Red Tape Decreases Care, Increases Bureaucracy.
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s remarks.
Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) discussed two recent articles that show how the President’s health care law decreases care and jobs across America.
A recent USA Today article titled “Health Care Jobs Grow…In Administration” highlights how the health care law forces providers to lay off caregivers so they can hire more clerks and administrators.
A recent Washington Post article by George Will titled “Choking on Obamacare” talks about how the law’s crushing mandates are keeping businesses like Carl’s Jr. from hiring new workers.
Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
“The health care law was supposed to actually work to get more doctors and more nurses and more x-ray techs and physical therapists to take care of patient—but that’s not what happened.
“Now we see its administrative jobs that are up, not caregiver jobs.
“As a matter of fact the USA Today printed an article, and the article actually talked about a New Hampshire hospital, and that hospital according to the article was forced to eliminate 5% of its work force.
“So here’s a hospital, 5% of the work force is cut—many of those workers, nurses and other
caregivers. Yet in spite of the fact they’ve had to cut, eliminate 5% of the work force, they’re actually still hiring.
"Well, how can that be? Let’s listen to what the hospital’s vice president, Mark Whitney said, ‘we need to deal with new technology, new services, new regulations, electronic health records, government reporting requirements on quality.’
“A lot of this is related to the new federal health law. So they’re eliminating nursing positions, positions of caregivers and hiring more people to push paper.
Washington Post article: “Choking on Obamacare”The article talks about the health care law’s crushing insurance mandates and how those influence those small and large businesses in terms of their willingness to actually hire new workers.
“In the article they use the example of the restaurants ‘Carl’s Jr.’. There are about 3,200 of those around the country and the parent company says that they have created about 70,000 jobs and they want to hire more workers.
“But the C.E.O. of the company, Andy Pudzder, says they can’t hire more workers because they don’t know how much they will need to spend on health care.
“But thanks to the health care law’s complex formulas and many regulations which have not yet been released, and many of the uncertainties that continue to exist, this is a company that’s going to have to guess about how much they’ll need to spend on health care.
“Well, they’re guessing they’re going to have to spend about twice the amount of money on health care as they did building new restaurants last year.
“It doesn’t take a lot to realize that hindering a company’s ability to build new restaurants means fewer available jobs, construction workers, service suppliers, in a struggling economy.”
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