The Obamacare Recession

The sequester’s $85 billion dollar slowing of federal spending isn’t what’s going to stall the economy this year – that will come from the President’s healthcare reform.

The White House and congressional Democrats have been hard at-work spinning the March jobs slowdown as an effect of sequestration even though the details of the report show no slowdown in government hiring. As sequestration would first impact government jobs, the correlation is non-existent.

The true culprit in the coming recession is not George Bush, Republican filibusters or slightly slower government spending – its Obamacare.

The President’s marquee healthcare reform law is taking its toll on business owners and families as it is directly causing premiums to skyrocket – some by more than double – and the toll on the economy is just beginning.

An exhaustive study by three congressional committees delivers startling news about the dire effects of Obamacare: President Barack Obama’s signature legislation could increase health insurance premiums by over 200 percent and render insurance coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans.

Insurance companies, states and the federal government have been frantically trying to implement the complicated and costly healthcare law.

Insurance companies have spent millions of dollars installing new software, designing integration with state/federal exchanges and changing their processes to deal with the concept of premium subsidies and premium cost-sharing – two major components of Obamacare. That money has to come from somewhere and its coming in the form of skyrocketing premiums.

States that chose to either implement their own exchanges or work in a state-federal partnership to form exchanges are seeing their costs balloon as well. State taxpayers will bear the brunt of those expenses.

The federal government, realizing that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is too complex, is planning to hire Obamacare Insurance Navigators at a cost of $29-$49.00 per hour. When the government hires, the costs come from taxpayers. Increasing costs mean increasing taxes – just as the President has proposed in his budget plan.

The revenue needed to fund the expense is coming out of the pockets of consumers and going to a massively-expanding federal bureaucracy. More taxpayer money is going to fund Department of Health and Human Services regulation, State and Federal exchanges and now more federal employees – expensive ones.

Consumers are getting hit from another side as premiums affect their paychecks and their employers.

As employers are forced to pay increasing premiums, more revenue must be directed away from pay and hours. Many employers are converting full-time positions to part-time or eliminating them altogether to avoid the overwhelming costs associated with healthcare reform.

Skyrocketing premiums mean less money for workers. As employer-provided health insurance usually splits the cost between the employee and employer, the worker will see a shrinking paycheck as premiums increase.

According to a Milliman Consulting Group study on insurance rates, the pain will be substantial for the middle-class:

the poor are likely to pay significantly less than they do now while middle-class families dig deeper into pocketbooks.

President Obama told the American people that this law would bend the healthcare cost curve down. In just its first few years of implementation it has done the opposite.

Even Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted that “there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market.” When asked about rapidly-increasing premiums.

Some proponents of the healthcare law have made the case that premiums are rising due to increasing healthcare costs. White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest countered that claim saying that “I would actually point to the results that we’re already seeing from the Affordable Care Act, which is a savings of $2.1 billion.”

So if healthcare costs are not causing insurance premiums to rise – there’s only one culprit left and the drain on the economy will likely push the country back into recession.