President’s Health Law Two Years Later: More Regulatory Burdens & Fewer Jobs

WASHINGTON – With the President’s unconstitutional, $2.6 trillion health spending law turning two this week, U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) today released a fact sheet outlining how the law’s costly Washington-dictated mandates and endless miles of red tape will hurt American job creators and threaten job growth throughout the nation.  Hatch and Enzi are respectively the Ranking Members of the Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committees.

1. 800,000 fewer jobs because ObamaCare provisions “will effectively increase marginal tax rates, which will also discourage work.” (Testimony of Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office, House Budget Committee Hearing “The Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook,” February 10, 2011)

2. 48 percent of businesses are not hiring because of the potential cost of healthcare regulations. (Gallup Poll, February 15, 2012)3. 80 percent of employers are concerned or very concerned about new administrative burdens caused by the new health spending law. (Lockton Benefit Group Survey of Group Health Plan Sponsors, June 16, 2011)

4. Price increases will reduce private sector employment by 125,000 to 249,000 in 2021, with 59 percent of those losses will falling on small businesses. (NFIB Research Foundation Report on the Impact of PPACA Health Insurance Premium Tax on Small Businesses and Their Employees, November 9, 2011)

5. The health spending law is “arguably the biggest impediment to hiring, particularly hiring of less skilled workers.”  (UBS Investment Research Report, September 19,2011)

6. $60 billion in taxes imposed on health insurance plans. The JCT also notes that the tax will be borne by “consumers in the form of higher prices; owners of firms in the form of lower profits; employees of firms in the form of lower wages; or other suppliers to firms in the form of lower payments.” (Joint Committee on Taxation letter to Jon Kyl, June 3, 2011)

7. 11,663 pages of regulations issued to date causing ever increasing burdens on employers. (Analysis by the Republican staff on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee)

8. Hundreds of pages of sub-regulatory guidance issued by the Administration, some in the form of non-binding “bulletins,” to avoid having to describe how much these mandates will cost.  (Analysis by the Republican staff on the Senate Finance Committee)

9. Hundreds of millions of dollars in underestimated costs of the health spending law because “the health care regulatory impact analyses presented no monetary estimates of benefits, often overestimated the number of people who would benefit, and usually underestimated costs.” (Report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University on Material Omissions in Regulatory Analyses for the Affordable Care Act's Interim Final Rules, January 9, 2012)

10. 159 new bureaucracies, boards, and programs have been created which will produce more mandates for businesses to follow. (Republican Policy Committee Fact Sheet, February 25, 2010)

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