FACT CHECK: GOP I-Told-You-So Chorus Over Health Overhaul Study Misrepresents Its Conclusions

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON - New estimates that President Barack Obama's health care law will encourage millions of Americans to leave the workforce or reduce their work hours have touched off an I-told-you-so chorus from Republicans, who've claimed all along that the law will kill jobs. But some aren't telling it straight.

The analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts the law will give several million people an opportunity to work less or not at all, because they won't be stuck in jobs just for the sake of keeping the health insurance they get from employers. To some Republicans, that amounts to "wreaking havoc on working families," ''dire consequences for workers" and a shower of pink slips across the land — conclusions unsupported by the report.

The study estimates that the workforce will be reduced by the equivalent of 2.3 million full-time workers by 2021 as people choose to leave it. More would take early retirement, work fewer hours or otherwise rearrange their work-home balance to take advantage of new subsidies for health insurance and new markets for individual policies that don't depend on having a job.

In a key point overlooked in the GOP response, the report says: "The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labour that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses' demand for labour."

In other words, workers aren't being laid off. They are taking themselves out of the workforce, in many cases opening job opportunities for others.

MORE...

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/the-canadian-press/140205/fact-check-gop-i-told-you-so-chorus-over-health-overhaul-stu

[Deep13]

1. When we say Americans need to be working, what we really mean is...

...they need to have income. Voluntarily leaving the work force or reducing one's time in it is not a problem. After all, this is all about free choice, right?

[Fred Sanders]

3. Fox News continues to lie and misrepresent the CBO report, so Republicans have to also. But why

the mass media has not figured out the truth and reported on the very, very good news in the CBO is why they are irrelevant.

And 3 Pinnochios from the Washington Post against the lying liars of Fox and the GOP......now the new normal.

[Thinkingabout]

4. It could be many reasons for people leaving jobs but the GOP does not dig deep enough

for fear of finding the truth. Sarah Palin left a job as governor, was it because of Obamacare? This is too hard for them to realize the job will be open to another employee. Just more crap by FOX and gang to tell lies.