10 careers boosted by Obamacare

[Playinghardball]

Hiring is booming in these fields as a result of health reform

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act say the law is a job killer. Employers will be forced to eliminate positions, or reduce staffers to part-time hours to save costs, the argument goes. In response, the White House last week posted on its blog about the growth in employment and sales since the law was passed in 2010 — complete with a chart http://whitehouse.tumblr.com/post/56825323234/your-daily-wonk-despite-claims-to-the-contrary showing increased hours for restaurant employees. “Despite claims to the contrary, Obamacare hasn’t constrained growth in hiring or work hours,” the post concluded.

But lost in the debate over whether the law will result in layoffs and shorter hours, recruiters and hiring analysts say Obamacare is certain to create a number of new positions — and not just in health care.
—By Jen Wieczner

1.
Nurse practitioners and physician assistants

When an estimated 25 million to 30 million people gain health coverage through the Affordable Care Act next year, many of them will likely pay a visit to the doctor: “There will be tremendously greater demand for everything,” says Jon Osborne, vice president of research and editorial at Staffing Industry Analysts, a firm that tracks recruiting. Demand for physician services is expected to increase at least 2% to 3%, especially for regular checkups and other preventive medicine, says Ani Turner, deputy director of the Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending.

But many of the hires aren't actually doctors, who are currently in short supply and take longer to enter the workforce after medical school: The physician unemployment rate is about 0.5%, or virtually nonexistent, Osborne says. “You can only grow physicians so quickly,” Turner says.

Also see: Signs of slowdown in U.S. health-care hiring emerge

Rather, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, who can perform many of the same services at a fraction of a doctor’s salary, are filling the ranks. The BLS forecasts PA jobs will grow 30% to more than 108,000 from 2010 to 2020; registered nurses will increase 26% to more than 3 million. “One way that people will be able to get access to primary care will be through nurse practitioners and physician assistants,” Turner says.

2. Payroll

The law requires employers to offer insurance to employees who work an average of 30 hours a week or more, at a cost for workers of not more than 9.5% of their annual salary. The responsibility of tracking work hours and health spending will fall to payroll departments, or companies that provide paycheck services such as ADP, human resources professionals say. Indeed, ADP’s new business bookings for its employer services, including payroll, grew 9% in the third quarter, CEO Carlos Rodriguez said when the company released earnings in May.

“It adds new gravity to monitoring the amount of hours that people work, and being more diligent about awarding overtime hours, and making sure employees stay within additional limits,” says Michael Rynowecer, president of BTI Consulting.

Because of the pressure, in the past few months ADP has been developing a new “eligibility calculation engine” for its payroll clients, to help employers determine which employees are eligible for coverage. But the technology also shows them where employees are going over the 30-hour limit and where some have time to spare, so they can “make sure they’ve got the right people in the right roles at the right time,” says Stephen Migliaccio, ADP’s vice president of strategy and business development.

3.Computer programmers

Under the Affordable Care Act, doctors and hospitals must use electronic medical records, but taking their old paper system into the digital age is a giant technological construction project. “You need an army of programmers to put these things together,” says Osborne, of Staffing Industry Analysts. Indeed, the number of medical records and health information technicians employed in the U.S. has grown 7% to more than 182,000 since 2009, before the ACA was enacted, according to BLS data. Employment in other occupations, meanwhile, decreased or stayed flat during the same period, Osborne says. Computer-related jobs in health care have grown more than 30% in the past five years, although they still represent less than 1% of all health care jobs, Turner says.

Employers will also have to build new electronic systems to report the costs of their employees’ health coverage to the government, although they will have more time to do it, since the ACA 2014 deadline has been extended. The enormous task may be over the head of many companies’ in-house IT departments, so benefits and payroll firms are hiring their own engineers to create tools for their clients.

More at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-jobs-created-by-obamacare-2013-08-05?mod=wsj_share_tweet

[Scurrilous]

1. K & R