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Jewish World Review July 30, 2009 / 9 Menachem Av 5769 Pay-or-play means more lost jobs By Glenn Garvin
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
I've heard of whistling while you work, but I think I guess, if you think bankruptcy, layoffs and unemployment are kicky. Those are the inevitable results if Much of the debate around health-care reform has floated in the philosophical stratosphere — whether it amounts to socialized medicine, whether it will lead to rationing, whether it's moral to force young, healthy workers into insurance plans to bring down premiums for everybody else. But before we even get to that, shouldn't we ask a more fundamental question? At a time when American businesses are going bankrupt at a rate of 240 a day, when the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent and headed north, does it make sense to impose any new taxes on business? What if play-or-pay leads to a third option: taking your ball and going home? Play-or-pay encourages just that — and worse yet, the burden is likely to fall on the workers that health-care reform was presumably intended to help, those at the bottom of the economic food chain. Consider some numbers: Last year, according to the If the cost of employing a worker were to suddenly double, a business would have to do something. One possibility is to raise prices — not likely in this economy. Another is to stop hiring and let attrition eat away at your workforce. (Obama's next campaign slogan: Recovery in 2013!) And a third is to fire him. That's hardly an empty threat; companies are already dumping workers at a staggering rate. From It will be sadly ironic (or, I guess, "kind of fun" to Sen. Baucus) if several hundred thousand more join them as part of health-care reform. But when businesses realize it's cheaper to insure machines than people, that's what will happen. How many receptionists will be replaced with voice-mail systems? How many graphic-designers and bookkeepers will step aside for computer software? How much more often will you call customer service and find yourself speaking with somebody in That's why the low-ball estimate of jobs lost to play-or-pay is 300,000 the first year; some economists predict it could be double that. And assuming the cost of health-insurance premiums continues to rise — a good bet; Kaiser says they've gone up four times faster than wages over the past decade — jobs will keep disappearing. Sorry, Sen. Baucus, but at the moment I don't think we can afford your kind of fun.
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Glenn Garvin is a columnist for the Miami Herald
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