Lanhee J Chen, Columnist

Obamacare Will, in Fact, Encourage Employers to Cut Jobs

Obamacare supporters have long argued the law won't hurt employment. Until now.

February 12, 2014 at 5:40 PM UTC

Lanhee Chen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches public policy at Stanford University. He was the policy director of Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Chen was a senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. He practiced business litigation with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and served as the Winnie Neubauer visiting fellow in health policy studies at the Heritage Foundation. Chen earned his doctorate and master's degree in political science from Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School and his bachelor's degree in government from Harvard College.

More delays and problems for Obamacare. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Obamacare supporters have long argued that the law will not have a negative impact on jobs. President Barack Obama's latest delay of the employer mandate contains a clear admission that it will.

As recently as last week, advocates for the Affordable Care Act fiercely responded to a Congressional Budget Office report, which concluded that the law will push the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time workers out of the labor market by 2024. Liberal talking heads, journalists and White House officials argued that what the CBO report actually said was that Obamacare would help people pursue their dreams, unencumbered by the jobs that had been so brutally holding them in place. Republicans, of course, countered that the CBO report was tangible proof that the law is a job killer.