Uncertainty and Health Insurance Reform - The New York Times

June 13, 2012, 3:53 pm By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

Mitt Romney said on the campaign trail in Florida yesterday that President Obama?s health care reform law is hurting small businesses and that Mr. Obama is oblivious to the problem. ?You have to scratch your head about that,? Mr. Romney said.

Well, gosh, yes you do. Or at least you would if it were true.

As Brad DeLong reported on his blog, Mr. Romney?s comment was ?based on a local interview Obama gave in Iowa, in which the president was told by a reporter that a local company had closed and was moving jobs to Wisconsin because of Obamacare.? Mr. Obama was incredulous, and that, I suppose, was the source of Mr. Romney?s head scratching.

It turns out, however, that the company, Nemschoff Chairs, which makes furniture for waiting rooms, did not close because of health care reform. ?We never said health care reform is the reason we?re closing and consolidating that operation,? Mark Schurman, a spokesman for Nemschoff?s parent company told The Washington Post?s Greg Sargent. ?The issue is not the administration?s proposed reform. The issue is there is no certainty as to what reform is going to look like.?

Mr. Schurman cited the pending decision from the Supreme Court regarding the reform act?s constitutionality. ?Were there no ongoing debate there would be no uncertainty,? he said.

Mr. Schurman raises an important point ? other than Mr. Romney?s habit of neglecting the truth.

Republicans love to kvetch about ?uncertainty? ? employers? uncertainty about the economy, for instance.? On his blog recently, Paul Krugman took apart a research paper purportedly showing that ?policy uncertainty? is restraining the economy. And House Speaker John Boehner has claimed that uncertainty over the future of the Bush tax cuts is hurting business.

About the only ?uncertainty? they don?t talk about is the status of health care reform.

That?s because this particular uncertainty was entirely manufactured by Republicans ? who began plotting to undo the Affordable Care Act by re-legislating it in the courts before the ink was dry on Mr. Obama?s signature.

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