CBO Director States Affordable Care Act Will Reduce Unemployment; Paul Ryan Corrects Republican Misinformation

There has been a lot of false information spread on the CBO report, initially primarily from reporters not understanding the details of health care policy followed by conservative media intentionally promoting the incorrect interpretation of the report. As I discussed here and here, the report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates the economic success of the Affordable Care Act, but some in the media were misled by debunked conservative talking points and initially reported inaccurately on the report. In testimony before the House Budget Committee CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed that his report suggests the Affordable Care Act will reduce unemployment. Video above.

While it has primarily been Republicans spreading false information on the report and Democrats, as in the exchange above, working to set the record straight. There is at least one exception. Paul Ryan has corrected his fellow Republicans:

At least one Republican is setting the record straight on what the Congressional Budget Office actually said this week about Obamacare and its effect on jobs.

House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) explained in a Wednesday hearing with CBO director Doug Elmendorf that the health care reform law wouldn’t cost the U.S. economy more than 2 million jobs, as many of his colleagues alleged, but that Americans would choose to work less.

“I want to make sure we accurately understand what it is you are saying,” Ryan said, before leading Elmendorf through a series of questions to explain the report and its findings.

Ryan and Elmendorf combined to explain that Obamacare would lead to a decrease in the number of hours worked by up to 2 percent in 2024. Most of that drop, the CBO said, would be the result of Americans choosing not to work, for various reasons, but not because employers would want to hire fewer workers on account of the law. Translate those lost hours into full-time employment and it equals up to 2.5 million jobs by 2024. But that’s not the same as jobs being cut.

“Just to understand, it is not that employers are laying people off,” Ryan said.

“That is right,” Elmendorf said.

For the moment I’ll ignore the ridiculous stuff he also said and give him credit for the point where he does get it right.

The Affordable Care Act helps millions of people (including myself, having to buy insurance on the individual market), many people I know personally (such as affluent friends whose spouses have had to work in jobs they otherwise don’t need purely so that they could obtain health insurance), and many patients who previously could not obtain insurance coverage.  The right wing media in return repeatedly reports “horror stories” which turn out to be incorrect on closer examination–just like their reports on the CBO report are incorrect.

Beyond all these (and additional) benefits related to health care, the Affordable Care Act will reduce unemployment, boost the economy, and reduce the deficit. The conservative argument for repeal makes no sense, which is why Republicans are starting to back away from this ridiculous position.

How can anyone support a position which will cause misery for millions of people, increase unemployment, harm the economy, and increase the deficit?

The Evolution vs. Creationism Debate

Creationist Debate

MacLeodCartoons sums up the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham on evolution vs. creationism in the cartoon above. This comes quite close to this summation of an exchange from The Guardian:

What is the one thing upon which you base your belief?

Ham: the Bible. There’s no other book like it. It tells us everything we need to know. Man is a sinner. The Gospel…Jesus died on the cross. Salvation, Jesus, God, God, the Bible. The Bible, the Bible, the Bible. God will reveal himself to you.

Nye: “I base my beliefs on the information and the process that we call science. It fills me with joy. It is a wonderful and astonishing thing to me. If we abandon all that we have learned, if we let go of everything we have learned before us, if we stop looking for answers, we will be defeated…We have to embrace science education. We have to keep science education in science classes.”

Here is another key exchange which sums up the difference between creationism and science in a nutshell. When asked what would change their mind, Ken Ham essentially replied “nothing” while Bill Nye replied “evidence.”

Ham-Nye-debate-in-a-nutshell

A more detailed recap of that portion of the debate:

What, if anything would ever change your mind?

Ham: I can’t prove it to you, but basically, God and Jesus. “The Bible is the word of God.” No one will ever convince him that the word of God is not true. Like, ever.

Nye: “We just need one piece of evidence like a fossil that swam from one level to another.” We would need evidence that rock layers could form in 4,000 years. Bring me any of those things and I would change my mind immediately.

