Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Stephen Lynch’s Anti-Health Care Vote Was an Anti-Jobs Vote

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And an anti-small business vote, as well.

David Cutler, a Harvard Applied Economics professor and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, found that repealing the Affordable Care Act would:

• Increase medical spending by $125 billion by the end of this decade and add
nearly $2,000 annually to family insurance premiums
• Destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade [emphasis mine]
• Reduce the share of workers who start new businesses, move to new jobs, or
otherwise invest in themselves and the economy

 

I suppose you could argue that Lynch was for it after he was against it, and that somehow repeal would magically be worse than if we’d never adopted it in the first place, so maybe his vote wasn’t such a job-killer at the time. But in December 2009, just before Lynch voted against health care reform, the Council of Economic Advisers predicted that the ACA would result in:

  • GDP that is 4 percent higher by 2030.
  • Median family income that is $6,800 higher by 2030.
  • Federal budget deficit lowered by as much as 2 percent of GDP by 2030.
  • An unemployment rate that is 0.16 percentage point lower and approximately 320,000 additional jobs.
  • A more efficient labor market because of a reduction in “job lock”.
  • A reduction in small businesses’ health insurance premiums.
  • An increase in health insurance coverage among small business employees.

If Lynch wants to fight for working families in the Senate, why didn’t he do it in the House?

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Comments

  1. There is concern on the part of many unions (and their health plan administrators) that the Obama plan leaves workers worse off:

    As health care costs have become unsustainable, so has the funds’ generosity—and their ability to subsidize periods of low employment. Unions hoped that the ACA, with its requirement that more employers provide health insurance, would level the playing field by bringing more small employers into the system.

    Instead the ACA appears to disadvantage multiemployer funds by permitting competitor employers access to the new health care exchanges while denying the funds the same access. The result is that employers will have every incentive to get out of the funds when union contracts expire.

    If multiemployer plans are decimated by the ACA, it will be doubly a tragedy, because these plans offer a model for health care reform that already addresses many of the issues the ACA was supposed to address. They offer small employers coverage with minimal overhead. They do not exclude people by using their medical information to evaluate them. And they address one of the recognized problems with the ACA—“churn.”

    “Churn” is how health policy wonks describe people who will move between Medicaid, subsidies on the exchange, and coverage from a job. At each of those stops, the patient/employee experiences different benefit designs, provider networks, reimbursement levels, and cost sharing. Plus an application process, and more delays…

    …As the policy wonks fret, the model was there all the time. Follow the example of the multiemployer plans.

    The regulations to implement the ACA are not yet settled. But it’s clear: failure to level the playing field could cause employers to stop participating and many plans to go under.

    I’m not a healthcare economist and I have no pre-primary ax to grind as yet, so I’ll defer analysis. I merely caution against Manichean arguments presuming facts and motives not in evidence.

    • In the 1950’s some people were concerned about being attached by ships from outer space. Is it the job of a congressman to vote based on these fears or to do what is best for the community he or she represents. Lynch deserves no apologists, as someone with a preexisting condition, Lynch can suck it for all I care.

    • If his opposition was from the left (it wasn’t but he now pretends it was), then where are the bills to introduce a Public Option? To do single payer?

      Hell, where are the SPEECHES talking about improving health care in America?

      All I’ve seen is woe-is-me headshaking about no public option, from the guy who was booed for opposing the public option.

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