Report: Health Reform Will Save Money, Create 250-400k Jobs

[babylonsister]

Healthcare overhaul could save money and boost jobs, researchers say
In a report to be released today, Harvard and USC economists say legislation being considered would slow cost increases and free up money for companies to raise wages and hire more workers.

By Duke Helfand

January 8, 2010


National healthcare legislation in Congress could slow the growth of medical costs, allowing employers to create 250,000 to 400,000 new jobs a year over the next decade, economists from Harvard University and USC are predicting.

Wading into the hotly debated issue of whether the legislation is a job creator or a job killer, researchers from the two universities say that the reforms under consideration would slow the rate of cost increases and free up money for companies to raise wages and hire more workers.

Specifically, healthcare savings could be achieved through proposals for greater competition in insurance markets, better coordination of care and shrinking administrative expenses, they said in a report to be released today. With those changes, employers could then reallocate money now spent on ever-growing premiums to other business priorities.

"We could achieve huge productivity gains," said Harvard economist David Cutler, one of the study's authors and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

snip//

The Harvard-USC report could be a boost for President Obama, who has made the economic benefits of health reform a top selling point in his administration's efforts to forge public support for the overhaul.

The president's Council of Economic Advisors said healthcare reform would increase domestic growth, raising family incomes substantially and leading to significant new hiring.

The Harvard-USC economists concluded that industries with high rates of employer-sponsored insurance -- including manufacturing, utilities and financial services -- would see some of the largest employment gains.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-health-jobs8-2010jan08,0,1333736.story

[Hello_Kitty]

1. Hopefully at least some of those new jobs will be in the US. eom

[PA Democrat]

10. I'm not holding my breath.

Health insurer Highmark Inc. is considering sending work overseas, possibly technology or call center jobs, in an effort to shave administrative expenses.

Several sources told the Post-Gazette that Highmark has been considering a fact-finding trip to India, purportedly to research whether the insurer should locate some of its jobs, or hire contractors, there.



Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09354/1022068-407.stm#ixzz0c35vYcWI

[mzmolly]

12. Perhaps we need to be proactive on this?

eom

[Hello_Kitty]

16. But wanting to keep jobs in the US is xenophobic and protectionist.

Just ask several DUers about that. We should be living on a dollar a day here because people in other countries do.

[mzmolly]

22. I disagree with

said DU-ers. :hi:

[dflprincess]

2. Yeah,

At the insurance companies who will need help processing all those victims, customers they’re being handed. Too bad a lot of those jobs will be "off shore".

[joeybee12]

3. Long article to say one thing..."There's a lot of unknowns out there right now"

Last sentence of the article...so basically thsi "study" is hypothetical, comprised of what-ifs.

[Political Heretic]

8. Well stated.

Such an important point that I wanted to add my own little PS on it too. But you said it first, and its a critical point that people need to remember.

There is going to be so much "proof-texting" publishing of "studies" and "findings" and "reports" with headlines that sound like there's some sort of absolute evidence that something will create jobs, or pull x millions from poverty, or provide quality care and consistent ability to access to millions of families, etc....

...when in reality, all the posts really turn out to be are advocacy pieces, based on speculation without evidence, reflecting the hopes (or much more often, the disingenuous propaganda claims) of a class of individuals who simply want "reform" that is going to make them and their friends dirty rotten stinking filthy rich.

Advocacy pieces, based on no concrete evidence - that's what these are. It's such a shame the whole institutional system of "economics" is so dishonest.

[joeybee12]

18. Thanks...95% of journalism today is comprised of "What ifs" and

no real concrete facts or evidence, pretty much for every topic.

[moondust]

11. All legislation is like that.

:eyes:

[joeybee12]

17. True, especially in this case where the legislation isn't even final...n/t

[bvar22]

4. HEll YES!... And NAFTA will be good for the American Working Class!

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.
.
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Any day now!

[Political Heretic]

6. Pretty much if investor-class economic institutions tell you something will create jobs

They are publishing bullshit in an attempt to help the piece of hairy horse shit they are asking the "lower" class to eat go down more smoothly.

