When Obamacare was first foisted upon the American people, critics warned that the employer mandate would have a chilling effect on job growth, further weakening the economy and prolonging the recovery. Those critics were dismissed, their concerns labeled “hysteria,” “anti-Obama derangement,” and other terms meant to minimize the very real impact this law would have on the private sector. But as a new survey of 743 professional executives shows, those fears are coming to fruition.
The survey, carried out by the Society of Human Resource Management, showed that nearly 14% of American businesses have cut part-time hours for their workers and another 6% intend to do so in the coming months. Five percent of businesses have either slashed their total workforce or plan to do so.
For now, the employer mandate affects only those businesses with 100 or more employees, but businesses with 50 to 99 workers will be compelled to provide health insurance for their workers starting next year.
“Companies cannot pay these exorbitant wages to people under the employer mandate,” said healthcare policy expert Sally Pipes. Speaking to Newsmax, Pipes said that these businesses were left with no choice but to reduce the number of part-time workers they employed. “Who does that hurt? It hurts the very people who are working in part-time jobs trying to build their reputation in the labor market and make a living for themselves and their families.”
Numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank paint an even grimmer picture of what’s going on. One in five companies have been forced to reduce employee hours to part-time so they don’t feel the effects of the mandate. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the mandate will levy $139 billion in fines against American companies over the next ten years.
The picture of what’s happening to our nation’s economy is clear, though no one in the Obama administration would ever admit to it. Obamacare is not just an ill-conceived plan, it’s a direct attack on the private sector. We are moving further and further away from true economic freedom, and capitalism cannot sustain itself when regulations push businesses out of the marketplace. That’s no problem for Obama and those like him; they would love nothing more than to see us replace capitalism with a planned, socialist economy. It’s entirely possible that the ACA was designed to fail from the start, all in the hopes that from its ashes could rise true universal healthcare.
At some point, we’re going to have to make a choice. Do we go with what brought us to the dance? Or do we follow the Pied Piper down the road to socialism? If there’s one thing that scares me about the future of this country, it’s that I honestly don’t know which path Americans will choose.
