Obamacare = More Freedom and Job Opportunities?

The Congressional Budget Office issued a report saying that up to two million Americans will quit their jobs because they can sign up for a policy under the healthcare exchanges.

Republicans have been quick to characterize this as "two millions jobs will be lost!" But the reality is that corporations are really losing two million employees. "Employees quitting" does not equal "jobs lost."

You could just as easily characterize this as two million jobs that pay well enough to provide health insurance are opening up for the unemployed.

When these people quit the companies that they were being forced to work for just to get health insurance, many of those companies will need to hire additional workers.

Some of the people quitting will move to part-time work. Some will retire early and leave the workforce completely. Some will open entrepreneurial small businesses because they're no longer shackled to the corporate/industrial health care complex.

This could also lead to higher productivity. People locked into jobs for fear of losing health care coverage are probably not the most motivated workers. If they quit, they'll make room for people who actually want to do that job.

The report says that some smaller companies may try to downsize in order to duck under the employee limit for businesses to provide health care. That might cause some short term pain, but in the long run that's what should happen overall.

Companies should not pay for their employees' health care, any more than they pay for food, clothing and housing. The health care mandate is a huge expense that companies in other countries don't have to pay, one that makes American businesses less competitive.

Eliminating the requirement for companies to pay for health insurance should be a goal that everyone can embrace, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It will make healthcare providers more responsive to their actual customers -- rather than their bosses -- put everyone in the country on equal footing when it comes to health care. And it would end the perverse motivation for costs in the health care industry to always go up.