Now is the Winter of Our Obamacare Schadenfreude Discontent

Another freezing, cloudy, windy, and otherwise unpleasant day here in the "land of pleasant living."   We had a tad of snow last night, just enough to drift into the valleys on the roof, and a few places in the yard.  I can hardly wait until spring.

Like winter, Obamacare Schadenfreude just keeps lingering.  Most of the stories seem to consist of liberals straining to justify the loss of 2.5 million job (equivalents), and conservative push back from that notion.

NY Times Pleased with Obamacare Job Losses

The lengths people will go to do suck up to Obama. This is just pathetic.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law. Of course, Republicans immediately tried to brand the findings as “devastating” and stark evidence of President Obama’s health care reform as a failure and a job killer. It is no such thing.
The report estimated that — thanks to an increase in insurance coverage under the act and the availability of subsidies to help pay the premiums — many workers who felt obliged to stay in a job that provided health benefits would now be able to leave those jobs or choose to work fewer hours than they otherwise would have. In other words, the report is about the choices workers can make when they are no longer tethered to an employer because of health benefits. The cumulative effect on the labor supply is the equivalent of 2.5 million fewer full-time workers by 2024.

It’s nonsense like this why even New York Times reporters are embarrassed by their own editorial page. It can’t be long until we return to to the good old days of funemployment.

One hopes that the Times is equally pleased with people not needing their daily news because they have no occupation and choosing not to subscribe to the Times.


Then the Washington Post chimed in with this report of a happy people who quit work thanks to Obamacare:

They quit their jobs, thanks to health-care law

Count Polly Lower among those who quit their jobs because of the health-care law.

It happened in September, when her boss abruptly changed her job description. She went from doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed. At another time, she might have had to grit her teeth and accept the new position because she needed the health benefits.

But with the health-care law soon to take effect, she simply resigned — and hasn’t looked back.

“It was wonderful. It was very freeing,” said Lower, 56, of Bourbon, Ind., who is now babysitting her 5-year-old granddaughter full time. With the help of federal subsidies that kicked in Jan. 1, she is paying less than $500 a month for health coverage for herself and her husband.

So we're paying for her to stay home and take care of her grandkids?  How nice of us. I hope she's grateful.

Politico chimes in by trying to make Republicans the ogre by trying to make people work for their own healthcare:

Why Do Republicans Want Us to Work All the Time?

The initial Republican reaction was predictable: Pundits filled the airwaves, Cassandra-like, to paint Obamacare as the ultimate job killer. Never mind that, reading the fine print, it’s clear the CBO was talking about workers voluntarily reducing their hours in response to the law—not getting laid off or seeing their shifts scaled back.

And anyway, isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?

The president’s critics, in high dudgeon, are fulminating about lay-abouts and scofflaws actually choosing to work less than what God intended, predicting a host of ills that will supposedly befall the nation, from moral turpitude to economic ruin.

The fuss will doubtless soon die down, but this bit of political theater has resurrected a very old debate about working hours, and could conceivably reawaken what I have called the forgotten American Dream. That dream has not always been just about striving to consume bigger houses, fancier clothes, faster cars. The idea that “full time” work is something foreordained and the bedrock of morality is new, mostly a product of the last century.

Very simply, because work, not welfare, is what makes society function.  People do jobs to save other people from doing things that they don't have the time, expertise or capital to accomplish on their own, and has allowed us to lift ourselves from living in mud huts (which any moron can do with available material) to living in, at least some cases, crystal skyscrapers, which no one person could conceive or build on their own.  By working together, for our own interests, we have built a mighty civilization. Giving people the benefits of that civilization without asking them to contribute to it is to help weaken it.  Enough, and you will tear it down, as no one sees the value in helping others.

We really don't care how much you work, as long as you are not asking others to unnecessarily carry part of your share.

Obama Democrats’ troubling view on work

America now has a government that views work as a trap and celebrates those who escape it.

That is the upshot of last week’s remarkable exchange over ObamaCare. It began when the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the interplay of taxes and subsidies in the law “creates a disincentive for people to work.” The report predicted the mix would lead to fewer hours worked, costing the equivalent of nearly 2.5 million jobs.

In response, President Obama’s spokesman pleaded guilty — with pride and pleasure.
“Opportunity created by affordable, quality health insurance allows families in America to make a decision about how they will work, or if they will work,” Jay Carney said.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi applauded the law for freeing people from “job-lock.”

They never mentioned the implications of this distinctly Obama-ish New Deal. The subsidies that enable some Americans to decide “if they will work” mean higher taxes from those who must or want to work.

What I said.

But job loss quitting isn't the only Obamacare Scahdenfreude for the day.  Other losses to workers (it's always the workers) are still coming to light, like benefit cuts:

AOL cuts benefits, blames Affordable Care Act

AOL became the latest company to blame the Affordable Care Act for cutting back on employee benefits.

The tech firm will now pay its 401(k) company match only to employees who are active on Dec. 31 of that year, as opposed to in their paychecks throughout the year. So those who leave the company before the end of the year will forfeit the match.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong blamed $7.1 million in additional Affordable Care Act costs the company is facing this year. Had the company not made the change in its 401(k) payments, employees would have seen their health insurance costs increase, he told CNN Thursday.

Armstrong did not provide a lot of specifics about what aspects of the Affordable Care Act were pushing up the company's health care costs, but said it was one factor affecting the 401(k) restructuring.

"The Obamacare Act and some of the changes that happened there had increases in our health care costs," Armstrong told CNN. "We had to make a choice whether we pass those on or whether we took other benefits and reduce them."

and discrimination against AIDS patients (who were already receiving a subsidy): AIDS patients in Obamacare limbo as insurers reject checks

Hundreds of people with HIV/AIDS in Louisiana trying to obtain coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform are in danger of being thrown out of the insurance plan they selected in a dispute over federal subsidies and the interpretation of federal rules about preventing Obamacare fraud.

Some healthcare advocates see discrimination in the move, but Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana says it is not trying to keep people with HIV/AIDS from enrolling in one of its policies under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The state's largest carrier is rejecting checks from a federal program designed to help these patients pay for AIDS drugs and insurance premiums, and has begun notifying customers that their enrollment in its Obamacare plans will be discontinued.

The carrier says it no longer will accept third-party payments, such as those under the 1990 Ryan White Act, which many people with HIV/AIDS use to pay their premiums.

"In no event will coverage be provided to any subscribers, as of March 1, 2014, unless the premiums are paid by the subscriber (or a relative) unless otherwise required by law," Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana spokesman John Maginnis told Reuters.

A bit of Obamacare "humor", courtesy of Theo's: A Princely Offer

I have an offer from a Kenyan Prince who wants to give me healthcare for life!

All I have to do is give him all my bank account numbers, my Social Security details, health history, and income tax information...plus PROMISE to make payments of an unspecified amount that will increase annually.

And if I do not, he has threatened to punish me with a BIG fine.

- But, he PROMISES that this is a really-really-really "good deal" for me, and I should have some nice hot chocolate and think about it. 'He would not LIE to me, and I can trust him' he says.

'Ya think?

I think I'll have a Bourbon and Branch and then tell this clown to go pound some Nigerian sand.