Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act

One of the putative motivations for enacting Obamacare (a.k.a. The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act; have fun reading it, and make sure you have industrial quantities of coffee on hand) was to ensure that no one would be financially ruined by a health care catastrophe.  After all, many bankruptcies are filed because of massive medical debt.  How have things played out in the Obamacare regime?

I.  Obamacare And Part-time Employment

Lately the White House ― well, not the building, but the chap who lives and works inside it ― has been claiming that the economy has improved considerably in the last year.  For example, in his recent State of the Union address, the President stated:  “Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999.”

This ostensibly rosy economic diagnosis doesn’t match with what I see in my practice, nor with the headlines I’ve seen over the last few weeks announcing layoffs at various companies.  (See, e.g., “Big profits, big layoffs: eBay, AmEx to cut jobs”.)  Therefore, I thought I’d look a little deeper into that job creation claim, and the types of jobs that are being created.
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