Many things were said without responses. This included Bill Nye asking if Kangaroos got off the Ark in the middle east, why are they only in Australia, and not even a fossil of one anywhere else? I would have liked to hear an answer to that one.

Ken Ham is a young earth creationist, the craziest of the crazies. Even Pat Robertson thinks that young earth creationism is a joke.

More commentary here, here, and here.

Video of the debate here:

Unfortunately many schools which receive public money teach creationism. Slate put together this map as to where they are located:

Creationism Schools

The CBO Report On The Success Of The Affordable Care Act

The Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday showed that the Affordable Care Act is getting off to a tremendous success despite the early computer problems in the exchanges. The report showed that millions of additional people are receiving coverage, the law results in a reduction in the deficit, and frees workers from the “insurance trap.”

The report also turned out to be both a test of the understanding of health care policy by reporters and of the dishonesty of conservative news sources. Health care policy is quite complicated and it is not unusual for reporters to make mistakes in the coverage of a report such as this. Many misunderstood the predictions of people leaving the work force leading to some rather untrue headlines yesterday. Needless to say, the conservative media continues to make the same false claims, ignoring the actual meaning of the CBO report, and will continue to spread this misinformation.

I was pleased to see  Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, who has made some major mistakes on health care policy coverage in the past, got it right on this one.  His fact-checker article was entitled “No, CBO did not say Obamacare will kill 2 million jobs”. I think it helped that he specifically wrote about what the CBO report really said, as opposed to getting into the more complicated details of health care policy. Kessler concluded with saying, “we award Three Pinocchios to anyone who deliberately gets this wrong.”

The word deliberately is important as unfortunately some people are going to be misled by the initial incorrect headlines and by the conservative media which will continue to make this false claim.  The reduction in employment described in the report is one of the positive aspects of the Affordable Care Act. Up until now, many people continued in jobs they did not want because they would be unable to obtain health insurance if they left their jobs.  I know affluent people whose spouses work purely for the health insurance as this was the only way they could obtain this. This change frees people in their 60’s to retire early if they choose. People who would prefer to change jobs will be able to do so without losing their insurance. People will also be able to start small businesses without losing health insurance, which will also probably turn out to be beneficial to the economy. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wrote about projections for an increase in entrepreneurship and self-employment last May. The CBO report confirms that they were correct.

On a related issue, the ability to keep affordable health insurance after losing a job means that people who develop a serious illness and become too sick to continue working will no longer lose their insurance. This was a common cause of bankruptcy in the past.

The New York Times looked at the benefits described by the CBO in an editorial today:

The report estimated that — thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums — many workers who felt obliged to stay in a job that provided health benefits would now be able to leave those jobs or choose to work fewer hours than they otherwise would have. In other words, the report is about the choices workers can make when they are no longer tethered to an employer because of health benefits. The cumulative effect on the labor supply is the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024.

Some workers may have had a pre-existing condition and will now be able to leave work because insurers must accept all applicants without regard to health status and charge premiums unrelated to health status. Some may have felt they needed to keep working to pay for health insurance, but now new government subsidies will help pay premiums, making it more possible for them to leave their jobs.

The report clearly stated that health reform would not produce an increase in unemployment (workers unable to find jobs) or underemployment (part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week). It also found “no compelling evidence” that, as of now, part-time employment has increased as a result of the reform law, a frequent claim of critics. Whether that will hold up after a mandate that requires employers to provide coverage, which was delayed until 2015, kicks in is uncertain.

The report also verified that millions more people will be covered by health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act:

Given the rocky start, 14 million additional Americans covered by insurance through the exchanges and Medicaid is sound progress; and the budget office projects a sharp increase in enrollment in 2015 and 2016 and a bigger net reduction in the number of uninsured. Its projections for subsequent years remain essentially unchanged. In 2017, it predicts 12 million more in Medicaid and 24 million more in private coverage through the exchanges.

Update: CBO Director States Affordable Care Act Will Reduce Unemployment; Paul Ryan Corrects Republican Misinformation