The White House has reportedly delayed another key provision of the Affordable Care Act — one that prevents employers from providing better health care to top executives versus employees.
According to the New York Times, “Tax officials said they would not enforce the provision this year because they had yet to issue regulations for employers to follow.”
President Barack Obama’s landmark health law prohibits employers from discriminating “in favor of highly compensated individuals” when determining benefits or eligibility, the Times reports.
But, as the Times notes, “translating that goal into reality has proved difficult.”
IRS officials reportedly are perplexed at how to define “highly compensated” and are not sure exactly what would qualify as discrimination.
The news comes just days after the White House announced on Tuesday that it would extend the Obamacare enrollment deadline for individuals who have pre-existing conditions.
(Reuters) – Republicans in Congress sought to showcase what they call major security problems with the Obamacare website HealthCare.gov on Thursday, just as U.S. officials ramp up a national campaign to persuade young adults to use the site to enroll in health insurance.
In a public messaging tug-of-war that will likely intensify in coming weeks, the Republican-led House of Representatives targeted the healthcare reform law in three separate oversight hearings. Two were geared toward Republican claims that HealthCare.gov remains vulnerable to hackers more than three months after its botched October 1 rollout.
Democrats accused Republicans of “cherry picking” partial information about the website to try and scare consumers away from it. Later in the day, Obamacare supporters, including federal and state officials, staged a six-hour presentation on YouTube.com intended to drive enrollment among 18-to-34-year-olds.
The administration also disclosed plans for a media promotion campaign during next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and unveiled 30-second ads with former basketball stars Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning.
U.S. officials are eager to boost youth participation, which is widely seen as vital to the success of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.
The administration needs enough young people, who are typically healthier, so that their premiums will help offset costs from older enrollees and prevent insurers from raising their rates.
Officials hope to enroll more than 2.5 million young Americans in coverage by a March 31 deadline. So far they have signed up only about one-fifth of that number, partly due to early technical glitches at HealthCare.gov.
While the performance of the website has greatly improved, the Obama administration is contending with fresh attacks from Republicans eager to highlight the healthcare reform’s flaws, including security questions.
“It seems to defy common sense that a website plagued with functional problems was, in fact, perfectly secure by design,” said Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who presided over one of Thursday’s security hearings.
At another Republican-led hearing, a cybersecurity professional warned that the federal government has failed to implement fixes necessary to protect the HealthCare.gov website from hackers.
“HealthCare.gov is not secure today,” David Kennedy, head of computer security consulting firm TrustedSec LLC, told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
HealthCare.gov is the consumer web portal to a 36-state federal health insurancemarketplace, which offers private insurance, with federally subsidized rates for some consumers. The 14 other states have built their own marketplaces.
Kennedy said “nothing has really changed” since a hearing before the same committee in November when he and three other expert witnesses said they believed the site was not secure and three of them said it should be shut down immediately.
“I don’t understand how we’re still discussing whether the website is insecure or not,” said Kennedy, who worked for the National Security Agency and the U.S. Marine Corps before entering the private sector. “It is insecure – 100 percent.”
Before the hearing, Kennedy told Reuters the government has yet to plug more than 20 vulnerabilities that he and other security experts reported to the government shortly after HealthCare.gov went live on October 1. Hackers could steal personal information, modify data, attack the personal computers of website users and damage the infrastructure of the site, Kennedy said in an interview.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency responsible for HealthCare.gov, said in a statement to Reuters, “There have been no successful security attacks on Healthcare.gov and no person or group has maliciously accessed personally identifiable information from the site.”
CMS said Kennedy’s methodology undermined his findings: “Because this individual had no direct access to the operations of the HealthCare.gov website, the information in the report is based on assumptions, not fact.”
The agency’s information security chief also publicly tried to reassure lawmakers that the site is safe.
The CMS chief information security officer, Teresa Fryer, said the website underwent end-to-end security testing on December 18 and met all industry standards.
“The (federal marketplace) is secure. In many instances, we have gone above and beyond what is required, with layered protection, continuous monitoring and additional penetration testing,” Fryer said before the House Oversight panel.
Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings charged that Republicans were “cherry-picking partial information to promote a narrative that is inaccurate” about the Obamacare website, when its security was “strong and keeps getting stronger”.
Instead of holding ever more hearings on the Obamacare website, lawmakers should be looking into the massive data breach affecting millions at Target Corp, Cummings said at the hearing where CMS’s Fryer appeared.
As the hearings took place, Republicans sought to amplify their anti-Obamacare message by advancing another bill to tweak the law. The legislation, which passed by a 259-154 vote, would require the Obama administration to issue weekly enrollment statistics.
The White House considers the transparency bill another Republican attempt to harass implementation of its healthcare reform. However, 33 Democrats voted for the bill. Last week, the House passed a Republican measure that would require the government to notify consumers in two days if their personal information on HealthCare.gov has been compromised.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Doina Chiacu and Bill Trott in Washington; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Leslie Adler)
This is a excerpt from the documentary “Architecture of Doom.” It shows how the Nazis considered the German population as one body to be healed collectively by the German universal healthcare system (Hitlercare.) The Jews were see as an infection of the population that had to be eradicated.
Progressives were major promoters of eugenics in America in the 1930’s. About 60k people were sterilized by eugenics programs in the US then. Whether there are as ruthless as Hitler, or not, they still want to use universal healthcare to social-engineer an utopia in America.
The next time someone tells you Obamacare isn’t Fascist, then ask them to watch this video. Government should never control healthcare. Healthcare should never be used to “control people.”
Is the ineptitude of ObamaCare’s authors and directors really a function of good old-fashioned government incompetence? Or is a widely ignorant American public being taken in by precisely what members of the radical left WANT to be brought about by the Affordable Care Act? Could the daily disasters–the suspended employer mandate, “honor system” reporting of income, previously unannounced taxes, doctors refusing to treat ObamaCare policy holders, the ludicrous Healthcare.gov website, the baldfaced lies about keeping your insurance and your doctors–could these extraordinary failures actually mean that the rollout of the ACA is proceeding exactly according to plan?
Acquisition of total control over 1/6 of the American economy, along with the absolute power of life and death over the American public–such have been the dreams of left wing politicians for a century. But the direct approach, that of commandeering authority over the healthcare industry, has consistently failed thanks to a suspicious, recalcitrant public and the massive complexity of the task. Ask Hillary Clinton.
But thanks to a Regime willing to lie shamelessly to the public on each and every day, many roadblocks have been successfully navigated. The “Affordable Care Act,” through which the uninsured and previously uninsurable are told they can at last obtain healthcare, has been sold as a Godsend, the only means by which victims of industry greed can secure life-saving service. The ACA has ostensibly incorporated the expertise of insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and healthcare providers across the nation, not threatening to rule or replace them, but to encourage each to do what they do best, all for the benefit of the American people.
Throughout the system, ObamaCare supporters claim to be depending upon rather than assaulting these institutions. ObamaCare minions will suggest they are on the outside looking in as the best and brightest of private enterprise carry the ball. Competition is reducing premiums, states are setting up and running their own ObamaCare exchanges, and the federal government is intruding only reluctantly in states unwilling to provide care for their inhabitants.
Indeed, the Obama Regime and its ObamaCare authors did little more than create mere guidelines. The private sector will make it all work.
This of course is utter nonsense. The authors of ObamaCare deliberately manufactured the most complex system imaginable. They have included thousands of pages of mandates and regulations, all designed to drown insurers in a sea of government red tape, and all for the purpose of making profitability impossible. The failed Healthcare.gov website has made it more difficult for the young and healthy–the very group upon which insurers were told to depend for balancing losses incurred thanks to the forced scrapping of medical underwriting–to sign up for ObamaCare, even if for some obscure reason they might want to!
