Obamacare and Jobs

Steve Wynn of Vegas casino fame got a lot of press with his diatribe against Obama yesterday.   The point of the rant was that Obama's regime of hyper-regulation and redistribution of wealth is a job-killer:

And I'm telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Just so.   Now the Heritage Foundation has weighed in with a study entitled "Recovery Stalled After Obamacare Passed," detailing the chilling effect the passage of Obamacare had on private sector job-creation.   The contrast between before April 2010 (when Obamacare passed) and after April 2010 is stark:

Ouch!   That's pretty persuasive to me.   Here's the punchline from the report, in the sedate tone of social science:

The economy is experiencing an unusually slow recovery. While the labor market improved steadily from January 2009 to April 2010, it suddenly stalled in May. This coincided with the passage of President Obama’s health care overhaul, which significantly raised both the costs and uncertainty involved for businesses providing employer-sponsored health insurance. Many businesses report that this legislation is holding back hiring. The data suggest that these complaints are not idle.

I'll be blunter.   The difference in private sector job-creation before and after Obamacare passed appears to be about 60,000 jobs a month.   It's about 16 months since then, so we're nearing a difference of 1 million jobs attributable to the passage of Obamacare.   In his vain effort to create his own legacy and to shift America toward a socialist state, Obama has screwed a million Americans out of their livelihoods.