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Comment by a3n | Hacker News Reader

Separate from the cost debate, the bill is labeled a "job killer," I assume because of all the insurance and related jobs lost.

Which would be bad for the people losing their jobs, but they're only employed because they work for an arguably unnecessary middle-man industry. There's no "right" to those jobs, and if we can find a way to deliver health care, as opposed to health insurance, to close to everyone, we should figure that out, regardless of insurance jobs.

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Yep, health care administrators--this century's buggy whip makers, telephone sanitizers, ...

Both the military and the private health insurance industry are Keynesian jobs programs first, their stated purposes second.

They call it a job killer because of all the extra taxes needed. More than doubling taxes in a state that already has very high taxes will have an impact.

How many are in state anyway? I'd of thought most of the middle men would be parts of large companies located in cheaper states.

How is this supposed to kill jobs? Total money spent should be no different. It just shifts from out of pocket to taxes.

If you read the other parent comment in this thread, total expenditures on health care would actually drop by close to 50% overall (with a few fraught assumptions, of course). In the best/worst case, that's a $350B economic blow to those who rely on insurers for their employment. Given the complexity of the health care system around the US, I'm sure any move to universal health care will be extremely economically disruptive and render quite a few people jobless without competitive skills.

It actually drops spending significantly; there's lots of friction in healthcare caused by the maze of different payers and their different requirements and processes.

But it's not a job killer; reducing the total cost drag from healthcare and the associated personal uncertainty resulting from the gaps in the status quo system ought to spur pretty much every other industry.

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