Welcome to the Reality-based community, Mr. Schultz. We tried to tell you.
Yes, in a recent interview, Mr. Schultz made this surprising statement:
[snip] Q: Starbucks was vocal about [wanting] health-care reform. How do you feel about how it worked out?
A: We have been a leader for almost 20 years now in demonstrating our heartfelt commitment to making sure that we provide health coverage for the majority of our people.
That cost last year was $250 million. We have faced double-digit increases for almost five consecutive years with no end in sight.
So, when I was invited to the White House prior to health care being reformed, I was very supportive of the president's plan, primarily because I felt it was literally a fracturing of humanity for almost 50 million Americans not to have health insurance.
There's no plan that would be a perfect plan, but the intent of the bill and the heartfelt commitment to insure the uninsured is the right approach. I think as the bill is currently written and if it was going to land in 2014 under the current guidelines, the pressure on small businesses, because of the mandate, is too great. [snip] (Click here to read the rest.)
Yes, which many people were screaming at the top of their lungs. I don't know why Mr. Schultz finally heard them, or realized this, but glad he did.
Oh, but wait, there's more. Remember the little claim by Nancy Pelosi about the job creation aspect of Obamacare? Here she is, detailing just how glorious this bill will be:
Oh, yeah. Well, a liberal organization, the Urban Institute, set out to prove Pelosi's claim that Obamacare would create all of these bazillion jobs. Guess what? They found out it doesn't, again, what many of us knew from the get-go. Here is part of their conclusion:
[snip]The ACA is unlikely to have major aggregate effects on the U.S. economy and on employment primarily because the changes in pending and taxes are very small relative to the size of the economy. Moreover, most of the effects offset each other. This of course implies that repeal would also have little effect on the macroeconomy. The increased spending because of the ACA will
increase demand for health services and demand for labor in the health sector. Cuts in Medicare and various costcontainment provisions, if successful, will have opposite effects. The new taxes on insurers, medical devices and pharmaceutical manufacturers could have adverse effects on those industries,except for the fact that coverage expansion should provide new revenues well in excess of new tax obligations. Cost-containment efforts, if successful, will have somewhat opposite effects,reducing the growth in spending on Medicare and Medicaid, which will reduce the taxes or borrowing the federal government has to undertake.Cost-containment that reduces the federal budget deficit would result in faster economic growth, more employment and higher family incomes. Cost-containment would also free up private dollars to be spent in non-health areas of the economy. [snip] (Click here to read the entire report.)
The report also claims there will be no impact on small businesses that employ fewer than 50 people, and makes a leap about other companies providing health care. From all (other) reports, though, including the assessment of a major company which presumably DOES provide health care, that seems a bit of a reach to me.
On the anniversary of this healthcare law, shoved down our throats by Pelosi and Co., we are still learning all of the ways this will impact us, many of them bad. Is it any wonder that the majority of Americans want it repealed? Uh, no.
As Nancy Pelosi said, we would find out what was in this bill once it became law, and are we ever. And we don't like what we are learning, from staunch Obama supporters like Schultz to John Boehner. It was a bad bill from the get-go, will cost us WAY more money than Obama, Pelosi, and Reid admitted, and will not create the jobs promised. It was one big lie from the get-go. It needs to be repealed, and to go back to the drawing board to craft a law that will not include major giveaways to Big Pharma, will not double count pots of money, and which will not play favorites with select groups of organizations (like unions). Now that is a bill I could support.
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