Obamacare Already Benefitting The Economy

Ken O’Brien

Republicans have been proven completely wrong as the Affordable Care Act helped both personal income and spending increase in January.

On March 3^rd The Wall Street Journal reported in an article titled” Obamacare Effects Account for Most of Income, Spending Increases”:

The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health law, is already boosting household income and spending.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both                                                                      fronts.

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes….

On the spending side, the BEA is assuming Obamacare is responsible for a $29 billion increase in health-care services. 

Republicans have spent years screaming from the highest peaks of Bulls–t Mountain that the ACA was going to kill jobs, drive healthcare costs up, and trash the economy. It turns out that the exact opposite is true.