(A version of this Health Alert was
published by InsideSources.com
and widely syndicated in local newspapers.)
Obamacare channeled billions of dollars
out of the productive economy and diverted it towards a health-services sector
that has become even more bloated than it was before 2010.
Last July, Dr. Bob Kocher, a venture
capitalist who served as a special assistant to President Obama when the
Affordable Care Act was created, noted
that more than half of all health care workers today are administrators, up
from just over a third before Obamacare became law.
These are paper pushers, not doctors and
nurses—not the kind of jobs we should be bragging about.
Because Obamacare diverted money into
health spending, technically lots of jobs have been added by the health care
sector. This provides cover for a superficial story that Obamacare has been a
job-creation machine.
Scholars affiliated with the Milken
Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University estimate
Obamacare repeal would kill 2.6 million jobs by 2019. Almost a million jobs
would be lost from health services while the balance would be lost in
construction, real estate, retail, finance and insurance.
Unfortunately, such research relies on the
so-called “multiplier effect,” a politically seductive but misleading type of
analysis. To be sure, Obamacare throws money at hospitals, doctors’ offices,
and other health services. Those recipients build new facilities and hire more
workers, who spend their paychecks in their communities.
But these are not true measurements of
economic growth. If Congress just sent a fleet of helicopters to scatter banknotes
from the sky, the same “multiplier effect” would take place: People would pick
the money up and spend it. Businesses located near the drop zones might profit,
and some might hire and expand. Jobs and the economy would not grow, however,
because the effect would be a mix of inflation and reduced spending in areas
away from the drop zones.
In other words, excess job growth in
health services comes at the expense of job growth in other sectors. And it is
worse than that: Jobs in health services are actually recession-proof.
Hospitals did not need Obamacare to keep adding jobs.
Nonfarm civilian employment peaked in
January 2008 (at 138.4 million jobs), just before the Great Recession, and
bottomed out in February 2010 (at 129.7 million jobs). Jobs were lost in 24 of
those 25 months. Nonfarm civilian employment did not cross the January 2008
threshold again until May 2014.
However, more than half a million jobs in
health services were added between
January 2008 and February 2010. In other words, health services added jobs
while the Great Recession destroyed 9.25 million other nonfarm civilian jobs before the Affordable Care Act was
passed in March 2010.
Since then, Obamacare has caused a
significant distortion of the American workforce towards health services. This
has continued even as the economy has slowly recovered.
By December 2016, the United States had
added 6.87 million jobs to the previous peak in January 2008. However, 2.59
million jobs—38 percent of the total—were in health services, which grew by 20
percent. By comparison, all other nonfarm jobs—in manufacturing,
transportation, mining, retail and services—grew only 3.42 percent, adding 4.29
million jobs.
And this counts only private health
services, not insurers and other middlemen or government employees added by
Obamacare. There can be such a thing as too much job
growth in one sector, and that is surely the case for health services today. Obamacare
didn’t create productive medical jobs, it created bureaucratic institutional
bloat.
Workers and businesses outside the
healthcare bureaucracy have been paying the price of Obamacare’s rules,
regulations and mandates with sluggish job and wage growth.
The Affordable Care Act was not a jobs
bill. Hospitals do not need Obamacare to maintain steady employment.
The rest of us, however, need Obamacare
repealed so the rest of the economy can add jobs at a more normal pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment