No widespread evidence?

IF YOU don’t understand everything you know about Obamacare, if you don’t know what th’ heck to expect come October 1st (Tuesday) as Obamacare comes online, if you don’t know if the headlines on the front page of your paper from day to day are good news or bad or mixed about health care and how to pay for it, or if you don’t understand how the same number of doctors is going to be able to handle hundreds of thousands of new patients here in Arkansas alone, if you don’t understand how the federal government is going to make anything less expensive . . . .

Then join the ever expanding club.

The president has spent a good portion of his presidency defending Obamacare, and why not? It needs defending. Like a guilty client.

Here’s one defense, given by President/Counselor Obama back in 2009, but repeated as a talking point even today: “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctor, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor and you can keep your plan.”

Tell that to the spouses of employees of UPS. That company said this summer it wouldn’t cover the wives and husbands of non-union employees who can get health care elsewhere, in part because of Obamacare. Even some unions say many of their members might not be able to keep current plans under Obamacare. When the Teamsters and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers are questioning how the new law works, or even whether it can, the rest of us might have reason to be concerned, too.

THE PRESIDENT visited a community college in Maryland on Thursday to give still more assurances about how well this law is working (if it can be figured out). He said health care shouldn’t be “a privilege for the fortunate few.” Then a few sentences later, he explained that “even before the Affordable Care Act takes effect, about 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance . . . .” (The man sounds as confused as the rest of us.)

At some point during the speech, after extolling the benefits of Obamacare and the obligatory attack on Republicans, the president took on those critics who say the new law could hurt some employees as companies cut back on the number of full-time workers on their payroll. To quote the president:

“They said this would be a disaster in terms of jobs. There’s no widespread evidence that the Affordable Care Act is hurting jobs.”

Let us take you now, Dear Reader, to the Pulaski County Quorum Court meeting last Tuesday night, just two days before the president made his speech. The justices of the peace of Arkansas’ largest county voted to cut the hours of a lot of part-time employees. Why? Because of Obamacare.

Under the new health-care law, employers must offer health insurance to anyone working more than 29 hours a week. So the county is cutting the hours of upwards of two dozen employees so they don’t have to be carried on the books as full-time workers.

These part-time workers don’t make a lot of money to begin with. Now, thanks to Obamacare, they’ll make even less.

There’s no widespread evidence that the Affordable Care Act is hurting jobs.

Widespread? Not yet maybe. But this thing has only gotten started. Just wait till it spreads. Or rather metastisizes.

NANCY PELOSI, the Democratic leader in the House, committed the now immortal and ever-relevant observation that Congress was going to have to pass the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, to find out what was in it. That wasn’t assuring then. It grows less so now.

What does the future hold as Obamacare spreads across the land like a bad case of the flu?

Who knows? But a lot of us will have to be signed up for it to find out what’s in it.

Something tells us the nasty little surprises have only begun.