Rep. Chris Van Hollen claims that Obamacare will lower unemployment:
How Douthat thinks about the labor market effects:
The bigger the effect, the more likely that the people dropping out aren’t just, say, parents cutting hours to spend more time at home while the other spouse works full time, but people we should want to be attached to the workforce, for their own long-term good and the good of the economy as well.
Which is why it’s appropriate that the new C.B.O. projection of 2 million to 2.5 million job-equivalents disappearing has inspired more disquiet and debate than the old projection of 500,000-900,000 … because it’s a sign, however provisional, that the costs of Obamacare’s workforce effects might exceed the benefits. I don’t see liberals reckoning seriously with that possibility, and I think they really should.
Kliff talks to economists about the ACA’s impact on employment:
“On the one hand, when you expand a program where eligibility is based on income, that means if people increase their income, they could lose eligibility. That may create a disincentive to find a job,” says [Harvard University health economist Kate] Baicker, who was a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2005 to 2007. “But if health insurance makes people healthier, it might give them extra resources that could increase their ability to hold or search for a job. People have made arguments in both directions.”
Ryan Avent chimes in:
The argument that the ACA will be good for the economy centres on the view—not at all absurd—that insured workers will be healthier and therefore more productive over a longer working life, that insurance related job-lock will become less of a problem and productivity will rise as a result of better job matches, that reduced dependency on employer-provided coverage will encourage entrepreneurialism and risk-taking, and that constraining health-care cost growth will either raise real wages or make it more attractive to hire or a bit of both.
Now you can argue that on reasonable guesses about how these effects play out, effective labour supply still declines, relative to the pre-ACA trend, as a result of Obamacare. What you can’t say, first, is that they are irrelevant and, second, that they are included in the CBO analysis. In fact, what you should say is that they are relevant and are not included in the analysis.
John Cassidy qualifies the CBO’s projections:
In exploring some of these effects, the C.B.O. was making a valuable contribution to the public debate. But its actual figures are merely informed guesses about what might happen in the next few years, and they shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Obamacare is so big and so new that we can’t be sure what impact it will have. In coming up with the estimates that two million jobs will be eliminated by 2017 and 2.5 million will be eliminated by 2024 (or the equivalent in hours worked), the C.B.O. relied on academic studies of previous policy changes, such as changes in tax rates and alterations to the eligibility requirements for Medicaid. These studies may provide a reliable guide to how Obamacare will play out—or they may not. If we’re not comparing apples to oranges, exactly, we’re certainly comparing Granny Smiths to McIntoshes. And, in any case, the conclusions of the studies differ.
The Dish 