Is it too late to stop Obamacare?

The Congressional Budget Office continues to revise its numbers on the effects of job loss and hour reduction as a result of Obamacare. “The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024,” the report states.

That means a historically high number of people will either be laid off or see their hours reduced. Another unintended consequence of incessant government meddling.

The Congressional Budget Ofiice also says deficits will start to grow after 2015 because of

an economy that continues to limp along and a stubbornly high unemployment rate, that they project will not fall below 6 percent until at least the latter part of 2016.

To understand this is to understand basic economics. Heretofore, companies offered a variety of healthcare plans to both full-time and part-time employees. Now that every policy must be “Obamacare compliant” it’s no surprise that many part-timers are losing their healthcare coverage and many full-timers are seeing their hours cut below 30 hours per week to avoid the tremendous added expense of the mandated insurance policies.

Not only will lower-end employees not get health insurance, they’ll have less money to buy it on their own because their hours have been cut. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. As I’ve been predicting since they were debating Obamacare in Congress, you’re going to see a flood of companies opt to pay the $2,000 fine and put their employees on Obamacare. They’ll even throw in a raise, which will pacify the employee who might otherwise protest the move.

Again, it’s basic economics. If you’re an employer and you’re paying 15-grand for a health insurance policy and you can pay $2,000 per year and not have to fool with it, why wouldn’t you? On top of that, think of the expense of HR hours and resources devoted to administering the policies, answering myriad questions about them and keeping up with the mountains of paperwork associated with them. All of that will be gone.

Just imagine your boss coming to you and saying, “Look, we simply can’t afford the new insurance policy required by Obamacare but I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you a $5,000 raise. You’re going to be able to go to the Obamacare exchange and choose either a gold, silver or bronze policy. Chances are you’ll get a subsidy to help pay for most of the policy. You’re going to have much better insurance and you get a raise to boot.”

What’s not to love, right? Of course, we’ve learned that any expense over $40,000 falls not on the insurance company but on the federal government. A little deal between Obama and the insurance companies to get them on board. In short order the whole thing will be bankrupt and then the rationing begins.

It’s surreal that we’re even at this place. This is something the left could only dream about just a few, short years ago. Now it’s a reality and, barring some lawsuit hitting pay dirt, we’re stuck with it, thanks to an inept opposition party in Congress.

At this point, it appears it’s every man for himself, as the old saying goes. It’s a scene right out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The moochers and looters set their sites on the producers. The producers assumed they could never breach the wall. Now the moochers and looters are inside. And they’re having their way with us all.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

It's your economy, stupid

Now that Syria has sort of blown up in President Obama’s face he’s once again turned to the economy.  In a speech marking the fifth anniversary of the demise of Lehman Brothers the president sought to take credit for anything he could find good in the economy and blame the rest on the Republicans.  Nice try, Mr. President, but the people are no longer buying it.

He bragged about 7.5 million private sector jobs he has created but the facts tell a completely different story.  The fact is there have only been a little over a million jobs created since Obama took office.  This is one of the slowest, if not the slowest, recoveries from a recession in the history of the country.  Why?

Well, for starters, George W. Bush and the Republicans have nothing to do with it.  Consider this.  Obamacare is turning the American work force into part-timers.  There are stories every day of companies that are cutting employee hours so they don’t have to bear the sticker shock of higher healthcare costs under Obamacare.  And the working poor are being hurt the most.  Here’s the reason.  Obamacare mandates that an employee pay no more than 9.5 percent of their income on health insurance.  Of course, health insurance is a fixed cost so, naturally, it’s a bigger percentage of someone’s salary making $30,000 than it is someone making $300,000.  So, if your employer is now paying 60 percent of your health insurance they don’t have to pay more money for the higher-salaried employee but they do for the lower-salaried employee.

Consider this example.  The Kaiser Family Foundation says the average family insurance plan is now just north of $16,000.  For that employee who’s making $300,000 by law they can’t pay more than $28,500 of their salary toward health insurance.  So even if they were footing the whole bill their employer wouldn’t be obligated to pay anything toward their health insurance.

Now let’s take the employee making $30,000.  By law they can’t pay more than $2,850 toward their health insurance.  If their employer is now paying 60 percent they’re paying $9,600 of that $16,000 health insurance tab.  Under Obamacare they’ll be required to pay $13,150 or 82 percent of that person’s health insurance.  Now do you understand why lower-paid employees are getting cut back to under 30 hours?  If you’re employed under 30 hours then your employer isn’t required to pay a dime of your health insurance.

We also have far more people trapped on welfare since Obama changed the standards during the recession.  More people on welfare means fewer people working.  Obama’s EPA has waged war against the oil and coal industries, killing tens of thousands of jobs in the process.  At a time when there’s an oil boom going on in North Dakota, primarily on private land.  Were the president to open up public land to oil development experts say we could be energy independent in five years, only having to import a little oil from Canada.  Imagine that.  No more entanglement in the Middle East over oil.

Between the president stubbornly standing in the way of getting at our energy resources and blocking the completion of the Keystone Pipeline millions of potential jobs go unfilled.  The way to economic recovery is through a booming economy and that comes from allowing the private sector to create jobs, not by killing them.  Unfortunately, the recession is still real for most Americans.

This is your economy, Mr. President.  After nearly five years at the helm there’s simply no one left to blame.  It’s time for you to own it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.