To the editor:

Ten years ago the definition of a good job would be one that paid fair wages, had decent benefits and allowed you to provide for your family without government entitlements.

Today the definition of a good job can be summed up as one that had a 40-hour work week.

With the advent of Obamacare, a job with a 40-hour work week and/or low cost health benefits is becoming a thing of the past. Many employers are making those 40-hour jobs into 30-hour jobs, making our workforce a bunch of part-timers. How sad is that?

In addition, some large employers, such as UPS, are dropping health coverage altogether for some classes of spouses.

Many unions, who are major supporters of liberal politicians, are worried because they offer health insurance through unusual plans that allow large and small employers to buy coverage as a group. They are concerned that if workers opt out of these health plans they may have less of a reason to belong to the union. There is also scrambling in some local governments who are faced with the choice of dropping employee health coverage or raising taxes.

What’s even more disturbing is that President Obama is now bringing class warfare into the health care issue by edicting exemptions to some of his favorite special interest groups and giving large subsidy benefits to many federal workers. He’s taken an already unpopular law and stuck the “have-nots” noses in it.

Who’s responsible for the mess our government has made of our health system? The blame is not Obama’s alone, a lot of it belongs to those individuals who voted for Obama a second time.

Fully aware that it was a very unpopular health program, these voters gave him the power to make it even worse with his dictatorial edicts, which benefit a chosen few, while ruining one of the best health systems in the world for the rest of us.

They are the real culprits in this debacle.

– Karl Kachadoorian,

Tryon