This Is Your Obama Recovery
By Mitch Berg
Almost three in four small businesses plan to lay off workers, cut hours, and replace full-time employees with part-timers due to Obamacare:
“Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate,” said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.
Under Obamacare, just 30 hours — not the nationally recognized 40 hours — is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine.
I’m wondering if Obama’s apologists in the media have figured out that if the unemployment rate is “dropping” but the underemployment rate is rising, something might be going wrong?
July 17th, 2013 at 8:35 am
My small town weekly paper has, for the last month, had 2-3 pages of help wanted ads. The only ones that are offering full time employment are the school districts and the county all the rest are <30hr/wk..
July 17th, 2013 at 12:13 pm
I don’t anticipate the MSM or liberal politicians to clue in to this. All too often, it seems as though data are only important to them if it serves their purposes, not if it serves as a sanity check on their ideology.
July 17th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
The NPR standard practice would be to mention the rumors of shortened work hours, giving no source other than ‘conservative opinion writers and blogs’. An academic economist will be interviewed to refute the vaguely described ‘claim’. This economist will be associated with very liberal views, and perhaps has worked for the Obama administration. This will not be mentioned.
This will be followed by an in-depth story on a quaint or entertaining cultural practice of a minority group, so the lily-white NPR audience can tell themselves that they are a community that celebrates diversity.
July 17th, 2013 at 5:10 pm
Ask a hard question. How about: “Would you support denying cancer treatments that average less than a 3 month extension of life to Medicare patients if that would lower your payroll taxes by 5%?” That’s a practical and honest question I’d like to see the answer to, as that’s the sort of question we need to answer to keep health care spending under control.
July 17th, 2013 at 5:22 pm
I’m wondering if Obama’s apologists in the media have figured out that if the unemployment rate is “dropping” but the underemployment rate is rising, something might be going wrong?
They don’t care. They’ll sling any line of bullshit the LIVs will swallow to protect The Won.
July 17th, 2013 at 7:11 pm
I just saw a pig hovering outside my window. I’m also reliably informed that Beelzebub has taken up short track speedskating. And Emery just said something sensible.
July 17th, 2013 at 7:26 pm
Emery: Yes.
Medical care is a scarce good. It always ends up being rationed.
The way the market would deal with your hypothetical situation would be to sell insurance that covers the procedures that medicare does not.
This is not fair, because not everyone can afford such coverage, or at least would choose not to purchase it.
A hypothetical:
A sixty year old cancer patient would like to stay alive another year so they can see their first grandchild. It will cost $100k for the required procedure.
It so happens that $100k is enough money to give 1000 20-something women mammograms that they would not otherwise receive. What do you do if you are the bureaucrat in charge of choosing which procedures shall and shall not be covered?
July 17th, 2013 at 7:44 pm
So emery, I’ll take that as a robust vote in favor of government run “Death Panels” – when they get old and in the way (i.e. no longer contributing to the good of the state) you just kill them. And Emery, you murderous so@ialist, the decimal point is in the wrong place – if you killed every medicare cancer patient with 3 months to live the net decrease to the payroll tax burden would at the most optimistic be less than 0.4%.
Emery, want to ask a real hard question instead of your ethical strawman hoax? How do we get rid of the middlemen?
July 17th, 2013 at 8:50 pm
Good points made in these various replies. Let me make a point in return:
I could accept the mandate as fair and equitable if insurers were allowed to discriminate on the basis of age. Young people have much lower health care costs, but have many other expenses (children, buying houses, starting careers). Old people have fewer expenses other than healthcare. But Obamacare explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of age, and limits the premiums that old people can be charged. Does it do so by offering a government subsidy for old people seeking insurance? No, it forces insurers to compensate for underpayment by old people by overcharging young people. Why does it do this? Because by forcing insurers to overcharge young working people, it hides the cost of the program. Obamacare, with its system of subsidies, mandates, and premium limits, is yet another tax on the young working people of the United States, sapping the vitality of the country to pay for social programs for indolent boomers who have never had to pay for the government they vastly expanded, leaving it for the next generation to settle their debts.
And yes, I am close enough to 50 to smell it, and I have seen many illnesses and medical expenses in my family. I buy health insurance. None of that makes the cynical transfer of wealth from productive young people to well-organized geezers, many of whom could afford to pay their own way. Should granny be spending 30% of her income on health care? Hell yes! The wealthiest demographic in this country is over 65; the poorest is under 18. Way to invest in the future, America!
July 17th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
I don’t think that you are being fair to Emery, Kel. His question was a hypothetical.
Health care costs are difficult to reduce for well-understood reasons. Market-based solutions would likely reduce the cost of routine health care in the US, but most people tend to value non-routine health care the most. People with the least ability to pay often require the most expensive care. What may, at first glance, appear to be cost-savings measures (like reducing smoking) may turn out to be more expensive in the long run as ‘healthier’ people become heavier users of the medical system for a longer period of time as they age.
A culturally American solution to the problem of expensive health care would be to encourage individual responsibility and market-based reforms, with a ‘bare bones’ system providing routine healthcare as a safety net.
A typical American solution, compared to a culturally American solution, would be bureaucratic, Washington DC centered, grossly inefficient, rife with rent-seeking and cost shifting, while stifling innovation. It would be immensely disliked, but immune from political reform.
July 17th, 2013 at 8:52 pm
Kel – SOMEONE is going to have to provide an answer to the question: given X resources and Y demands on those resources (where X < Y), what gets funded, and what doesn't? You can prefer individuals or the government as the answerer, but you cannot avoid the question.
