Healthcare overhaul could save money and boost jobs

[azurnoir]

In a report to be released today, Harvard and USC economists say legislation being considered would slow cost increases and free up money for companies to raise wages and hire more workers.

National healthcare legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting.

Specifically, healthcare savings could be achieved through proposals for greater competition in insurance markets, better coordination of care and shrinking administrative expenses, they said in a report to be released today. With those changes, employers could then reallocate money now spent on ever-growing premiums to other business priorities.

But conservative economists and many business leaders contend that the proposed legislation would drive up costs by imposing billions of dollars in new taxes and penalties, killing jobs and hurting the economy as the financial burden of healthcare shifts to employers and workers.

One analysis from the conservative Heritage Foundation determined that higher taxes levied on the wealthiest Americans -- a proposal in the healthcare bill approved by the House in November -- would eliminate more than 450,000 jobs over the next decade.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-health-jobs8-2010jan08,0,1333736.story

[Lost4words]

1. But boosting jobs is not a priorty for this admin nor for the GOP

[midnight]

2. Eliminating jobs did not seem like a problem over this past decade when Nafta

was proposed and implemented. In fact, the saying was better jobs would replace those.... My thought is those 450,000 people should retrain and become nurses, doctors, etc.. So they can see first hand why their jobs were not neccessary....

[azurnoir]

3. Karma and healthcare is the #1 or 2 growth area

in jobs anyway

[chimpymustgo]

4. Not one word in the article explaining HOW. This is nothing but SPIN.

-edit-

National healthcare legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting.

-edit-

Specifically, healthcare savings could be achieved through proposals for greater competition in insurance markets (WHAT GREATER COMPETITION???), better coordination of care and shrinking administrative expenses (AND THIS IS ENSURED IN WHAT WAY???), they said in a report to be released today. With those changes, employers could then reallocate money now spent on ever-growing premiums to other business priorities.

"We could achieve huge productivity gains," said Harvard economist David Cutler, one of the study's authors and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank (THAT IS ESSENTIALLY AN ARM OF THE WHITE HOUSE).

-edit-

Several California employers said they found the Harvard-USC study hard to believe, given that the average employer has paid double-digit annual increases in insurance premiums for several years and experienced other escalating business costs.

Santa Monica attorney Jeffrey Lee Costell, for one, says he will probably hold off hiring additional clerical workers if provisions remain in the healthcare legislation that require companies like his -- those with payrolls exceeding $500,000 -- to pick up the bulk of insurance premiums or face penalties.

"It's going to have a chilling effect," Costell said. "We're getting penalized because we are productive entrepreneurs."

-edit-

The bills also would impose billions of dollars in new taxes on the insurance industry, with the Senate bill including the "Cadillac tax" on more expensive healthcare plans.

-edit-

The Harvard-USC report could be a boost for President Obama, who has made the economic benefits of health reform a top selling point in his administration's efforts to forge public support for the overhaul.

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SPIN, SPIN, SPIN.