Posted on 8/7/2009, 6:57:43 PM by Free ThinkerNY
A new study by Steven Nyce and Sylvester Schieber for think tank Watson-Wyatt on the long-term effects of Barack Obama’s health-care reform plan shows explosively bad results that mainly impact lower-income workers. The Watson-Wyatt study uses five scenarios using differing versions of ObamaCare floating around Capitol Hill to determine the impact of nationalizing the health-care industry on real compensation to workers. The lack of real cost controls will force a regressive impact on compensation and worsen the very problem the Obama administration proposes to resolve:
Under an assumption that we control health cost inflation but expand coverage by means of an employer play-or-pay mandate, the effect on wage growth patterns would be negative at the bottom of the earnings distribution and mildly negative in the middle of the earnings distribution for a while. But after 2015, wage growth rates would return to the healthier levels of the 1990s. Bringing health costs under control allows more resources for expanded coverage.
If we expanded health insurance coverage but our current health cost inflation rate continued unabated, the higher overall costs would result in falling wages at the bottom of the earnings spectrum and very slow wage growth on up the earnings distribution. These dismal wage outcomes would persist over at least the next couple of decades, possibly longer.
The next scenario considers the real possibility that health inflation increases as a result of expanded insurance coverage offered under reform. Looking back at the implementation of Medicare, this is exactly what happened. This scenario combines expanded health care coverage with accelerated health inflation rates. In this case, the higher costs would drive disposable wages downward across most of the earnings spectrum, although the declines would be steepest for lower-earning workers. These depressed conditions would persist over the entire projection period.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
In fairness though, where is the “if we do nothing” scenario?
parsy.
I know someone who works at a prominent BC/BS and tells me that they have done a great deal of affirmative action and other “socially constructive” hiring. If these folks were not being over-paid to shuffle paper and kill time at their desks, they’d likely be at home on the couch with a box of Ding-Dongs and Oprah.
One thing for sure, the minority unemployment rate in that town will shoot up.
I have yet to see a single study that says Obamacare will do anything positive, not even by liberal think tanks. If we can’t get one positive out of $1 trillion cold and hard, why the hell bother?
Then we’ll just have to raise the minimum wage to what a newly elected Senator is making.
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