There’s an old joke that a quandary exists when your mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your new Porsche. Are you more happy about losing her or more unhappy about losing your sports car?
I’m not clever enough to come up with humorous quandaries, but I have shared policy quandaries.
I’ve asked, for instance, whether libertarians might have second thoughts about an end to drug prohibition if the result was bigger government.
And I speculated whether leftists or social conservatives would be more upset about a gay man legally adopting his lover in order to minimize Pennsylvania’s death tax.
And if you like this kind of thing, I have more than one dozen additional examples of these types of quandaries.
I have something else to add to the list, and it’s near and dear to my heart because I like to think that I’m among the biggest critics of both Obamacare and bureaucracy.
But what happens if there’s an issue pitting Obamacare and bureaucrats against each other? Would I be able to pick sides?
This isn’t theoretical speculation. Check out these excerpts from a recent report in the New York Times.
Cities, counties, public schools and community colleges around the country have limited or reduced the work hours of part-time employees to avoid having to provide them with health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, state and local officials say. …Even after the administration said this month that it would ease coverage requirements for larger employers, public employers generally said they were keeping the restrictions on work hours because their obligation to provide health insurance, starting in 2015, would be based on hours worked by employees this year. Among those whose hours have been restricted in recent months are police dispatchers, prison guards, substitute teachers, bus drivers, athletic coaches, school custodians, cafeteria workers and part-time professors.
To be honest, I don’t know how to react to this.
Am I glad that we have more evidence that Obamacare is hurting people and reducing labor supply?
That’s obviously the case, and it’s an embarrassment to the Obama Administration.
For months, Obama administration officials have played down reports that employers were limiting workers’ hours. But in a report this month, the Congressional Budget Office said the Affordable Care Act could lead to a reduction in the number of hours worked, relative to what would otherwise occur. Jason Furman, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, reaffirmed the White House view that the law was “good for wages and incomes and for the economy over all.” …The Obama administration says “there is absolutely no evidence” of any job loss related to the Affordable Care Act.
One suspects, by the way, that the Obama White House must have a very strange definition of “job loss.”
They’ll only confess culpability, one imagines, if Obama personally delivers the pink slip or HHS Secretary Sebilius personally orders the loss of hours.
But let’s get back to our main point. I was wondering whether I should be happy to have this additional evidence against Obamacare.
But perhaps I should be glad instead that local governments are squeezing the hours and benefits of the bureaucracy, particularly since the alternative would be higher taxes.
Check out these passages from the NYT’s story. Isn’t it wonderful to read about sulking bureaucrats?
William J. Lipkin, an adjunct professor of American history and political science at Union County College in Cranford, N.J., said: “The Affordable Care Act, rather than making health care affordable for adjunct faculty members, is making it more unaffordable. Colleges are not giving us access to health care, and our hours are being cut, which means our income is being cut. We are losing on both ends.” The American Federation of Teachers lists on its website three dozen public colleges and universities in 15 states that it says have restricted the work assignments of adjunct or part-time faculty members to avoid the cost of providing health insurance.
Some people love the smell of napalm in the morning. Not me. I prefer the whining of angry and resentful bureaucrats. Maybe (as I’ve suggested before) Obamacare isn’t all bad after all.
But 98 percent bad is still bad. The law is a trainwreck and needs to be repealed.
