FACT: ObamaCare Causing Part-Time Nation

"Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that the ratio of part-time to full-time jobs has completely flipped this year from historical trends," writes health policy expert Grace-Marie Turner.  "Last year, six full-time jobs were created for every one part time job. This year, only one full-time job is being created for every four new part-time jobs" [emphasis added]

The shift to part-time has accelerated over the past several months because of the “look back” provision in ObamaCare that sets the baseline this year for the number of full-time workers a company employs to determine their compliance with the employer pay-or-play mandate.

The administration may have been trying to stop the damage when it announced in July it would delay for a year the reporting requirements for the health law’s employer mandate – the requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide health coverage that is acceptable to the government or pay a fine of $2,000 to $3,000 per employee per year.

The damage is real, and the one-year delay is unlikely to have a significant impact on hiring. Businesses are not going to hire full-time workers for year or less only to have to fire them next year.

In our still struggling economy, we should be making it easier for businesses to grow. Instead the law is causing huge dislocations in the labor force and imposing major new costs on businesses — money that could have been invested in growth and new hiring.

ObamaCare is hurting more than the job market. Consumers will see prices of virtually everything soar as businesses of every size are forced to raise prices to cover the high costs of ObamaCare. As Turner notes, "A recently-leaked letter from Delta Air Lines to the Obama administration states that the 'cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year,' much of it due to Obamacare." 

Read her full article.

Obamacare Fallout Continues

Thanks to the Obamacare law:

• Forever 21 Inc. became the latest national company to cap employee work hours at 29.5 hours per week.
• Beginning Jan 1, 2014, working spouses of University of Virginia employees will no longer be covered under UVA's health plan.  And UVA premiums are going up, too:
  "Provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act are projected to add $7.3 million to the cost of the University health plan in 2014 alone. ... 'Ironically, by providing generous benefits, the University becomes exposed to a federal excise tax known as the Cadillac tax,' [UVa Vice President and Human Resources Officer, Susan] Carkeek said." (The UVa Medical Center wholeheartedly endorsed Obamacare back in 2010.)
• UPS will drop about 15,000 working spouses in 2014 for the same reason.

However, there will be no pain for Congress and their staff due to Obamacare, according to the Wall Street Journal. The law requires the nearly 11,000 Members and Congressional staff to switch from Federal Employees health program to the new Obamacare exchanges, which could mean "thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket insurance costs" they weren't paying before.

The result was a full wig out on Capitol Hill, with Members of both parties fretting about "brain drain" as staff face higher health-care costs. Democrats in particular begged the White House for help ... And now the White House is suspending the law to create a double standard. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that runs federal benefits will release regulatory details this week, but leaks to the press suggest that Congress will receive extra payments based on the FEHBP defined-contribution formula, which covers about 75% of the cost of the average insurance plan. For 2013, that's about $4,900 for individuals and $10,000 for families.

How OPM will pull this off is worth watching. ... In any case the carve-out for Congress creates a two-tier exchange system, one for the great unwashed and another for the politically connected.

This latest White House night at the improv is also illegal. OPM has no authority to pay for insurance plans that lack FEHBP contracts, nor does the Affordable Care Act permit either exchange contributions or a unilateral bump in congressional pay in return for less overall compensation. Those things require appropriations bills passed by Congress and signed by the President.

The lesson for Americans is that Democrats who passed ObamaCare didn't even understand what they were doing to themselves, much less to everyone else. But you can bet Democrats will never extend to ordinary Americans the same fixes that they are now claiming for themselves. The real class divide in President Obama's America is between the political class and everyone else.