Obamacare Repeal Would Cause Job Lock(Getting Stuck in A Job Because You Need It's Health Insurance)

Repealing the health care law will force Americans to stay tied to jobs they don't want.

Before the Affordable Care Act became law, almost 11 million potential freelancers were tied to jobs they did not want, solely because they needed access to employer-provided benefits, a phenomenon coined "job-lock." President Barack Obama's health care law changed that dynamic by providing affordable, individual insurance options for employees eager to join the ranks of America's burgeoning contingent workforce – part-time, freelance and contract employees . As the Senate prepares legislation to overhaul the nation's health care system, lawmakers should consider how their efforts could undermine contingent workers, with serious long-term consequences to U.S. business.

The Affordable Care Act required everyone to purchase insurance, but subsidized premiums for lower-income Americans. It also allowed youth to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26 and prohibited insurers from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions. For many, the combination of these policies meant they could reasonably assume that they could afford health care, even if they lost employer-provided benefits.

In 2013, the Urban Institute projected that 1.5 million people would become self-employed because affordable individual plans would be more available. In fact, in the health care law's first two years alone, the number of self-employed people increased by nearly 3.5 percent to nearly 183,000 people, according to Department of Labor data, and the trend continued.

There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence to suggest that access to affordable nongroup insurance was the primary factor leading many contingent workers to leave traditional jobs, often to launch on-demand startups that employ other contingent workers. When Thumbtack, an online marketplace for on-demand services, surveyed its small-business owners, about one-third said access to affordable health care was the single reason they had enough confidence to start their own business.

The Affordable Care Act was not only providing confidence for employees to become contingent workers, it was ensuring that more contingent workers were actually getting coverage. A 2016 Stride study concluded that the Affordable Care Act made it easier for gig workers, who are three times as likely to be uninsured, to find affordable health coverage. Moreover, under the first two years of the health care law, the number of uninsured gig workers who were planning to shop for coverage grew substantially year over year.

If left in place, the Affordable Care Act would continue to spur the growth of American's contingent workforce, which comprised over 40 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2015, according to a Government Accountability Office estimate. The world's second largest recruitment firm, Randstad, expects that number to jump to at least 50 percent in the next eight years.

As a division of Randstad, Randstad Sourceright's own data mirrors that projection. When we surveyed HR leaders for our 2015 Talent Trends Report, 31 percent told us that contingent workers made up more than 20 percent of their total workforce. Just two years later, in our 2017 Talent Trends Report, contingent workers had jumped to 30 percent of the total workforce, per respondents in the survey.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act without a comparable replacement could reverse this transition and lock many American workers – who would prefer the flexibility and independence of contingent work – into traditional employment out of fear of losing health care coverage. Without the law's cost-sharing subsidies, older and lower-income Americans are likely to pay higher premiums for individual coverage.

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Not coincidentally, an enormous segment of the contingent workforce is older or lower income. Baby boomers, for example, are more likely than any other generation to join the contingent workforce, and the median annual income of contingent workers is about $20,000 lower than that earned by traditional employees. Once existing contingent workers are priced out of the individual health insurance market, they will face mounting pressure to return to traditional employment in order to access health care.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act is also likely to put the brakes on employees becoming new contingent workers. It is hard to imagine full-time employees with pre-existing conditions pursuing the risk of contingent work without some sort of guarantee that they will find an affordable, independent health insurance plan that will cover the condition.

The continued expansion of the contingent workforce could stall if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and replaced without considering the impact on contingent workers. Holding back this vital segment of the U.S labor force could have significant impacts on businesses that tell us they are relying on mobile, contingent workers to expand their pool of available talent and fill critical skills gaps that may be limiting productivity and reducing earnings. Given the massive growth the contingent workforce is projected to experience in the next 3 to 5 years, any proposal to reform the health care system must consider how this dynamic segment of the labor market will be impacted.

- Rebecca Henderson


My take: I've written about this before and it seems almost as if the GOP want to keep us under the thumb of corporate America or locked into some business where we really don't want to be or cannot fulfill our best talents. Obama Care freed us out from under this "bondage" to the corporate business structure by providing an affordable mobile health plan that only previously the business community could provide. Workers all over America with health care needs could move on and pursue their hopes and dreams in work that lies outside the employer health care environment.

Republicans essentially serve corporations and are certainly serving them in this stupid endeavor. The 2nd cartoon above with caricatures of McConnell and Ryan just about says it all. 

Working in secret with senators leaving many Republican senators still in the dark McConnell comes out now and wants a vote just next week again like the House leaving any time to analyze the CBO report that will reveal just what damage this new health care bill would reek on us all. McConnell and Ryan of course want to ram a bill through before anything can be done, before the populace can amp up enough to strongly oppose it. 
The Republicans in congress are in corruption mode and the streets of the U.S. Capitol should be filled soon with millions of Americans. Should be. Let's hope, let's pray, let's go.