Obamacare: Supposedly Increasing Insurance Coverage at the Expense of Workers’ Hours?

ByJulianC

Obamacare: Supposedly Increasing Insurance Coverage at the Expense of Workers’ Hours?

The 2012 September Jobs’ report lowered the unemployment rate to 7.8% after 114,000 full-time and 582,000 part-time jobs were created last month. This rate moved 0.3% lower from its 8.1% unemployment rate calculated from the August 2012 Jobs’ report solely because of part time jobs, not healthy grow of full-time jobs. [i] However, many people, including Jeffrey H. Anderson from the weekly Standard, believe that Obamacare’s employer mandated health care coverage, including its new definition of “full-time” for workers, is in large part to blame for the large number of newly created part-time jobs.[ii]

Delving more in-depth into the new mandate of Obamacare, one must look into the new definition of “full-time” created by the Obama administration’s recently passed legislation, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), to see why there are more part time jobs being created. Jeffrey H. Anderson of the weekly Standard points out that under Obamacare, employees working 30 hours or more per week are now classified as “full-time.” Since full-time employees, working for employers that have 50 or more employees, must have healthcare through the Obamacare mandate, employers who decide not to provide coverage or pay the fine, will create more part-time jobs in the future to get around this mandate.[iii] Therefore, one can directly blame Obamacare for more and more part time jobs being created with even fewer hours compared to a full-time being defined as either 35 hours per week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the traditional 40-hour work week.[iv][v]

Since Obamacare is creating a new class of part-time workers, it is fundamentally interfering with the relationship between employer and employee. It disrupts how businesses run their organizations and how workers interact within the labor market. Ed Morrissey, a writer at the website Hotair.com, points out how government intervention can be very costly to the market, “This is the problem with massive government interventions into markets.  They create perverse incentives, and force participants in markets to look for alternatives to the massive costs of those interventions.”[vi] What Ed Morrissey means by this quote is that Obamacare has forced unnecessary stress upon the markets.

He goes on to discuss how Obamacare’s intentional or unintentional creation of a class of part-time workers is detrimental to both workers and businesses alike, “Businesses usually prefer stable labor pools, and full-time status and reasonable benefits usually help provide that kind of stability.  As a hiring manager for years, I can tell you from personal experience that managing a part-time staff creates its own costs and headaches, much of which won’t be felt in the home office of a multiple-location entity like Darden.”[vii] He further discusses, “However, the costs may not outweigh the savings any longer derived from dumping benefits for workers — and that’s doubly true in a bad job market for workers.”[viii]

Based on this information, Obamacare’s 30-hour work week full-time status and the resulting class of growing part time workers show this structural change in the unemployment figures is directly and almost exclusively attributable to Obamacare’s contents. There is more disheartening news because according to Mike Shedlock, there are 8,613,000 people who are currently in part-time jobs but want to have full-time positions. This figure does not include the 582,000 new part-time jobs created in September of 2012.[ix] Based on these figures alone, and as Obamacare is going to be fully implemented fully on January 1, 2014, one could extrapolate that there we be more part-time workers and less full-time workers as time goes on.[x]

Based on the evidence presented here, it seems that Obamacare is not welcomed by many workers and many businesses and owners. Looking at the evidence presented here, you will see that the new full-time work week of 30-hours and the related health insurance mandate for full-time workers will make more and more companies contemplate whether they want to follow the law or shift their workforce more and more to a part-time staff. Based on everything discussed, Obamacare can certainly share some of the blame for the structural shift in the economy from full-time workers to part-time workers.

Now that we have covered the real and lasting effects of Obamacare, we would like to ask you the same question again. If you are a physician, where do you stand on Obamacare and the deleterious effects upon the economy, but more importantly the patients of America? You only have a few days to change the course of America and its health care system.

So if you are a Physician, Healthcare Provider and or a Hospital in California, Texas, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire or a top ranked Hospital in Florida such as Florida Hospital Memorial Medical Center or a great surgeon like Dr. Christian Birkedal or need Healthcare (SEO) Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management and or need assistance with Video/Media Production we can help you. Visit our Services Page and we may also  be reached at (800)-888-6348 or via email at info@axiomadminserv.com. Call us for a free consultation. Disclaimer.


[i] Shedlock, Mike. September Jobs +114,000; Unemployment Rate 7.8%; Part-Time Workers +582,000; Initial Reaction and Election Impact. 5 October 2012. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/10/september-jobs-114000-unemployment-rate.html. Accessed October 29, 2012.

[ii] Anderson, Jeffrey H. Obamacare and the 29-Hour Ceiling. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-and-29-hour-ceiling_655219.html, Accessed October 29, 2012.

[iii] Anderson, Jeffrey H. Obamacare and the 29-Hour Ceiling. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-and-29-hour-ceiling_655219.html, Accessed October 29, 2012.

[iv] BLS Information: Glossary. http://www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm#F, Accessed October 29, 2012.

[v] Cover, Matt. Obamacare Mandate: Anyone Who Works 30-Hour Week Is Now “Full-Time.”  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obamacare-mandate-anyone-who-works-30-hour-week-now-full-time, Accessed October 29, 2012.

[vi] Morrissey, Ed. ObamaCare transforming America into Part-Timer Nation?  http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/09/obamacare-transforming-america-into-part-timer-nation/, Accessed October 29, 2012

[vii] Morrissey, Ed. ObamaCare transforming America into Part-Timer Nation?  http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/09/obamacare-transforming-america-into-part-timer-nation/, Accessed October 29, 2012

[viii] Morrissey, Ed. ObamaCare transforming America into Part-Timer Nation?  http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/09/obamacare-transforming-america-into-part-timer-nation/, Accessed October 29, 2012

[ix] Shedlock, Mike. September Jobs +114,000; Unemployment Rate 7.8%; Part-Time Workers +582,000; Initial Reaction and Election Impact. 5 October 2012. http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/10/september-jobs-114000-unemployment-rate.html. Accessed October 29, 2012.

[x] Alonso-Zaldivar, Ricardo. Obamacare Poll: Most Americans Expect To See Affordable Care Act Implemented.   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/obamacare-poll_n_1915091.html, Accessed October 29, 2012.

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