Major Chicago pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories will be forced to cut 1,900 jobs (more than 2% of their entire workforce) it announced late yesterday afternoon. As Bloomberg notes, these cuts follow almost 9,000 jobs the company cut just last September.
In a statement announcing the cuts, a spokesman explained that Obamacare had already cost the company $200 million in the past year and that the layoffs were “in response to changes in the health- care industry, including U.S. health-care reform and the challenging regulatory environment”. Maybe this time the White House will listen. Up until just two weeks ago, Bill Daley, President Obama’s new Chief of Staff, served as a member of Abbott’s board of directors.
While the President continues to oppose repeal, despite public disapproval, it is increasingly clear that the facts are not on his side. As Heritage reinforced recently in our Case Against Obamacare series, it is hard to study this massive new law and not come away with the realization that it’s a raw deal for the American people. So as Obamacare repeal efforts begin to take shape in the Senate, we can only hope that Obama’s Chief of staff will use his firsthand experience to point this out to his new boss the devastating impact that this law has already had.