The new healthcare law will slow economic growth over the next decade, costing the nation about 2.5 million jobs and contributing to a $1 trillion increase in projected deficits, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released Tuesday.
The non-partisan agency's report found that the healthcare law's negative effects on the economy will be "substantially larger" than what it had previously anticipated.
The CBO is now estimating that the law will reduce labor force compensation by 1 percent from 2017 to 2024, twice the reduction it previously had projected. This will decrease the number of full-time equivalent jobs in 2021 by 2.3 million, CBO said. It had previously estimated the decrease would be 800,000.
The budget scorekeeper said this decrease would be caused partly by people leaving the workforce in response to lower wages offered by employers, and increased insurance coverage through the healthcare law.
The agency also said employer penalties in the law will decrease wages, and that part-year workers will be slower to return to the work force because they will seek to retain ObamaCare insurance subsidies. |