Republicans use job market data to launch fresh attacks on Obamacare

Republican opponents of US president Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law have seized on an independent report that shows it would encourage Americans to work less, to launch fresh attacks on the legislation.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that about 2.5 million Americans would give up jobs, work fewer hours or stop looking for work altogether by 2024 because of the benefits they will receive under the so-called Obamacare legislation.

The independent office, which supplies economic data to Congress, said that lower- paid workers would be the most affected by changes that will start taking effect from 2017 and estimated that the law providing cheaper health insurance would cut total workers' pay by about 1 per cent from 2017 to 2024.

Employees will be discouraged from working because subsidies that help lower-paid workers buy expensive health insurance will be phased out and taxes will increase on take-home pay, the office said.

Businesses may also decide to reduce the number of full-time staff to stay below the 50-worker threshold at which they will face a penalty if they do not offer insurance, the analysis found.

House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said that "the middle class was being squeezed in this economy" and that this report showed that Obamacare was "making it worse".

The White House stressed that the report's findings showed that most of the changes would come from workers making voluntary changes in employment rather than businesses cutting jobs.

"This is a choice on a part of workers," said Jason Furman, chairman of the Obama administration's economic advisory council.

"I have no doubt if, for example, we got rid of Social Security [social welfare payments] and Medicare [health benefits for the elderly], there are many 95-year-olds who would chose to work more to avoid potentially starving or to give themselves the opportunity to get healthcare. I don't think anyone would say that's a compelling argument to eliminate Social Security and Medicare."