I came across the following article online while casually surfing the web and felt that it warranted a blog post based on last week’s discussion. I understand that the complexities surrounding federal regulations/laws and the effects it has on small business/entrepreneurs go beyond this simple article, but it highlights a sad reality that we live in today. When legislation like the Affordable Care Act gets passed, the first thing we hear when we turn on the news is the political backlash that is inevitably coming from the other side. In case of Obamacare, we hear ranting and raving from conservatives about the “detrimental costs” that come with universal health care. or how the legislation is not fair because it allows for “freeloaders” while others pick up the tab.
The saddest part of it all is that the IDEA of providing healthcare to everyone is actually an idea that a majority of Americans support, but we let the politics of who will pay blind us from these ideas. It is undeniable that our country is facing very serious financial problems, but instead of working together to find solutions to the problem, we spend more time arguing about which party has the better plan.
While is it difficult to predict which plan is best, (and politicians will continue to argue that their plan is in fact the best) one thing is for certain, change has been and still is needed. That being said, it is still interesting to see how some of Obamacare’s biggest critics have pulled back on their criticism once the numbers were finally run. Hopefully changes like this will prevent future knee jerk overreactions and remind people that despite our political affiliation, we should always hope for the successful implementation of ideas like universal healthcare, despite which party was able to pass it.
Great article Brian – and I thought your viewpoint on Obamacare, taxes and regulation in general was solid. Congress has been paralyzed in recent years because of a “who is going to foot the bill” issue in regards to taxes being both levied and cut on American individuals and businesses. When it comes to cutting our public deficit, everyone wants to cut it – but when it comes to which programs will be cut, nobody wants the programs that are important to them to be touched. So, prospective legislation is often discussed at length, analyzed and criticized without being effectively passed. As this article discusses, Obamacare was, and continues to be, staunchly criticized by conservatives. Most businesses hated the idea of the Act without seeing how it would actually affect them financially. Now that Obamacare has been applied for a couple years, it is interesting to see that it is not costing the fast food industry nearly as much as they had forecasted, and perhaps jumped the gun a bit on so strongly criticizing the Act.
In regards to this class, parallels can be drawn to how entrepreneurism and start ups are regulated by the state and federal governments. Businesses want to avoid costly regulation through regulatory arbitrage tactics, and the government wants to oversee businesses in a cost-effective manner. What motivates both the government and businesses is the bottom line, and both sides have become increasingly stubborn over the past couple decades, regardless of beneficial societal impacts that may result from legislation or business innovation.