In response to Ms. Goin’s blog post, I think it’s necessary to clarify a few facts that I believe may have been misrepresented. The ACA(Affordable Care Act) is; to quote Speaker of the House John Boehner, currently the “law of the land”. While not all of the A.C.A. provisions are yet in effect, they have all passed into law. The Supreme Court did modify some of the provisions, but they upheld the law as a whole. The only “controversial” provision was the individual mandate, which was upheld by the Court as a function of Congresses right to tax. The most relevant provision that was modified by the Court, was the requirement for States to participate in the expansion of medicare.
Concerning the “facts” regarding the ACA’s effect on the national debt. I must confess that although I’ve not crunched the numbers myself, the Congressional Budget Office has been kind enough to do the math for me. So it appears the ACA will actually lower the deficit by 124,000,000,000 dollars.
Now while the Pappa John’s incident may lead us to think that mass layoffs may be a product of the ACA, I assertion dubious. First the cost of providing health care is marginal to a large employer such as Wal-Mart or Pappa John’s. In the case of the aforementioned pizza chain, it was found that the company could provide healthcare to all of their employees by raising the cost of pizza by a mere 15 cents. Second there are provisions that would provide tax credits to small business who already provide health insurance to their employees, thus making it profitable to do the right thing
Finally, before we fret too much over the fate of doctors in a dystopic post-Obamacare America, let’s take in the implications of a single fact: the ACA will create 30 million new customers for the American health care system. As outlined in the already-cited NYT article, the combination of newly-covered citizens, and the provision that requires %80 of insurance revenues to be spent on actual care will sharply increase the demand for medical services. Basic economics will tell us that as the demand of a thing goes up, given a fixed supply, the value of that thing will go up. Simply put, I can’t imagine any way that a vast increase in people able to purchase the services of doctors will be bad for doctors.
Just a few words here. The congressional budget office can make all the math projections it wants, but there is no way ACA will lower the deficit. In fact, I cant see a way that it wont raise it substantially. Over 40 percent of Americans receive some sort of government aid each month, do you really think they will all of a sudden be able to afford health insurance on their budgets? NO, which means they will basically receive free healthcare. Look, I believe that everyone should have access to good, affordable health care, but the federal government should not be involved. We need to face reality, Politicians are not good with money or running a business just take a look at the USPS.
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