There’s been a lot of talk about the uncertainty the healthcare reform act will bring to bear on the economy. Many say it will hurt, but Alana Semuels of the Los Angeles Times has been hearing something else. Economists think it might bring, well, clarity, she reports.
“That clarity might help businesses finally make some personnel and other moves, giving the economy a much-needed kick and President Obama one more thing to brag about, economists say,” she writes in a recent article.
That includes hiring healthcare personnel to meet the increase in demand sure to come with increased preventive care, Dan Seiver, an economist at San Diego State University, told her. “There’s going to be a huge increase in demand for all kinds of medical services,” Seiver told Semuels. “That’s a good thing and a bad thing. A lot more people are going to get preventive care, but there will be costs.”
Those costs are what motivated the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) to join states in the lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, particularly the individual mandate to purchase insurance.
The organization did not mince words. In a press release distributed right after the decision it stated, “This day will go down in history as the day when Americans lost a part of their freedom – the freedom to choose what they want to buy with their own money,” said Karen Harned, executive director of NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center.
But Peter Schroeder of thehill.com says that “uncertainty still looms large over businesses navigating a rocky economy,” even though they can now take steps to fall in line with its new requirements.
Even with the court’s decision, there are still plenty of questions, he notes. “Of course, there is less uncertainty in the sense that we know the answer,” Maria Ghazal, vice president and general counsel for the Business Roundtable, told Schroeder. “But there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
