Why the new healthcare law will cost us jobs

CNN.com - September 3rd, 2010
Obama calls for improving small business climate
"President Obama cited small businesses as 'the primary drivers of job creation' and called on Congress, especially the GOP, to tackle a bill aimed at improving the climate for such enterprises.
...
There are signs the economy is improving, though. He said August saw 67,000 new private sector jobs created, while official July numbers indicated 107,000 jobs were created. In contrast, the latest unemployment numbers show joblessness rose from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent last month."

Oh please, what utter twaddle. Things are NOT improving, a drop of 40,000 new jobs in a month is the opposite of improvement. And a 9.5 or 9.6 percent unemployment rate is definitely not a sign of improvement.

However, let us give credit to President Obama for recognizing that small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Recognizing the obvious, that is indeed high praise for a politician. Solving the problem however, appears to be beyond the capabilities of the current leadership in Washington.

First, this Congress gave us the bank bailout. Billions and billions of tax dollars were doled out to the banks. Objective: spread the money as loans and funding to encourage small business growth and thus improve the economy and create jobs.
Implementation: zero checks and balances.
Result: top bank executives give themselves obscenely large bonuses, small businesses got absolutely nothing.

Congress claims victory and goes on to throw even more money at car manufacturers, who so far, have not quite been able to produce a car that they can sell in a country that has more cars per household than most other nations on this planet. Outstanding performance from Washington thus far.

And now we have a new healthcare bill. Yet another misguided legislative blunder. With a pricetag of nearly one TRILLION dollars. We don't do things on a small scale, why stop at wasting a Billion dollars when we can just as easy throw away a Trillion dollars.

Based on a noble sentiment, this law is absolutely misguided and lacks commonsense. Yes, this country has far too many medically uninsured individuals and families. However the quality of healthcare in the US is among the best in the world. What is the problem then? In a nutshell, we have the best medical care that money can buy, that unfortunately costs too much. The concept of health insurance is two-fold; first, the financial risk is spread out across a group, and second, the insurance company is able to negotiate volume discounts for their members. Without legislative control over what the health insurance companies can do, what we have ended up with is this; doctors receive a mere pittance for preventive and routine medical care for the insured patients, which forces them to charge cash customers up to ten times the fee just to break even. Doctors are essentially running a business, between salaries to nurses/assistants/office staff, rents, supplies, and most of all malpractice insurance - what a typical General Practitioner earns each year is laughable given the amount of time and education they have to invest into their work.

Now we have this new healthcare bill, a law that forces all employers with 50 or more employees to offer health insurance to their workers, or pay a $2,000 a year fine per employee. Yet it puts no restrictions on the health insurance companies whatsoever. I happen to be in one of the first lucky (not!) small businesses that are now discovering the true nature of this absurd law. My company's health insurance policy renews each year and we just received the new rates. Our health insurance premium has a 79% increase, yes, it has almost DOUBLED in just this first year of the new healthcare law!

What are employers to do if their insurance premiums are going to shoot up each year, without any limits?

And this is WHY this new healthcare law will affect YOUR job.

First option for the small business, layoff staff to get below the 50 employee cap. Lost jobs, lost taxes, increased public assistance, no medical insurance for any workers.

Second option, refuse to buy health insurance and pay the tax of $2,000 a year per employee. This will of course reduce the company revenue, thus preventing any additional hiring or growth. And it does not provide health insurance for anyone.

The third option is most likely what most small businesses will end up doing - shut down, go out of business. Lost jobs, lost taxes, no health insurance.

Given the current limitless increases that health insurance providers are levying, it is almost inconceivable that ANY small business will be able to obey this law and remain solvent. It is just not possible.

We are effectively shutting down or downsizing small businesses. Instead of increasing hiring, we are encouraging layoffs. Instead of increasing tax revenue through increased payrolls, we are not only losing taxes but also increasing unemployment and its associated costs. Instead of providing hard working Americans with health insurance, we are laying them off and driving them into social medical programs that encourage dependence on public assistance.

So in closing, if you currently have medical insurance, be very afraid for you may not be able to afford it for long. If you do NOT have medical insurance, don't expect to get it any time soon. If you have a job, you may not have one tomorrow. If you are looking for a job, it does not bode well for you. The only jobs left will be at large corporations, not even government jobs will be safe once the tax revenue dries up due to reduced payrolls. Large corporations, of course, prefer to "outsource" work to cheaper continents. Perhaps now is a good time to learn some new languages, the day is fast appearing when one will have to leave the US in order to find a job. Or afford to see a doctor.