ObamaCare a Job Killer

Obama’s government takeover of health care signed into law won’t just add billions of dollars to our budget deficit, but it will also add to the unemployment lines and make it much more difficult for low-skilled workers to find decent paying jobs.

Under the new law, every company that employs more than 50 workers will be required to offer health insurance to its employees or pay an annual penalty of $2,000 per full time worker. For employers who rely on part time workers, the employer will be faced with a $2,000 penalty for each block of 30 weekly hours of part-time work performed by the same or different employees.

The consequences of this will be staggering. Business owners, when faced with the choice of being penalized for growing their business larger than 50 employees, will naturally cap their growth to stay below the threshold at which the government will penalize them. How many jobs will be lost, or never created at all, because employers fear the economic consequences of growing beyond the 50 employee barrier?

Companies that employ higher-skilled, and higher paid workers, will be able to absorb these new penalties by cutting wages. That is not an option, however, for millions of service and retail industry employees who have already seen their pay cut to the bone as a result of the recession. They simply have no more to give.

When small businesses cap their own growth, or cut employees in order to stay under the ObamaCare caps, the net result will be deeper unemployment and prolonged economic uncertainty. Low-skilled workers face the greatest challenges as it is. The unemployed rate among those with just a high school diploma is nearly 15%. The unemployment rate for teens is about 26%. These are the people who will suffer the worst economic impact under ObamaCare, even though they should be the first we look to give a hand up toward the American Dream.

Unfortunately, ObamaCare will only make that dream harder and harder to attain.