Consumer Reports implies that a part time job with Obamacare is better than a full time job without it
First of all, I understand that Consumer Reports is big on protecting its copyrighted material. However, fair use does permit me to quote small excerpts for the purpose of commentary and criticism. I will keep these quotes down to the bare minimum that is necessary.
On page 15 of their March 2013 issue, a reader expresses concern about
“CEOs claiming that Obamacare will force them to reduce employees’ hours due to the cost of insuring them”
Consumer Reports responds by saying
“even if that happens, those low-paid employees will, for the first time in 2014, have access to good insurance they can afford”
Before I get to my main point of criticizing Consumer Reports on their response to the reader, I’d first like to address their statement of “even if that happens.”
It’s not a question of “if.”
In the real world, it is already happening.
I cited real world examples of it happening in these two previous blog posts: Obamacare is encouraging restaurants to replace full time jobs with part time jobs and Obamacare supporters are shocked that its opponents’ predictions of job destruction are coming true.
Therefore, Consumer Reports comment of “even if that happens” is an attempt at denying that Obamacare is definitely and has already caused some workers to be switched from full time to part time.
Given that the alleged mission of Consumer Reports is to help people, this denial on their part is disgusting and shocking.
Now, on to my main criticism.
Although Consumer Reports doesn’t specifically say that a part time job with Obamacare is better than a full time job without it, they do imply such a thing, based on their complete and total refusal to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, some workers might be worse off as a result of this policy.
In the real world, this reduction in hours may cause some workers to be unable to pay their rent – but Consumer Reports implies that such a thing is OK, because at least they’ll have health insurance.
In the real world, if someone thought that having health insurance was a bigger priority than being able to pay the rent, they are perfectly capable of acting accordingly on their own, without the government making this decision for them. What Consumer Reports is saying in its response, then, is that people are too stupid to prioritize how they spend their own money, and that the government must make this decision for them.
Shame on Consumer Reports for glossing over and dismissing the readers’ concern for and the real world evidence that Obamacare is causing workers to switch from full time to part time.
And more importantly, shame on Consumer Reports for implying that people are too incompetent to prioritize how they spend their own money.