By Dana Amihere | Maryland Reporter
ANNAPOLIS — Policy analysts are criticizing UMBC’s Hilltop Institute for its recent study showing the economic growth from the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, because they said it was too narrowly focused on spending and job creation.
Researchers at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, concluded that the new legislation would reduce Maryland’s unemployment rate by almost 1 percent by 2020, creating nearly 27,000 jobs across all sectors, as reported in MarylandReporter.com two weeks ago.
In addition, system reforms including the expansion of Medicaid coverage would funnel more than $18 billion into the state’s economy over six years.
But Marc Kilmer, Maryland Public Policy Institute senior fellow on health care, called the health-care reform study an “incomplete look” at ACA’s effects, because it “focuses (only) on the benefits.”
“When you look at the variety of other things in the new law, you think all this money is going to be pumped into the economy by ACA, but the new money has to come from somewhere,” Kilmer said. “It’s not falling out of the sky. It’s coming from taxes and borrowing which impose a dead-weight loss on the economy.”
Read the complete story at Maryland Reporter.