The penalty for a healthy 20 year old NOT purchasing an ObamaCare policy–$95 or 1% of yearly income. And this can ONLY be collected by the IRS withholding the penalty from an income tax refund. The IRS is NOT permitted the use of leans, threats, or additional interest added to the original amount. No jail time may be incurred. In short, few if any of this “healthy” group, so vitally important to the eventual profitability of insurers, is likely to obtain insurance until they should absolutely NEED it. That, of course, will put them squarely in a class with the rest of those with pre-existing conditions.
The radical left want to introduce single payer, government-run health insurance into the US. In order to do so, the Affordable Care Act must destroy the health insurance industry in the United States, itself going up in flames along with the insurance companies and healthcare providers it takes along with it. At this point–in 18 to 24 months–Barack will ride to the rescue of the American people as he claims his Regime did not want to do it, but is now forced to institute a single payer system so as to save the sick and infirm along with the remainder of an ObamaCare system destroyed by Republican interference and industry greed.
Perhaps even more disgusting than Barack the Liar will be Republicans who have said and done nothing to prevent this massive, additional theft of our liberty.
Obama has dismissed the Constitution in favor of advancing his end game; we in fact, risk losing our Republic at the hands of a narcissistic illegal president.
[H/T Forbes>>M. Northrop Buechner] — Since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, he has changed it five times. Most notably, he suspended the employer mandate last summer. This is widely known, but almost no one seems to have grasped its significance.
The Constitution authorizes the President to propose and veto legislation. It does not authorize him to change existing laws. The changes Mr. Obama ordered in Obamacare, therefore, are unconstitutional. This means that he does not accept some of the limitations that the Constitution places on his actions. We cannot know at this point what limitations, if any, he does accept.
Jon McNaughton
By changing the law based solely on his wish, Mr. Obama acted on the principle that the President can rewrite laws and—since this is a principle—not just this law, but any law. After the crash of Obamacare, many Congressmen have implored the President to change the individual mandate the same way he had changed the employer mandate, that is, to violate the Constitution again.
The main responsibility the Constitution assigns to the President is to faithfully execute the Laws. If the President rejects this job, if instead he decides he can change or ignore laws he does not like, then what?
The time will come when Congress passes a law and the President ignores it. Or he may choose to enforce some parts and ignore others (as Mr. Obama is doing now). Or he may not wait for Congress and issue a decree (something Mr. Obama has done and has threatened to do again).
Mr. Obama has not been shy about pointing out his path. He has repeatedly made clear that he intends to act on his own authority. “I have the power and I will use it in defense of the middle class,” he has said. “We’re going to do everything we can, wherever we can, with or without Congress.” There are a number of names for the system Mr. Obama envisions, but representative government is not one of them.
If the President can ignore the laws passed by Congress, of what use is Congress? The President can do whatever he chooses. Congress can stand by and observe. Perhaps they might applaud or jeer. But in terms of political power, Congress will be irrelevant. Probably, it will become a kind of rubber-stamp or debating society. There are many such faux congresses in tyrannies throughout history and around the globe.
Mr. Obama has equal contempt for the Supreme Court. In an act of overbearing hubris, he excoriated Supreme Court Justices sitting helplessly before him during the 2010 State of the Union address—Justices who had not expected to be denounced and who were prevented by the occasion from defending themselves. Mr. Obama condemned them for restoring freedom of speech to corporations and unions.
Ignoring two centuries of practice, President Obama made four recess appointments in January 2012, when the Senate was not in recess. Three courts have found that his appointments were unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case. If the Supreme Court finds against him, what will Mr. Obama do?
We can get a hint by looking at how other parts of his Administration have dealt with Court decisions they did not like.
The Attorney General’s Office is the branch of government charged with enforcing federal laws. After the Supreme Court struck down the key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Attorney General Holder announced that he would use other provisions of the act to get around the Court’s decision.
The Supreme Court has defined the standard for sexual harassment as “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” behavior to a “reasonable person.” In open defiance of that ruling, the Obama Department of Education has declared a new definition of sexual harassment for colleges, that is, “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including “verbal conduct,” even if it is not objectively offensive—thus reinforcing the reign of terror over sex on college campuses. If a young man’s request for a date turns out to be unwelcome, he is guilty of sexual harassment by definition.
