, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to do.

...The same law Obama is praising because it will reduce the workforce by making work unnecessary for 2.5 million people is also forcing elderly nuns to pay for contraceptives. When you’re dependent on the State for your livelihood, even your ability to vote becomes a largely theoretical “freedom.” They know which way you’re going to vote. You can’t afford to make any other choice.

When we expect everyone to seek employment, we are showing respect to our fellow citizens. Obama’s attitude is outrageous in its contempt for the American people. He really does think the American dream is a reasonably comfortable dead-end existence, with the working population obliged to cover the bills of the indolent.

No more burdensome job for pajamaboy; just bill working taxpayers RT@kerpen @TSAS4LIFE Haha @AFPhq nails it -> pic.twitter.com/TdlGIEgayx #FL22

— Jeremy Rodgers (@RepRodgers) February 6, 2014