"The Markets Go Mad For Obambacare"
Follow the money!
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How Obamacare could unlock job opportunities. "In a sense, Obamacare amounts to a massive transfer of risk. Under the old system, if you quit your job and couldn't get health insurance, you courted financial ruin every time you did something as mundane as riding your bike or playing pickup basketball. Now that risk is distributed to everyone who buys health insurance (including the government). Free of the massive financial risk of being alive, unemployed Americans can more easily take on risks associated with doing what they want to do...It may seem counterintuitive, but from an economics perspective, this is a good thing, because it encourages the labor force to allocate itself more efficiently. Older workers will finally be able to retire, leaving openings for younger workers. People will switch to jobs that better suit their talents. Parents will be able to spend more time with their families. Such changes don't always make people wealthier, but they make people happier." Shaila Dewan in The New York Times.
Investors bet big on Obamacare. "A new online broker, Motif Investing, is offering Obamacare's friends and foes alike a chance to put their money where their mouth is. Co-founded by a former Microsoft executive, Hardeep Walia, and backed by Goldman Sachs and other investors, Motif allows customers to bet on narrowly tailored concepts...The Obamacare motif is up 46.9 percent in the past year, doubling the performance of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index (up 22.8 percent)." Joshua Green in Bloomberg Businessweek.
To dodge Obamacare, public sector shifts workers to below 30 hours a week. "Cities, counties, public schools and community colleges around the country have limited or reduced the work hours of part-time employees to avoid having to provide them with health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, state and local officials say...[P]ublic employers generally said they were keeping the restrictions on work hours because their obligation to provide health insurance, starting in 2015, would be based on hours worked by employees this year. Among those whose hours have been restricted in recent months are police dispatchers, prison guards, substitute teachers, bus drivers, athletic coaches, school custodians, cafeteria workers and part-time professors." Robert Pear in The New York Times.
For White House staffer, the health-care law may be harder sell than Obama was. "Two years ago, Marlon Marshall was deputy national field director for President Obama's disciplined, centralized reelection campaign. His job was to mobilize enthusiastic supporters to do something that cost them nothing: cast a vote. Now he is at the White House working on a very different, and arguably more difficult, effort: helping persuade Americans to get -- and in many cases pay for -- health insurance. Marshall, 34, is deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, where he is charged with helping to sell the Affordable Care Act." Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post.
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