July 17th, 2013 at 9:11 pm
When the time of reckoning comes, neither party is likely to enjoy the majorities that President Obama had in 2010. I hope the compromise arrived at will create a simple and limited mandate to provide basic healthcare for all, together with a block grant to the states. That is the only chance for those who want single payer healthcare to receive it. That is also the only chance for those who want a voucher system to receive it. Yes, that delegation to the states will create some failures, but eventually success is contagious, and the states will eventually coalesce around a solution. The federal government acting alone, particularly with the support of only one party, will never be adventurous enough to find a good solution.
July 18th, 2013 at 11:02 am
No Terry, EmeryTheSoci@listDegenerate’s question was indeed an ethical choice strawman, much like the venerable “would you kill somebody at random if you had a gun pointed at your head and it was either you kill, or be killed”. Medicaid/Medicare has to be completely overhauled, means tested and individuals (yes, the word that is not in EmeryTheSoci@listDegenerate’s vocabulary) have to be responsible for their own insurance. 0bumblerCare does nothing of the sort, just piles on.
July 18th, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Medicare is expensive because it’s full of high-risk old people who are expensive to insure. Even for old people, most of the higher cost is from efforts to keep them alive (even if not conscious) for an extra month or two at the end. The way to make it solvent is not to have fewer old people which is what raising the retirement age does. It’s to bring in younger and healthier people who will be net contributors instead of net drains on the system. Expand eligibility instead of restricting it.
I’d be interested to find out which other country you’re thinking of that’s solved their healthcare costs by making their healthcare less socialized.
July 18th, 2013 at 9:55 pm
Emery wrote:
“The way to make it solvent is not to have fewer old people which is what raising the retirement age does.”
The people who are in the best health are the one who can afford to retire later.
Reality is both cruel and relentless.
July 18th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
One-way out of this trap is to simultaneously offer Medicare for all. You can’t reform Medicare because to do so is an attach on seniors, which they will fight. You can’t means test Medicare because middle class seniors (the ones who vote the most) know that they will be paying more. But if you offer Medicare to all, reform is absolutely essential, and it will be harder for the seniors to argue about means testing when the young are paying 80% of the premiums and the old are taking 80% of the services.
So if you are a conservative, you start by offering Medicare to all. You make the annual dues for young people astronomical for the full plan, so you offer them cheaper versions of Medicare which are not fee-for-service, or high deductible and co-pay, and/or run through private insurers. Then you tell the seniors that they have to move to the cheaper versions of Medicare if they want to avoid fees, fees which are means tested. This will take a decade or more, but if we don’t pursue a path like this, the politics become impossible.
The takeaway lesson is that you can’t privatize or otherwise reform Medicare unless you make it universal, first.
July 19th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
It’s worth noting that a lot of the age-driven costs of healthcare are really the costs of a lifetime of poor health decisions like smoking, obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise–some estimate 50% or more. Ken Cooper estimated about 55% sometime back in the 1970s and 1980s.
So if you really want to cut healthcare costs in a big way, you’ve got to figure out a way of allowing people to see the costs of their decisions. The Health Insurance Deform Act does exactly the wrong things by forcing insurance on everyone, by preserving the tie between employment and insurance, and by mandating high payout ratios that can not be achieved by high deductible plans.
And that also (ahem, Emery) requires truncating, not spreading, Medicare. Sorry, Medicare is pretty uniquely horrible in this regard.
July 19th, 2013 at 8:18 pm
The smart way to be addressing the debt today is to be looking at long term reform of the entitlements to the elderly that are the long term threats to budget balancing. Making a major change in either pensions or health care is likely to involve immediate additional expenses (buying somebody off) followed by long-term savings. This would be the perfect time, for instance to implement universal (but rationed) healthcare to replace Medicare and Medicaid or individual retirement accounts to replace Social Security. The expensive transition would be expansionary and stimulative now, when we need it, but would be a big step towards solving long term budget issues, which would build confidence more than any short term hair shirt austerity program that the current debt ceiling theater is likely to produce.
Countries that invest the surpluses of their workers in the old are in decline. Those that invest those surpluses in the young will thrive. When we sacrifice education and infrastructure to pay old age pensions and medical bills, we place ourselves inexorably on a downward spiral. Does this mean we abandon the aged, put them out on an ice flow to die out of our sight? No. It means that we must make difficult choices to treat maladies with public dollars when those treatments result in additional healthy, productive years of life, rather than a few months of painfully delayed decline towards death. It means that the elderly should be expected to work, albeit with fewer hours in less demanding positions, until death is fairly close at hand. Retirement cannot be a state-subsidized 20 year vacation in the sun if we are to progress as a society. If the baby boomers want to break with their established pattern of self-absorption and actually do something worthy, they’ll embrace limiting the transfers of wealth to the elderly, focusing on the children instead. I’ll not be holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
July 23rd, 2013 at 5:16 pm
Emery, instead of “expecting the elderly to work”–a top down solution–what is so wrong with simply setting up the incentives so that people will figure out their own way to make things work financially?
Yes, last year of life is expensive–about 20% of all medical expenses–or quite frankly, about the same proportion as is incurred with insurance overhead costs. Repeal Obamacare and allow people to take their corporate insurance money for a high deductible policy, and you can get a good portion of that insurance cost, as well as the 50% of medical costs (plus or minus) due to lifestyle issues. That’s as much as a 60% reduction in overall costs.
For that matter, maybe it’s time to change Medicare to a high deductible policy, too. Again, 60% and the Pareto Principle.