The lack of respect for the Supreme Court by the Obama administration is manifest. They feel bound by the Court’s decisions only if they agree with them. If they disagree, it is deuces wild; they will embrace any fiction that nullifies the Court’s decision.
The direction in which Mr. Obama is taking us would make possible the following scenario. A Republican Congress is elected and repeals Obamacare over a Democratic President’s veto. The President refuses to enforce the repeal. The Supreme Court rules that the President’s refusal is unconstitutional. The President denounces that ruling and refuses to be bound by it.
If the President persists in rejecting all authority other than his own, the denouement would depend on the side taken by the Armed Forces. Whatever side that was, our national self-esteem would be unlikely to recover from the blow of finding that we are living in a banana republic.
The shocking fact is that our whole system of representative government depends on it being led by an individual who believes in it; who thinks it is valuable; who believes that a government dedicated to the protection of individual rights is a noble ideal. What if he does not?
Mr. Obama is moving our government away from its traditional system of checks and balances and toward the one-man-rule that dominates third world countries. He has said that he wants afair country—implying that, as it stands, the United States is not a fair country—an unprecedented calumny committed against a country by its own leader.
What country does he think is more fair than the United States? He has three long years left in which to turn us into a fair country. Where does he intend to take us?
Mr. Obama got his conception of a fair country from his teachers. A fair country is an unfree country because it is regimented to prevent anyone from rising too high. Their ideal is egalitarianism, the notion that no one should be any better, higher, or richer than anyone else. Combined with a dollop of totalitarianism, egalitarianism has replaced communism as the dominant ideal in our most prestigious universities. Mr. Obama and his colleagues are the product of those universities, and they have their marching orders.
The most important point is that Mr. Obama does not consider himself bound by the Constitution. He could not have made that more clear. He has drawn a line in the concrete and we cannot ignore it.
Those who currently hold political office, and who want to keep our system of government, need to act now. Surely, rejection of the Constitution is grounds for impeachment and charges should be filed. In addition, there are many other actions that Congressmen can and should take—actions that will tell Mr. Obama that we have seen where he is going and we will not let our country go without a fight.
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government had been created. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.”
We are losing it. If Mr. Obama’s reach for unprecedented power is not stopped, that will be the end. Everyone who values his life and liberty should find some way to say “No!” “Not now!” “Not yet!” “Not ever!”
[H/T Story Leak]: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) wasn’t even read by most of Congress before it became law!
The ongoing Obamacare debacle has raised huge red flags across the political landscape. Everyone — Republican, Democrat and Independent — is talking (and fretting) about the profoundly flawed Affordable Care Act because it adversely affects everyone.
The lead up to the passing of the ACA also holds many secrets which attest to why Obamacare should have never become law. Then there is this infamous quote by the House Speaker at the time of its passing:
“BUT WE HAVE TO PASS THE [HEALTH CARE] BILL SO THAT YOU CAN FIND OUT WHAT’S IN IT….
— Spoken by a true liberal nut-job, Nancy Pelosi in March 2010 when she was Speaker of the House
Talk about an engineered train wreck. You can’t make this stuff up!
Having become effective during the ongoing recession the ACA has served to further burden an already weary and financially broken middle class. The 48 million uninsured still remain basically uninsured because of the barriers to entry due to the extraordinarily dysfunctional website. As of this late date, just over 100, 000 have enrolled in Obamacare.
As for businesses, both medium-sized and small, the obstacles are as logistically daunting as they are cost-prohibitive. Obamacare will end up bankrupting more small businesses than any other legislation in US history. Truly, the ACA will prove to be the most expensive piece of legislation enacted at perhaps the worst possible time — right in the middle of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
How does the government get away with imposing a fine on the poorest because they can’t afford to purchase Obamacare?
When the US Federal Government levies a fine against those in society who can’t even navigate the Obamacare website, much less successfully enroll, something is very wrong. VERY wrong! Especially when the same folks are too indigent to pay for this costly health insurance coverage in the first place!
