How Obamacare is Cutting Your Salary -- And Your Vacation Budget http://www.thestreet.com/story/1342...r-vacation-budget.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO Economic reality is catching up with the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, according to two recent reports. The problem is that while acts of Congress can be repealed, the basic laws of economics cannot. In this case, the law in question is one that most students are taught on the first day of economics class: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays. Obamacare is proving no different. First, people with employer-based health insurance are paying in the form of lower salaries because of the extension of coverage to dependent children through age 25. "We find evidence that employees who were most affected by the mandate, namely employees at large firms, saw wage reductions of approximately $1,200 per year," states a January-dated report from the National Bureau of Economic Research. That's $1,200 per year that employees would have received if it not for the implementation of Obamacare, according to the report. The Incidence Of Mandated Health Insurance: Evidence From The Affordable Care Act Dependent Care Mandate, by Gopi Shah Goda and Monica Farid, both from Stanford University, and Jay Bhattacharya of Harvard University, examined income data from the U.S. Census Bureau for August 2008 through March 2013. That includes 19 months before the healthcare law was passed as well as 37 months of Obamacare. "These reductions appear to be concentrated among workers whose employers offer employer-sponsored health insurance; however, they do not seem to be only borne by parents of eligible children or parents more generally," the report says. In other words, the childless are subsidizing those who have kids. To put the $1,200 in perspective, it represents an extra 2.2% annual raise for the median household income in the U.S., which was $53,657 in 2014, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. A second report is no less worrying. It indicates the ACA is upending one of the long-standing realities of the U.S. consumer. Typically, when gasoline prices fall, consumers have more money in their pocket at the end of the month, money they might spend on luxuries or so-called discretionary items. Not so much this time -- even with fuel prices dipping under $2 a gallon on average across the U.S. "A notable uptick in healthcare spending linked to Obamacare is eating into many of the gains linked to lower prices at the pump," according to the report, published by the KKR Global Institute. More simply, Obamacare is immediately taking away some of the cash that lower fuel prices are returning to consumers. (More at above url)
Obamacare is a massive cross subsidy from those who already had health insurance to those who didn't. The people hit hardest, eg those who paid out of pocket for private insurance, were already getting ripped off by the unjustified tax exemption for employer-provided insurance. Now they get to pay double to give insurance to illegal aliens and their large families and other Obama constituent groups. Forced cross subsidies like obamacare are the most inefficient way possible to grant a benefit to a group. It's cleaner just to pay for it out of tax revenues, but of course that doesn't give you the ability to hide the cost and blame others for poor outcomes. Our politicians are really something. The democrats refuse to recognize basic economic principles. The republicans refuse to recognize the lessons of history concerning empire building and waging pointless far-off wars.
The Obama mandate was always about the transfer of wealth from those that earned it to those that didn't. "Spread the wealth around" - Oct 12, 2008
So far as I'm aware Illegal aliens do not qualify for any means tested welfare programs in the U.S. , not food stamps, not medicaid, not subsidized Obamacare, etc. (Their children born in the U.S. may qualify however for some welfare benefits.) Am I not correct about this? Illegals receive care through hospital emergency rooms, and virtually 100% of the so-called "welfare" provided to illegals, that we hear so much bitching about, is of that nature. That's the same the world over. In fact, wasn't the U.S. the last developed country to stop turning away patients at the emergency room if they couldn't pay? However it is important to understand that Treat and Street medical care provided by emergency rooms is very different from the care provided by, say, medicaid.
I believe the mean household earnings went down between 2007 and today. But is that an effect of Obamacare or the recession and high unemployment? Or perhaps both?
It's just math. Obamacare makes healthcare more expensive, so less money left over. If it was a clean transfer from rich to poor then it would be no big deal economically. But in any transfer there is the government vig.
And where does that government vigorish go? If it's just paying government employees then that money will magically trickle back up into the economy. There seems to be some slippage somewhere. Who gets the slippage? I don't know, I've been on both sides and somehow When you need slippage there is never enough, and when slippage is costing you it always too much. Both sides are better off when the market is tighter, and all the govenmnet has done with healthcare is widen the spread, and the commish
not sure about verify, but you have to check the box that you are a legal citizen and sign your name uner penalty of law if untrue