Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts,...

Is Mitt Romney being unfair to the law he inspired? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the key arguments made by opponents to the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is that it will kill jobs. The reasoning is that forcing employers to provide insurance for their employees will raise their costs, and that they'll cover those costs by cutting wages and other compensation, and ultimately by shedding jobs. But is that true?

The nonpartisan Urban Institute decided to find out. It did so by looking at what has happened in Massachusetts, whose health reform law, passed in 2006, is broadly similar. It found no evidence whatever that health care reform, and mandated coverage, killed jobs:

There is no evidence of a more pronounced decline in overall employment in Massachusetts than in the rest of the nation over the 2006-2010 period, nor is there evidence of a more pronounced decline among the small firms, industries, and workers, where such declines would be predicted if health reform had dampened economic growth in the state. Although there are differences in the details between the Massachusetts health reform and the ACA, there are broad similarities that indicate that the impacts could be roughly similar under the ACA. The evidence from Massachusetts would suggest that national health reform does not imply job loss and stymied economic growth.

The Urban Institute first studied whether the Massachusetts law and the federal one were alike enough to draw conclusions from the state's experience. It determined they were. It then looked at trends between 2001 and 2010  in both health insurance coverage and employment, in Massachusetts and in four similar states and in the nation as a whole. It also looked at employment in small businesses as well as large ones, and found no great differences at any level. And it found that "there is no evidence that younger and lower-skilled workers have been more likely to lose employment under health reform in Massachusetts relative to trends in the rest of the nation," nor has there been any disproportionate shift to part-time work. All major employment trends looked pretty much the same in Massachusetts as elsewhere.

Nonetheless, as Talking Points Memo notes in a report on the study, Mitt Romney, the father of the Massachusetts law, issued a statement just last week saying "We can't afford job-killing policies in Obamacare."

Read the Urban Institute's full study here.