{"id":20201,"date":"2014-02-21T17:24:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T22:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20201"},"modified":"2014-02-27T14:24:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T19:24:02","slug":"contra-sebelius-obamacare-already-killed-at-least-33000-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20201\/contra-sebelius-obamacare-already-killed-at-least-33000-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"Contra Sebelius, ObamaCare Already Killed at Least 33,000 Jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is absolutely no evidence \u2013 and every economist will tell you this \u2013 that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act [i.e. Obamacare],\u201d Kathleen Sebelius<\/a> said earlier this week.<\/p>\n

The Health and Human Services Secretary was responding in part to a report by the Congressional Budget Office estimating that President Barack Obama\u2019s signature domestic policy will result in 2.5 million job losses by 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The only explanation that renders Sebelius\u2019 statement (barely) plausible is her phrasing in the present tense: \u201cno evidence\u2026 that there is<\/em> any job loss related to\u201d Obamacare. Sebelius is talking about the present<\/em>, while the economists at the CBO are projecting into the future<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But even this generous reading won\u2019t survive the fact that Obamacare has already killed 33,000 jobs in the medical device industry<\/a>, according to the Advanced Medical Technology Association.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a 2.3 percent excise tax on each medical device sold since January 2013, industry members report shedding 14,000 jobs, with an additional 19,000 openings left vacant.<\/p>\n

The biggest losers were research and development branches, and manufacturing. Regarding the latter, 10 percent of companies surveyed said they moved their plants overseas.<\/p>\n

These numbers show just how democratic is Obamacare\u2019s impact on jobs. R&D positions are some of the highest paid in a firm, while manufacturing jobs can range from low- to middle-income.<\/p>\n

On the bright side, to date the medical device tax has netted the federal government a cool $3.8 billion, so at least Secretary Sebelius has some extra money to funnel through Medicaid and Obamacare exchange subsidies.<\/p>\n

Somehow though, decreasing the number of jobs and increasing the amount of tax revenue doesn\u2019t seem like a long-term formula for success.<\/p>\n

Maybe an economist should tell Madame Secretary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is absolutely no evidence \u2013 and every economist will tell you this \u2013 that there is any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act [i.e. Obamacare],\u201d Kathleen Sebelius said earlier this week. The Health and Human Services Secretary was responding in part to a report by the Congressional Budget Office estimating that President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[440,3308,27,35,42],"class_list":["post-20201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-cbo","tag-health","tag-jobs","tag-obamacare","tag-sebelius"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20201"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20206,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20201\/revisions\/20206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}