The president’s health law also unintentionally operates to prevent the smallest companies from growing. Owners have a strong incentive to stay below the law’s 50-employee threshold at which they are required to provide health insurance.

Here the U.S. is following in the footsteps of France and other countries with sclerotic economies. Earlier this year, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a study of the French regulatory burden on businesses with more than 50 employees.

The authors found that “firms will optimally choose to remain small to avoid the regulation, so the size distribution becomes distorted with ‘too many’ firms just below the size threshold and ‘too few’ firms just above it.” The report also noted that “some of those firms just below the cutoff” have, thanks to the regulation, “been prevented from growing to their optimal size.”

ObamaCare will have other consequences. Today, employers with so-called self-funded health plans act as their own insurer, collecting premiums and paying claims filed by employees. In 1999, 44% of workers receiving employer-provided health coverage were in such plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Employer Health Benefits Survey. Today, 61% are.