The inherent injustice of this profound legislative flaw really makes peoples’ blood boil. The longer this piece of the law stays in force, the longer it will serve as the fatal Achilles Heel of Obama and his administration. Potentially this aspect of Obamacare alone will bring down the entire Affordable Care Act … permanently.
When this is all over, everyone in the Obama Administration better have their catastrophic coverage in place because this unprecedented political, economic and social saga is not going to be a happy ending! Charging the poorest, as well as the soon-to-be bankrupted middle class, an annual fine for not signing up for what amounts to unlawful legislation in the first place?!
The Tea Party is absolutely right on Obamacare
The confluence of so many negative co-factors and highly consequential outcomes associated with the implementation of Obamacare has the potential of transforming the USA into an Obamanation — one that is thoroughly broke, busted and disgusted. This observation is not meant in any way to be satirical or humorous. The more one looks at the far-reaching social costs and economically destructive aspects of the ACA, the more it becomes apparent that it MUST be repealed!
Just because the Republican (really the Tea Party types; not the RINOs) side of the fence is the one trumpeting the many weaknesses of this law, doesn’t mean that those deficiencies aren’t absolutely true. Unfortunately, the Democrat side of the aisle continues to politicize the whole matter so that the real systemic problems are never substantively addressed.
In fact Obamacare has so many systemic fatal flaws, inherent economic inefficiencies and pervasive procedural defects that the dangers have become quite evident, especially its implementation right in the midst of an intractable and deep recession. It ever there was a time NOT to enact such an extremely unpopular law, this is it. Therefore, many ask the question: Was this a planned social cataclysm?
The HealthCare.gov WEBSITE is the elephant in the living room!
Everyone and their brother … and their sister … and their mother … and their father knew from the get-go that the Obamacare website was a total train wreck waiting to happen. And yet, they proceeded as though everything was okay. They knew it wasn’t okay, but worked triple time to convince the nation that all was well.
Instead of working overtime to fix HealthCare.gov, they spent all their time lobbying Congress and everyone else in site about the virtues of keeping to the implementation schedule. It’s as though they wanted to make sure the train wreck happened at the right intersection. Yes, they were that determined to make this disaster happen, and happen within a certain time frame?!
Why did the Obama Administration do their damndest to hide the obvious inadequacies of this law?
This strategy to obfuscate and obscure the realities of the ACA must be looked at very closely. Therein lies the true purpose behind this most complex, complicated and convoluted law.
That the Health Insurance Companies wrote much of the actual law to somehow fill their coffers is an obvious conclusion, particularly in view of the many canceled policies which are now being replaced with much more expensive contracts. However, what appears to be the case is that there are motivations at work which exist far outside the normal context of unconscionable corporate enrichment.
The critical step in the analysis of why Obamacare was force-fed to the American people, and then designed to implode, will have to take place sooner than later. That is, of course, if we are to avoid becoming an Obamanation!
[H/T Breitbart]: The Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, has taken a toll on President Barack Obama’s standing in the polls. The latest Gallup poll now shows Obama’s approval rating at just 39%.
First, the Chronology of the Obamacare Lie straight up:
Here are seven Obamacare facts dragging down the president’s approval rating:
1. Obamacare will cost taxpayers $1.8 to $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years. Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates Obamacare will cost American taxpayers $1.798 trillion. The Republican Senate Budget Committee says CBO’s numbers rely on overly optimistic economic assumptions and puts the true cost at $2.6 trillion.
2. At least 3.5 million Americans have already received health insurance cancelation notices. According to data compiled by the Associated Press, 3.5 million Americans have received notices from their health insurance companies that their plans will be canceled due to Obamacare–something Obama explicitly promised would not occur. Worse, the Associated Press’s calculations are expected to rise, as they are based on data for just half of the states.
3. The now-infamous Obamacare website cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 billion to build. A Bloomberg analysis finds that the broken Obamacare website and its supporting IT infrastructure cost American taxpayers over $1 billion.
4. The New York Times says Obamacare “will leave out two-thirds of poor blacks and single mothers.” The Times’analysis concluded that Obamacare “will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help.”
