Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog takes a shot at the right wing ACA critics:
But aside from the garden-variety nonsense, the debate’s audience also heard a more specific claim from Marco Rubio: “[W]e have a crazy health care law that discourages companies from hiring people.” To which the reality-based community responded, “We do?”The oddity of the criticism is how easy it is to recognize how wrong it is. We know, for example, that in 2014 – the first full year of ACA implementation – the job market in the United States had its best year since the late 1990s. Indeed, hiring in 2014 was so strong, it surpassed literally any single year in either Bush presidency, and even many of the years in the Clinton era.
How do “Obamacare” critics explain this? As best as I can tell, so far, they don’t even try.
While it’s a convenient turn in employment, how do you go about proving the ACA is causative? A single chart won’t do it, regardless of how you fly in the debate. If you take a psychological view of the matter, then is it really a valid claim – or is it just that confidence was boosted (despite the efforts of the GOP to denigrate the legislation at every step), which is not a rational attribute – but undeniably exists.
And at the next depression/recession (which this fellow thinks is imminent), do we also blame the ACA for it? And if we don’t, is it all cherry picking?
