The Stupid! It BURNS!!!

The furious spin continues:

Obamacare isn’t killing jobs.  It is just removing jobs that people didn’t want, anyway, and only took so that they could get health insurance. 

This relies on several specious prerequisites that I don’t necessarily agree with:

1.       Assumption #1 - People were taking on jobs because, and ONLY because, they needed them to get health insurance.  Forget about the fact that there was insurance available on the individual market before ACA.  Forget that it was actually cheaper than it is now, post-ACA.  Who are these people?  Jobs with health insurance aren’t entry-level jobs.  These aren’t jobs people were “just taking to get health insurance.” 

2.       Assumption #2 – People who lost their jobs are being “liberated” from jobs that they hated.  How the fuck can they make this statement?  How do they know that every person who lost their job due to ACA “hated” their job?  How do they know that the only reason that these people kept their “hated” job was health insurance, and not, you know, a PAYCHECK?  Both of which are apparently worth more than not having a job they “hate” or else they wouldn’t have had the job, right?  Besides, and maybe more importantly, at what point in time did it become a function of the United States Federal Government to “save” people from having jobs they don’t like? 

3.       Assumption #3 - ACA is somehow going to provide food and lodging for these people who no longer have jobs.  This is an assumption that none of the proponents of this furious spin exercise have actually touted, but they must believe it, because health insurance does more than just cover a percentage of your health expenses after you’ve covered a deductible, right?  It also gives you a monthly stipend that you can use to pay rent, and put food on your family’s table, and…  wait, insurance doesn’t do that?  Only a job can?  But wait, that could mean that these people who lost their jobs would be worse off, right? 

4.       Assumption #4 - ACA will allow a person to pay for a health plan without being tied to a job. However, it won’t give the person money to pay for the plan, unless they are subsidized in some manner (the pre-requisites to which I admit I’m fuzzy on).  How does this change anything from the individual insurance market, which allowed a person to pay for health insurance without having a job?  Other than ACA has made individual plans more expensive, and thus, more difficult to pay for?  So unless these people are subsidized, they are worse off.  If they lose their job, will they be subsidized?  Is the country better off forcing people out of the workforce and onto the dole?  Is this really a goal to which we should aspire?

5.       ACA expands freedom, by untying people from jobs they don’t like… 

…By forcing other people to work to subsidize them... 

…Which is not enhancing freedom by any stretch of the imagination.  This is an argument that they’ve made, and in fact, done so quite shamefully, couching it in terms of “shouldn’t freedom-loving conservatives love the ACA because it creates all this freedom?” as if “freedom” can actually exist in a climate where one man is being looted at gunpoint for another’s benefit.