CBO Report on Impact of ObamaCare on Economy

It’s the ideology, Stupid!

Roger Simon, “The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times: Scenes from the Culture Wars, “  PJ Media,  February 4, 2014

You may not be aware of it, but there’s a cultural war going on out there.   One side says ObamaCare is good, the other says ObamaCare is bad.

Two of the newapaper heavyweights in this war are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,  America’s two most widely read newspapers. The two take diametrically opposite views on the just released  nonpartisan Congress Budget Office report on ObamaCare’s effect  on the economy.

This economic impact   is a good thing, says the New York Times  in the opening paragraph of its  lead editorial:

“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 economic impact is a bad thing, says the Wall Street Journal ,  in its  lead in paragraph to Op-Ed piece.   It  screams in its  headline, “Health Law to Cut into Labor Force:  F More People Will  Opt  to Work Less as They Seek Coverage through Affordable Care Act,” and then goes on to say, “ The new health law  reduces the total number of hours Americans work by the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs in 2012 with bigger Impact upon  the workforce than previously expected, according to the  nonpartisan congressional report."

I have news for you, there are no nonpartisanship in the media   is this battle for America’s ideological soul. 

As a pathologist, I have performed  an autopsy  of headlines of liberal and conservative media and it shakes out this way.

 Impact of CBO Report:

·        “ CBO: Botched Health-Care Rollout Will Reduce Signups,” Washington Post

·         “CBO: ObamaCare Will Cost Economy 2 Million Fewer Workers”, NewsMax.com

·         “ObamaCare to Cut Work Hours by Equivalent of 2 Million Jobs: CBO”,  Reuters

·         “More May Choose to Work Less under ObamaCare”, Cnnmoney.com

·         “ObamaCare to Cut Hours of Work by 2017”, Bloomberg News

·         “The Explosive CBO Report Not as Explosive as it Seems”, Huffington Post

·        “ Bombshell: CBO Says ObamaCare Will Cost Equivalent of of 2.3 Million Jobs”,  Fox News

·         “How Critics Are        Misreading the CBO”, The New Republic

·      “   Liberals , ObamaCare, and Work”, New York Times

·        “ Truth and Consequences of ObamaCare Distortion”, the National Journal

What these titles say  to me is that journalists rarely change their partisan stripes when writing about ObamaCare.   

It comes down to a ideological  point of views of view on opportunity.  Is ObamaCare an opportunity not to work – to stay at home and to enjoy one’s dreams and leisure – at the government’s and other people’s expense?   Or does ObamaCare decrease the opportunity to work by decreasing the availability of and access to jobs?  

Which is more important – to work or not to work?  The meaningless of work or the dignity of work? 

I am on the side of Ken Kursen, a New York Times reporter.  He believes what I believe:  what makes America great is the desire to work, to earn your way up the opportunity scale.  In the February 4 article in the New York Observer, he writes, “The fact of the matter is that the Wall Street Journal just kicks our editorial ass. I mean it’s just no contest, from top to bottom, and it’s disappointing. (Ken Kurten,, “The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Time’s Editorial Page,” The New York Observer, February 4, 2015.

Doctor Richard Reece is a retired pathologist in Old Saybrook.   He has written 12 books on health reform and over 3000 posts in his blog, Medical Innovation and Health Reform. His latest book  Understanding ObamaCare is due for publication next month.