Obamacare may have an unintended consequence, say Stephen Myrow and Brandon Barford, partners at research firm Beacon Policy Advisor.
The Affordable Care Act could cause the Fed to delay raising interest rates, they write on CNBC.com. Economists' consensus is that the central bank will move around the middle of next year, although Myrow and Barford see the consensus calling for a March start.
In any case, "during the 2015 tax filing season, millions of low- to moderate-income taxpayers will likely first learn that they exceeded the income eligibility levels for the Obamacare subsidy they received in 2014 and will need to repay the government," the duo says.
"This repayment could result in a sufficiently abrupt and targeted reduction in consumer spending that could delay the Federal Reserve from starting to raise short-term interest rates."
Between 1.1 million and 3.3 million subsidy recipients will probably have to pay back at least part of their windfall to the government, Myrow and Barford write. That should total $1.1 billion to $3.3 billion, they say.
Meanwhile, one negative impact of Obamacare has escaped much attention, says physician Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. That's the migration of healthcare research, development and technology overseas, he writes in The Wall Street Journal.
Annual R&D spending in the United States rose only 2.1 percent on average from 2012 to 2014, down from an average of 6 percent over the prior 15 years.
The sluggish economic recovery over the past five years explains some of the slowdown, Atlas says. "But the economy's weakness has been exacerbated by the negative impact of new taxes and regulations under Obamacare," he writes.
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