Americans for Tax Reform Foundation today released a study conducted by the Beacon Hill Institute on the job losses that will result from the passage of President Obama’s healthcare plan.
The study uses standard practices to evaluate the job loss, but assumes more realistic policy outcomes (for example, the Medicare “doc fix” is assumed to be re-enacted by Congress every year).
From the Executive Summary:
Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has urged passage of the massive health reform plan moving through Congress as a way to create up to 400,000 jobs. Speaker Pelosi bases her claim on a report by the Center for American Progress (CAP) in which the Center estimates that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) would create 250,000 to 400,000 jobs per year over 10 years.
This estimate by CAP amounts to a hurried effort to add academic heft to the claim that national health care reform offers a collateral benefit in the form of an economic “stimulus.” It turns out, however, that its methodology, stripped of unsupportable claims about savings in health care costs, shows just the opposite of what CAP intended. PPACA is a job killer, not a job creator.
The result is a loss of between 119,000 and 698,000 jobs between enactment of the bill this year and 2019. A breakdown is below:
Sector
|
ESI
|
Jobs
|
|
|
%
|
Low
|
High
|
Agriculture, mining and construction
|
|
|
|
Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting
|
20
|
-923
|
-5,441
|
Mining
|
68
|
-939
|
-5,478
|
Construction
|
37
|
-7,374
|
-43,316
|
Manufacturing
|
65
|
-18,022
|
-105,229
|
Trade
|
|
|
|
Wholesale trade
|
57
|
-8,149
|
-47,663
|
Retail trade
|
39
|
-14,364
|
-84,339
|
Transportation and communication
|
|
|
|
Transportation and warehousing
|
55
|
-6,290
|
-36,806
|
Utilities
|
80
|
-906
|
-5,271
|
Services
|
|
|
|
Information
|
63
|
-4,510
|
-26,342
|
Financial Activities
|
66
|
-13,236
|
-77,269
|
Professional and business services
|
44
|
-22,606
|
-132,596
|
Educational services
|
61
|
-5,493
|
-32,102
|
Leisure and hospitality
|
25
|
-8,436
|
-49,682
|
Other services
|
48
|
-7,946
|
-46,564
|
Totals
|
|
-119,194
|
-698,098
|
Click here for a PDF of this press release
Click here for a printable PDF of the full study