ObamaCare and America's Global Competitiveness, ctd.

It's been a while since I last checked in on the effects of ObamaCare (a moniker that the President supports, btw) on American companies' global competitiveness.  As you may recall, one of the administration's more, ahem, creative arguments in support of passing health care legislation was that it was absolutely essential to securing American companies' continued economic domination (no, seriously).  I, of course, provided the blatantly obvious rebuttal to this silly argument by noting (repeatedly) that it was utterly impossible that 1200 pages of new taxes, spending and regulations were going to somehow supercharge the global competitiveness of US manufacturers and service providers, and that it was far more likely that the new regulations would hurt, not help, American businesses.  Now comes a fantastic depressing new video of CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder explaining just how devastating ObamaCare, and other regulatory adventurism practiced by the executive branch, have been for American businesses (i.e., the people who, you know, create jobs):



The stuff on health care starts at about 1:20, but the entire video is worth your time.  It provides a very clear an concise explanation of how bad regulations and their awful implementation by the agencies like the EPA and the NLRB hamstring America's job creators (something I've also lamented).  My favorite line:

It's very hard to model the costs [of ObamaCare] because the bill was so complex.... We have a national healthcare advisor... that we use, and the range that they gave on our health care costs increasing at CK Restaurants was between 7.3 and 35.1 million dollars.... Their [new] estimate was that it would increase our health care costs by about 18 million dollars.  We spent about 9 million dollars last year building new restaurants; that would be totally wiped out.

Yikes.  Although Pudzer's company operates US restaurants (and thus isn't directly facing foreign competition), the regulatory pains he discusses are similarly felt by American manufacturers and service providers who do regularly compete in, and in some cases rely upon, the global economy.  And until the US government provides a less burdensome and uncertain regulatory environment, all US companies will continue to suffer.

And so will their current - and potential - employees.