November 2, 2011 12:55PM # Yes, ObamaCare Will Eliminate Some 800,000 Jobs By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE From my article “[ObamaCare–The Way of the Dodo](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=13820)” in *Virtual Mentor*, a journal of the American Medical Association: > The CBO [projects](http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-director-says-obamacare-would-reduce-employment-800000-workers_547288.html) the law will eliminate an estimated 800,000 jobs. The fashionable [retort](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/14/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-obamacare-will-kill-800000-j/) is to note that this effect “primarily comes from workers who *choose* not to work because they no longer have to work at jobs just for the health insurance.” That defense fails for two reasons. First, a “job” is when Smith and Jones exchange labor for money. It doesn’t matter whether Jones withdraws the money or Smith withdraws the labor. Either act eliminates a job. Second, it’s an odd defense of a law to say it encourages people to consume without producing. Emphasis added; citations embedded as hyperlinks. Put differently: why should we care only about *someone not getting a paycheck* and not at all about *a job left undone*? **Update:** When he’s talking about something other than ObamaCare, President Obama himself acknowledges that suppressing the labor supply is as harmful as suppressing demand. Obama [laments](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-the-Department-of-Education%20) how government policies “cost\[\] us hundreds of billions of dollars in wages that will not be earned, *jobs that will not be done*, and purchases that will not be made.” ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).