Hundreds of Thousands of Public Sector Workers Face Cutbacks from #ObamaCare

Hey, what about no one being harmed by this Democrat-collectivist monstrosity?

At the New York Times, "Public Sector Cuts Part-Time Shifts to Bypass Insurance Law."

Commentary from Jonathan Tobin, "New ObamaCare Losers: Public Employees":

[Kathleen] Sebelius was as wrong about the question of ObamaCare’s impact on employment as she was about the rollout of the law’s website. But the problem for the administration isn’t just a credibility gap that was already as big as the Grand Canyon. It’s that the ranks of ObamaCare losers are now growing and being filled by people that are the backbone of the Democratic Party. That means the real myth about ObamaCare is the assumption that once it goes into effect it will be transformed from an unpopular law to a beloved national institution like Social Security.

The findings of the Times report validate the conclusions of the Congressional Budget Office study released earlier this month on the impact of ObamaCare on employment. Though administration figures like Sebelius have been orchestrating a campaign seeking to deny these facts, the Times story illustrates the futility of this effort. Municipalities and public institutions around the country have been cutting the hours of their workers in order to avoid paying for their health care. Thus even though the point of the Affordable Care Act was to get more people covered, the unintended consequence of its passage was to cut the pay as well as deprive a significant population of public-sector workers of their chance to get insurance from their employer.

As the article notes, public workers are being especially hard hit because municipal employers can’t pass along the increased costs of the insurance mandates to consumers the way private companies can try to do. Instead, they must cut down on the number of those they employ. But rather than reduce the ranks of those public employees getting expensive benefits and pensions that often are far more generous than those received by the taxpayers who pay their salaries, the people losing out in the ObamaCare squeeze are those at the bottom end of the wage scale.

These findings once again point out the problem with the administration’s belief that their ObamaCare troubles are merely the result of a rough rollout and will soon disappear. It is true that millions of Americans who are either poor or have pre-existing medical conditions will be net winners as a result of ObamaCare. But unlike government entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, ObamaCare has also created a vast number of net losers who are losing coverage, losing jobs, or getting their hours and possible benefits cut.

The fact that a large number of those losers are members of a demographic that is a key element of the Democratic base is a potential political disaster for the president’s party. Rather than going away as the midterms approach, if the Times is to be believed, it is getting worse. In this case, the Democratic focus on income inequality appears to be pertinent. But rather than being able to blame the plight of low-income workers on the wealthy or the Republicans, it is President Obama’s signature accomplishment that is to blame.

Yeah, Democrats are wrong alright. And they'll stop at nothing to destroy critics of this monumental failure of far left-wing ideology.