There has been great debate about the potential labor market impact of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Obamacare”). Some have pointed to Massachusetts as the harbinger of what is to come nationally, while others have predicted massive dumping of employer-based insurance. An extension of this labor market debate was on full display during the summer of 2012. Critics seized on a McKinsey & Co. survey that found that Obamacare could result in thirty percent of companies dropping employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). Meanwhile, proponents of the ACA quickly and continually referred to the experience of companies in Massachusetts as a way to push back on this narrative.
Surprisingly, there is bipartisan agreement that Massachusetts’s own health reform efforts (“Romneycare”) does in fact serve as an accurate model for what to expect under the federal law: this has complicated a lucid discussion of the ACA’s potential labor market impact.