The Economic Benefits of the Affordable Care Act

It is great to be back at the Center for American Progress (CAP) with my friend Neera Tanden. CAP has been a powerful advocate for progressive policies, so it is fitting that I am here to discuss the economic benefits of the Affordable Care Act, one of the most significant pieces of progressive legislation in decades-and one that gave me the great opportunity of working closely with Neera. Paul Krugman recently argued that the direct benefits of the Affordable Care Act for the health and financial security of Americans are so large that just establishing that the Affordable Care Act did not do any economic harm would be sufficient to justify it. But I believe we can do even better and today I want to talk about the many ways that the Affordable Care Act has benefited-and will benefit-our economy by expanding health insurance coverage and reforming our health care delivery system in ways that reduce health costs and improve quality of care. But before I get to this affirmative case, it is worth spending a moment reflecting on what the law has not done. During the debate over the law and the years that followed, we heard a stream of predictions that the law would cause economic catastrophe. To put it mildly, these doomsday prophecies have not come to pass. One popular claim has been that the law would be a "job killer." To the contrary, starting with the month the Affordable Care Act became law, our businesses have created 12 million new jobs over 60 months of continuous job growth, the longest streak of private sector job growth on record. And over the last twelve months as the Affordable Care Act's main coverage provisions have begun to have their full effect, we have created 3.2 million private sector jobs, the strongest twelve-month period of private sector job growth since 1998. And, from 2013 to 2014, the unemployment rate declined by 1.2 percentage points, the largest annual decline since 1984.