Obamacare: Reality Bites

An article over at the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry clearly outlines the unintended conseuqences of the Affordable Care Act otherwise known as Obamacare. 

That is, businesses are limiting either the size of their workforces or cutting their hours to turn them into part-time emplyees.  Both actions reduce the costs employers will face under Obamacare rules.  To quote the article:

Obamacare requires all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a $2,000 penalty for each employee after the first 30 workers. The employer mandate creates incentives for businesses to avoid higher costs by, for example, hiring part-time employees instead of full-time employees, since businesses will not be penalized for failing to provide health insurance to part-time employees….Businesses can also avoid penalties by keeping the number of employees under the mandate threshold of 50, which further discourages creating new jobs.

Now, I am sure Obamacare's proponents will blame "greedy fat cat businessmen" for denying the "basic human right of healthcare coverage" to their employees.  And, many will nod their heads seeing the apparent sense of that dumb argument - oblivious to the costs.  If unchallenged and left to stand as it is, I predict the administration will change the rules and force employers to provide insurance without exception, regardless of the costs to the employer or the public it serves.

Lost in all this debate over Obamacare is the fact that few people in the United States - very few people, in fact, are denied medical treatment.  The rich and the poor have access to the same hospitals and the same doctors and the same medicines.  Few people of any social or income scale are denied access to medical care.

Yes, I know the foregoing runs counter to the prevailing narrative.  And, I agree that the cost of medical care are high and can exhaust a person's or family's ability to pay.  These are serious issues.

But Obamacare will exhaust the country's ability to pay and will lead to rationing.  I will write more about that in a later post.  But situation has not been helped by the President and the Affordable Care Act.  It has been made worse.