Obamacare to destroy 2 million jobs in America, says government budget office

Monday, February 17, 2014 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: Obamacare, American jobs, government budget office

(NaturalNews) If you like your job, you might not be able to keep it under Obamacare. Following reports that millions of full-time employees have already been laid off or relegated to part-time status as a result of the so-called "Affordable Care Act" (ACA) being declared law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that the equivalent of another 2 million full-time workers will probably be eliminated from the labor market within the next three years in exchange for government healthcare.

The CBO maintains that most of these cuts will be voluntary in nature, with an increasing number of taxpayers simply deciding to opt out of the workforce altogether rather than pay higher taxes for fewer benefits. Essentially incentivized volunteerism, this next mass exodus from the workforce will represent workers for whom it makes more sense to just stop working and maximize their Obamacare coverage rather than continue working at a lesser rate and still be forced to pay for healthcare.

As it turns out, this vast expansion of insurance coverage under Obamacare is causing a vast shrinkage in employment and overall employment stability. It began with many small companies having to directly cut employees in response to rising premiums and coverage mandates and continued with employees being self-driven out of the workforce due to government-imposed incentives that encourage them not to work.

"CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor - given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive," stated the non-partisan tax agency about its findings.

Obamacare: a massive redistribution of wealth

Congress has responded to the report in typical bipartisan fashion, with the Democrats actually lauding the findings as beneficial for those Americans who always wanted to quit their jobs and stay home with the kids. But neither party seems at all concerned with the real implications of Obamacare, mainly that it represents nothing more than a massive redistribution of wealth.

Though it is repeatedly denied, Obamacare's shifting of the insurance market, forcibly driving some people out of the workforce in order to provide other people with health coverage, is a massive redistribution of wealth, mainly away from the middle class. Not only have millions of hard-working people lost their coverage under Obamacare, but millions more have lost, or will lose, their quality of life.

"[Obama] couldn't stand up before the American public and say that the only way to achieve the program's goals was to reallocate money within the health insurance market," wrote James Oliphant for National Journal back in November about this issue. "That there would need to be a transfer of wealth - from the young to the old, from men to women, from the healthy to the sick."

"That to raise the floor, you had to lower the ceiling."

And this is exactly what is taking place today, and what will continue to take place in the years to come, as the artificial, zero-sum health insurance game known as Obamacare is played out, mostly unchallenged by a complacent populace. More and more workers will feel compelled to work less or not at all as their employers drop coverage and other benefits, making employment less worthwhile.

"As a direct result of the cost increases associated with the medical coverage, I will now be forced to drop the coverage and let the employees fend for themselves. The other option was to let about 15 percent of the force go," writes one small business owner in a comment at The New York Times. "If anyone thinks that these people will be better off on the bottom line they are sorely mistaken."

Sources for this article include:

http://www.washingtontimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com

http://www.politifact.com

http://www.nationaljournal.com