Showing posts with label
ACA/Obamacare as an election issue.
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Showing posts with label
ACA/Obamacare as an election issue.
Show all posts
"Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is currently chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee.
Price, an orthopedic surgeon for nearly 20 years before coming to Congress, has represented the northern Atlanta suburbs in the House of Representatives since 2005.
If confirmed by the Senate, Price would likely have a central role in the Republicans' stated plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and design a replacement. He has repeatedly introduced legislation to repeal and replace the ACA and is one of hundreds of Republicans who have voted dozens of times to repeal the federal health care law since it was enacted in 2010. Those efforts either didn't make it to President Obama's desk or were vetoed by him.
As HHS secretary, Price would not only oversee Obamacare as it currently exists, but also run the government's largest social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. He would also have authority over the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other major health agencies." - Trump Chooses Rep. Tom Price, An Obamacare Foe, To Run HHS, npr.org, 11/28/2016
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/28/502566553/trump-chooses-rep-tom-price-an-obamacare-foe-to-run-hhs
“For the 85% of enrollees with lower incomes, federal subsidies make the premiums somewhat more affordable. Those even closer to the poverty line can get additional subsidies that reduce the deductibles, which can run into the thousands of dollars.
But for many middle class Americans -- a single person earning more than $47,520 or a family of four with an income of $97,200 -- the pricey premiums and deductibles mean health care coverage remains out of reach.
"The middle class are getting squeezed," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "They aren't getting subsidies and these deductibles are hard to afford."
This schism is turning Obamacare into another government benefit program for lower- and moderate-income Americans. The typical enrollee has an income of only 165% of the federal poverty level, or $40,000 for a family of four.
The real problem is that health care is very expensive, Levitt said. But most Americans don't realize the true cost because they are shielded by their employers.
Some 150 million people have insurance through work, paying only about $440 a month for a family plan, while employers cover the rest, or about $1,075.” - Is Obamacare really affordable? Not for the middle class, Obamacare is now a tale of two health insurance programs, CNN money, 11/04/2016
Note: The seen and unseen regarding the above, the unseen as it were, might well be found in Director’s Law, political constituency building with other people's money and the backfiring (unintended negative cascading consequences) of the conjunction of both concepts. How so? (1)
Reviewing Director’s Law:
Director's law states that the bulk of public programs are designed primarily to benefit the middle classes but are financed by taxes paid primarily by the upper and lower classes. The empirically derived law was first proposed by economist Aaron Director.
The philosophy of Director's law is that, based on the size of its population and its aggregate wealth, the middle class will always be the dominant interest group in a modern democracy. As such, it will use its influence to maximize the state benefits it receives and minimize the portion of costs it bears. (2) (3)
Hence if in the main and upon normal occasion ACA/Obamacare is viewed as a program to benefit the middle class, then the benefit thereof could easily be considered as: Particular politicos exercising political constituency building with other peoples money. That is, yet another middle class benefit at the expense of other taxpayers which leads to a political constituency wanting the continuation of the benefit and therefore reliance upon (support/voting for) the sponsoring politicos of such program.
The problem then becomes: Much of the middle class, rather than benefiting, are being pummeled by skyrocketing premiums along with high deductibles and high co-insurance payments.
In the end, a middle class benefit (Director’s Law) meaningfully and purposefully deployed as a political constituency building exercise by particular politicos with other people's money, backfires. Backfires as a vast swath of the middle class fails to benefit and actually experiences rising prices.
The supposed political constituency developed by the politico becomes an advisory political constituency.
Notes:
(1) http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director%27s_law
(3) https://www.jstor.org/stable/724835?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
‘President Obama on Friday vetoed legislation to repeal most of his signature health care law, saying the bill would do “harm” to millions of Americans.
The move was widely expected, after Republicans for the first time succeeded in sending an ObamaCare repeal bill to the president’s desk. The legislation that Obama vetoed also would cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
While Congress may try to override, Republicans do not currently have the votes to do so.
Republicans, though, say they met two goals by passing the bill: keeping a promise to voters in an election year, and showing their ability to repeal the health law if a Republican wins the presidency.
“This is the closest we have come to repealing ObamaCare,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday.
As the next step, Ryan wants to work on a proposal to replace the health care law. As he said in a statement Wednesday, the goal is to lay the groundwork for repealing and replacing the law should a Republican win the presidency this November.
“It clears the path to repealing this law with a Republican president in 2017 and replacing it with a truly patient-centered health care system,” he said. “We will not back down from this fight to defend the sanctity of life and make quality health care coverage achievable for all Americans.”’ - Obama vetoes health law repeal bill, foxnews.com, 01/08/2016
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/08/obama-vetoes-health-law-repeal-bill.html
"The omnibus spending bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama delays the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s so-called “Cadillac plan tax” for two years. The new law also weakens the effect of the tax (assuming it’s ever collected) by making it deductible, as noted by my Mercatus Center colleague Brian Blase. I agree with former OMB director Peter Orszag’s observation that the delay may simply be a first instance of a “rolling permanent deferral” of the Cadillac plan tax.
The tax has long been on shaky political ground and the new law considerably reduces the chances of its ever taking effect. It is worth understanding what caused the unraveling of the tax, and what lessons can be drawn from this.
The Cadillac plan tax is (was) a 40% excise tax on the amount by which health insurance plan costs exceeded annual thresholds of $10,200 (individuals) or $27,500 (families), starting in 2018. These thresholds were indexed to grow more slowly than historical health cost growth, so that over time more and more plans would be subject to the tax, producing escalating federal revenues necessary to help fund the ACA’s ambitious health entitlement expansion. A key policy intent of the tax was to offset the damaging effects of the longstanding federal tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), one of which is to drive excess health cost inflation.
Lesson #1: Save before you spend.
Lesson #2: Don’t assume a favorable future political alignment.
Lesson #3: Be transparent.
Lesson #4: Partisan victories can be short-lived.
Lesson #5: Don’t campaign against necessary policy steps."
- Five Lessons of the Cadillac Plan Tax Failure, Economics 21, Manhattan Institute, 12/22/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://economics21.org/commentary/cadillac-tax-obamacare-charles-blahous-12-23-15
“On Dec. 24, 2009, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed President Obama’s healthcare law with a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority, triggering a massive backlash that propelled Republicans to control of the House the following year. On the Senate side, going into Tuesday’s elections, 25 senators who voted for Obamacare were already out or not going be part of the new Senate being sworn in on January.
To be sure, it isn’t fair to attribute all of the turnover in the chamber to Obamacare. Many senators voted for Obamacare and lost re-election battles in which they were hit hard for their support for the law, and other Democrats were forced to retire because they had no hope of getting re-elected given their support for the law. But in some cases — such as John Kerry leaving his seat to become secretary of state, or Robert Byrd passing away — Obamacare clearly had nothing to do with it.
Additionally, some outgoing pro-Obamacare votes were replaced by new Democratic senators.
That having been said, as of this writing, 15 Senators who voted for Obamacare either failed to win reelection or declined to run for reelection and had their seats turned over to Republicans. That number is likely to grow once the results are in from the Senate runoff in Louisiana, which Mary Landrieu is expected to lose.” - 29 senators who voted for Obamacare and won't be part of new Senate, 11/06/2014, washingtonexaminer.com
Note: The link below is to the entire article that produces the exact breakdown of the missing Senators.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/29-senators-who-voted-for-obamacare-and-wont-be-part-of-new-senate/article/2555721
