A1 - "Drones ready to deliver; people are the problem"
A3 - "1871 whaling wrecks found off Alaska"
- "Starting this year, FBI will track animal abuse"
A4 - "Health-care repeal advances to a certain veto"
[Various corset ads later...]
A11 - "Obamacare does not appear to be hurting labor market"
Page A 11 ! Is it any wonder most Americans are clueless about the positive impacts of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? Do you think most readers get past page 3 or 4? What the vast majority of readers of this "librul" newspaper probably missed was yet another puncturing of one of the favorite and most repeated lies Republicans tell about Obamacare: "It's a job killer!" Three studies have once again concluded that fact- free Republican scare mongering about Obamacare being a drag on the economy was just that -- fact-free Republican scare mongering. Here's what most Americans will never hear about, from the somewhat expanded on- line version (our emphasis):
One study, published Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs, focuses on a widely criticized provision of the law that requires employers with at least 100 full-time workers to offer health insurance as of the beginning of 2015. (This year, that requirement is being extended to firms with more than 50 employees.) Critics worried that the provision would deter small businesses from expanding and would encourage them to cut their workers' hours. But this study is the latest in a series to conclude that Obamacare did not, in fact, widely result in more firms asking employees to work part time.
The authors examined Census data and found no increase in the likelihood of working part time, except for a 0.18 percentage point increase in the likelihood of working 25 to 29 hours per week between 2013 and 2014 — a trend that the authors say predated the ACA. [snip]
A second Health Affairs study and a working paper issued Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research both examined whether employees have chosen to work less in order to qualify for Medicaid, which became available to a larger group of people under health reform.
The new research on the effects of the Medicaid expansion does not suggest that people are looking to limit their earnings. On the contrary, some might even be looking to work more.
"In general, there's been no evidence that the ACA has done anything significant to employment," said Robert Kaestner, an economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one of the authors of the working paper, using the abbreviation for the Affordable Care Act. "We don't have to worry too much." [snip]
Obamacare's detractors had said that with access to Medicaid, some people earning between the poverty level and 138 percent of that level would quit working. [Ed. note: "Non-white moochers!" in Republican dog whistle.] They might have been working in jobs that did not pay well but offered health insurance sponsored by the employer. With insurance provided by Uncle Sam, people in that category might have decided going to work wasn't worth it. [snip]
In fact, according to the calculations by Kaestner's group, the labor market actually looked a little bit stronger in the states that expanded Medicaid.Is this the media we deserve? For now, it's certainly the one we're stuck with.
