OBAMACARE BREAKS CORPORATE "JOB LOCK"

The good news coming out of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has cause a problem for Democrats. I acknowledge that we struggle with a bumper sticker mentality, especially in politics and that the CBO message was complex. Republicans jumped on it, distorted it, and then cash in on their distortion—in fact I heard at least fifty times last night and this morning that CBO says “Obamacare to cause 2 million jobs will be lost”. For them, his technique is no more than politics as usual for them. Therefore, I faced a dilemma as how to approach this subject in my blog posts. Sam Stein, a frequent participant on, Morning Joe (MSNBC), solved that. He came up with a catchy little phrase, “job lock”. Affordable health care decrease the amount of money a worker must make to live; therefore, they can move from jobs they don’t like, to take a risk and become entrepreneurs, or work less hours. It really shows how the cost of health insurance companies, big businesses, has distorted our American economy, which is the main argument for a direct pay system.

Years ago, there were such things as company stores and payment of wages by company script that was only valuable in company stores—employees living in small towns with only one employer such as a coal mining town, were locked into their jobs. They were not in control of their own lives. Because of health care costs, a similar but more subtle and complex situation exists to day. Workers are “locked in their jobs” because their health insurance coverage is part of their employment agreements. Insurance company swindles to cheat workers such as selling inadequate policies to companies for their workers because they are cheap, numbers of hours a worker has to work to be covered by good policies, preexisting conditions, being a woman, or to old to change jobs if our insurance policy will not follow you in your new job no longer apply. Obamacare breaks those lock companies have on employees and employers hate it when employees can change jobs or are free to work less hours because they can still obtain affordable health care.

A careful reading of the CBO report reveals that Obamacare is actually increasing the number of jobs; every business hires workers to do a job, if there are 100 workers working 40 hours per week that is 4,000 hours of labor. If 10 of those workers can work 10 hours less per week to pay for health insurance that will be 3,900 hours labor per week; the company will have to create 2.5 more jobs per 100 hours to compensate for lost labor. Transposing these calculations over the 2,000,000 jobs CBO talks about would mean Obamacare would free workers from 20,000 hours work to pay for health care or increase the number of jobs by 50,000. In an economy where Bush and Republican policy lost millions and million of jobs, that is not many but it at least by removing the “job lock”, Obamacare moves  the job change from  the loss column to the job creation column. We man not be able to explain it on a bumper sticker but it is true.

Hurray for Obamacare; again!

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated