Obamacare.....From those who have to those who don't have - Page 8

Obamacare mirrors Romneycare.

If you you get too scared, kieth, you can always move to Iran and join people like minded.

Good one joanro!  One of my biggest concerns with Obamacare is for my elderly parents who are in their late 70's and in good health.  If they are diagnosed with cancer, will they receive treatment?  I understand the need for doing away with preexisting conditions since my 22 yr old son who has one year left in college has ulcerative colitis.  He is covered under our plan and will soon be out on his own and getting his own insurance.  However, we should not be forced to purchase something by our government.   One more freedom taken away from us by big government.

" the scary part is that we let these people vote...and breed!" kieth, how about giving us a LIST of exactly who "these people" are that you feel should be denied their civil rights. WE can call it "KIETH'S LIST".

Romney: And perhaps most troubling of all, Obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor.

The health care law does set new minimum benefits packages, but that’s more a matter of coming between patients and their insurance companies, rather than patients and their doctors.

Many Republicans have claimed the law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board will lead to a rationing of patient care. But as we have written repeatedly, the purpose of the 15-member panel of doctors and medical professionals, economists and health care management experts, and representatives for consumers is to find ways to slow the growth in Medicare spending.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act explicitly states that IPAB “shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums … increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co-payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.” (See page 490.) The board’s recommendations, furthermore, will go before Congress, where they can be replaced with alternative cuts or rejected outright by a three-fifths majority.

And again, the health care law doesn’t come close to establishing a government-run system like those of Britain or Canada. While Medicaid will be expanded to more people, most Americans will continue to get their insurance through a private carrier. To the dismay of many liberals, a proposal to include a government-run “public option” to private health insurance was dropped during the legislative process.

Factcheck.org



 

 

Romney on Raising Taxes

Romney blamed the law for raising taxes and cutting Medicare, two claims that require further explanation.

Romney: Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion.

It’s certainly true that the health care law would raise taxes on some Americans, particularly those with higher incomes. The law includes a Medicare payroll tax of 0.9 percent on income over $200,000 for individuals or $250,000 for couples, and a 3.8 percent tax on investment income for those earning that much. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the biggest chunk of revenue — $210.2 billion — comes from those taxes.

There are other taxes in the health care law — including an excise tax on the manufacturers of certain medical devices and on indoor tanning services. The health care law included $437.8 billion in tax revenue over 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation‘s calculations. Republicans tend to add in fees on individuals who don’t obtain health insurance (which the Supreme Court now agrees can be considered taxes) and businesses that don’t provide it to bump that up to about $500 billion.

Some taxes, such as those on medical devices, may or may not be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, but a large majority of Americans would not see any direct tax increase from the health care law.

Factcheck.org


 

"If you you get too scared, kieth, you can always move to Iran and join people like minded."

Because you served this country?

Cuts Medicare by $500 Billion?

Romney: Obamacare cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion.

As we have written many times, the law does not slash the current Medicare budget by $500 billion. Rather, that’s a $500 billion reduction in the future growth of Medicare over 10 years, or about a 7 percent reduction in growth over the decade. In other words, Medicare spending would continue to rise, just not as much. The law stipulates that guaranteed Medicare benefits won’t be reduced, and it adds some new benefits, such as improved coverage for pharmaceuticals.

Most of those savings come from a reduction in the future growth of payments to hospitals and other providers (not physicians), and a reduction in payments to private Medicare Advantage plans to bring those payments in line with traditional Medicare. (MA plans have been paid more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.)

And it assumes they actually happen. There’s good reason to think that some of those reductions won’t be implemented. The law calls for cuts in the future growth of reimbursement payments to hospitals and other health care providers — that accounts for $219 billion of the Medicare savings in the law. But Congress has consistently overridden similar scheduled cuts in payments to doctors. 

Kills Jobs?

Romney: Obamacare is a job-killer. Businesses across the country have been asked what the impact is of Obamacare. Three-quarters of those surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce said Obamacare makes it less likely for them to hire people.

As we have written before, claims about the health care law killing jobs are overblown.

This has been a standard line of attack for Republicans — one that was formalized in a January 2011 House bill titled “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”

It’s true that the amount of labor in the economy would be reduced by “a small amount,” about half a percent, according to the CBO. That currently equals about 675,000 jobs. But the jobs would not be lost or killed. Most of those workers would have the “financial resources” — because of the subsidies provided by the law — to retire or reduce their hours, the CBO says.

Now, CBO also said that some businesses seeking to avoid paying for insurance could hire more part-time workers, rather than full-time employees. And John Sheils, senior vice president of The Lewin Group, has estimated that 150,000 to 300,000 low-wage jobs could be lost. But that estimate does not include the potential for job increases in the health and insurance industries. Overall, Sheils told us there would be a “small net job loss.”

Romney cites a recent online survey to support his claim that the law is a “job-killer.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce conducted an online survey in late March and early April, and 1,339 executives at companies with fewer than 500 employees and revenues of less than $25 million participated. The chamber, which opposes the health care law and has run numerous TV ads attacking it, reported that 73 percent said the health care law is “an obstacle to growing their business and hiring more employees.”

That statistic was based on an online, opt-in survey of small-business executives. A press release from the Chamber of Commerce about the survey carries a large caveat: “This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.” In other words, the chamber can’t be sure it’s a representative sample of small-business executives.

Those kinds of surveys can be useful for marketing research purposes, said Scott Keeter, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center and the most recent past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. “But from the point of view of public policy decisions, they tend not to be given much credence.”

“The bottom line is that surveys that have self-selected samples don’t have any known relation to the target group [in this case small-business owners],” Keeter said. “As a result, it is difficult, if not impossible, to know what kind of weight to give this.”

That is why, Keeter noted, that major news organizations like the Washington Post, New York Times and ABC News have strict policies prohibiting the reporting of such surveys.