[Political Heretic]

5. The President's Council of Economic Advisors are full of shit and on Wall Streets payroll.

As far as "Harvard Economists" are concerned, "huge productivity games" that don't pair with rising wages, pretty much keeps us on the same path to oblivion that we've been on.

It tickles me how investor-class economists constantly say the same things and are constantly wrong and yet keep saying it anyway. Trickle-down, free-market religion economists always expect businesses to spend profits on creating jobs, and that's never what happens - not at the scale true believers invariably predict.

This "report" is basically just another backhanded way of saying "insurance care reform is going to create billions and billions of dollars of profit for big corporations" - its just written with "working class spin" to sound a little better.


All of this is true, but it isn't even the biggest point, which is that jobs are important, but the purpose of health care reform was to create a society in which everyone has affordable, comprehensive health care that they fully utilize without going bankrupt. If giving us quality health care would somehow cost jobs, it wouldn't matter - it would still be the right thing to do, and we would need to take action to create those jobs through other means.

Likewise, a piece of reform that benefits multi-billion dollar industries first, while subordinating the needs of low-income and working families to second place, a piece of reform that doesn't address out-of-pocket co-pay costs for care (a poor family with a 20% co-pay still finds themselves unable to pay for and access health care when something serious happens. A 25,000 bill, common when critical medical need hits, still amounts to so much money owed by a poor family that they go bankrupt or worse), a piece of reform that does not establish a clear, concise, unfettered system of tough rules and absolute regulations but instead leaves key oversight and regulation components up to individual state's discretion (meaning hundreds of millions of people living in our many ultra-conservative states will get screwed by policy that benefits the wealth corporate elite, as per usual)....

....a piece of shitty corporation-first legislation does not suddenly stop being wrong simply because a bunch of investor-class economic cronies promise - as they always do every time there is a corporate giveaway in policy - that huge numbers of jobs will be created. This bill wasn't about jobs. It was supposedly about bringing the United States out of the societal dark ages, and allowing us to join the rest of the industrialized world in guaranteeing all of our citizens health care access free of fees many can not afford.

Whether it cost jobs or creates jobs is sort of irrelevant if it fails to achieve that most basic goal.

[Political Heretic]

7. PS - the title is a lie.

The "study" actually only says one thing: we don't know shit about anything. Says it right at the end, when it says "there are a lot of unknowns right now" and so all of this is just theoretical and speculative. But of course they're going to release it to the press anyway just to muddy the waters a bit and help the bad medicine go down smoother with the working class.

[HughMoran]

13. "we don't know shit about anything"

Most of what's posted here qualifies :shrug:

Doesn't stop people from posting more attractive titles to get people to read their latest 'theory' (or rant).

[Hello_Kitty]

15. But most people here aren't recognized "experts"

So it's pretty much a given to take whatever they/we/you/I write with a grain of salt. These policy wonks, OTOH, are given free reign to spew whatever baseless horsecrap they want and have it be given credibility. The architects of this corporate HCR are making all kinds of unfounded predictions about jobs, savings, and revenue and assigning specific, and large, dollar values to them.

[Political Heretic]

20. That's exactly it. But, at the same time some people at DU are actually experts.

Not many, but some DUers are deeply involved in policy analysis from an educational background and as a career profession.

When experts lie, it's still a lie. And when a non-expert tells the truth, its still the truth.

Sometimes we have differences of opinion or interpretation that makes discussion complex, but other times its simply about telling lies or telling the truth.

Presenting speculative guesswork as concrete fact is called lying. Pretty simple, really.

[Hello_Kitty]

14. Did you know that the excise tax on health plans is going to raise $150 billion?

Most of that is going to come from, get this, the increased wages employers are going to pass along, generously as they are always so wont to do, from the savings.

For serials. :crazy:

[Political Heretic]

19. THIS IS HUGH!!!!1111111111

:rofl:

It's a wonder we get so screwed... we keep accepting the same old outrageous lies, heh.

[avaistheone1]

9. Single payer would create 2 million new jobs.

California Nurses Associaton commissioned a study on the prospects of single-payer and jobs more than 6 months ago.
For results. Here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/8xyd8a








Single payer or Medicare for all is still the way to go.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

21. Name ten senators who are in favor of single-payer.