The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does not appear to have impeded the economic recovery. That's according to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Among other things, Maxim Pinkovskiy, the economist who authored the report, did not find that there was a significant shift away from hiring full-time workers as a way to avoid providing employees with health insurance. The provision of PPACA that requires large employers provide insurance to full-time workers or pay a fine only took effect in the beginning of 2015, meaning that future analysis of its impact might show a more convincing effect.
Indeed, Pinkovskiy makes clear that while he has found no evidence suggesting PPACA has caused job loss or prevented employers from hiring, it's not clear that the economic effect of the policy has been positive or that there won't be more clear negative effects in the future.
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"(T)his should not be taken as a blanket statement that the ACA has improved the labor market, let alone that the welfare impacts of the ACA have been positive overall," he wrote in the article's conclusion.
For one, certain provisions of PPACA still haven't kicked in, such as the Cadillac tax, and the insurance mandate for businesses that employ between 51 and 99 workers.
"While it is heartening that the ACA does not appear to have substantially slowed the recovery or hurt it in its first year of implementation, its long-run impact on the U.S. economy remains to be seen," writes Pinkovskiy.
The fed report comes on the heels of other analyses that suggest that the landmark health law has not dealt the devastating blow to the economy that its opponents predicted.
Last year, opponents of the law were quick to tout a report from the Congressional Budget Office that projected that the economy would shed more than 2 million jobs as a result of the law. While the report was widely cited as evidence that PPACA would hurt the economy, its findings actually suggested that employment would drop because many workers would drop out of the labor market because they wouldn't be dependent on an employer for health insurance.
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