5. Tens of thousands of worker hours and jobs have already been cut due to Obamacare. Local stories of employers slashing jobs and worker hours have become common since Obamacare went into effect. As of Oct. 17, Investor’s Business Daily’s running Obamacare scorecard listed at least 351 employers who have cut jobs or hours in response to Obamacare.
6. Premiums will rise by 99% for young men and between 55% to 62% for young women. As CBS News has reported, an analysis by the Manhattan Institute finds that, despite the Affordable Care Act’s name, health insurance premiums will rise dramatically under Obamacare for young men and women–the individuals Obamacare relies on to fund coverage and subsidies for older, sicker Americans.
7. Obama promised no less than 23 times that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” NY Magazine compiled 23 video clips of Obama promising that Obamacare would not result in Americans losing their current health care insurance.
President Barack Obama signed Obamacare into law on March 23, 2010.
TheBlaze reported: The White House on Tuesday seemed cold to the possibility of delaying the medical device tax, even amid mounting speculation it will be the key to a final deal on raising the debt ceiling and ending the partial shutdown of the government.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration is not interested in discussing the tax in the current context of negotiating a deal.
“Discussion of the medical device tax or other elements within the Affordable Care Act that lawmakers want to talk about in order to improve the Affordable Care Act we are willing to have,” Carney told reporters. “But not in the context of or as ransom for opening the government. That is why a provision like that appears in a proposal that seems to be going nowhere by House Republicans because it’s an effort to try to buy votes from tea party Republicans who shut this government down in the first place.”
The medical device tax is part of Obamacare, and amounts to a 2.3 percent levy on manufacturers of medical devices such as pacemakers. crutches and prosthetics.
The House GOP voted to ditch the tax, and the Democrat-controlled Senate voted to repeal it by 79-20. While the House GOP has asked for a repeal, but Senate Majority Harry Reid has insisted on a “clean” continuing resolution and debt ceiling increase.
Carney added, “We’re not going to pay a ransom, from the American people to the Tea Party.”
“When it comes to the medical device tax, I think it’s important to note, that those who portray themselves as paragons of fiscal responsibility and discipline often propose making that change without acknowledging the fact that it would raise the deficit,” Carney said.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with House Democrats at the White House Tuesday, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) continued to work on details for an agreement.
Breitbart reported: Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) tweeted out a photo at 12:09 AM EST showing the Obamcare exchanges website was down, nine minutes after various federal government offices shut down and the Affordable Care Act exchanges went into effect.
Shutdown or no shutdown, we are ready to go, to start enrolling people tomorrow,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said at a press conference Monday. “We are about to make some history and some very positive history for lots of families around the country.”
According to ABC News:
Sebelius said about 52 percent of HHS employees will be deemed unessential and furloughed, but that will not affect any workers in the call centers or ”navigators” tasked with helping people to sign up. Most of the funding for the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was provided in the law so it would not be affected even if the federal government shuts down.
Sebelius did say it was “hard to tell” how a prolonged shutdown could affect implementation of the law down the road, though.
“That begins to look more serious the longer it takes,” Sebelius said, noting that much of HHS’ operations will be covered under “mandatory money.”
She also acknowledged that there were bound to be “glitches” when the new insurance marketplaces come online Tuesday morning, and people begin to sign up. HHS is running all or part of the marketplace exchanges in 36 states; the others will be handled by each state individually. She compared that possibility to Apple’s latest software upgrade, which asked users to download an additional update to fix problems with the initial update.
The House voted later in the night on procedural measures in regards to the continuing resolution. Republicans are seeking to appoint a “conference committee” to come up with a funding measure. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded to that idea saying, “We will not go to conference with a gun to our head.”
TheBlaze reported: While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) filibustered the funding of Obamacare, two Democratic presidents claimed the law is making health insurance cheaper for individuals and actually reduce deficit spending.
President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton spoke in a talk show like setting Tuesday in New York in a forum about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sponsored by the Clinton Global Initiative.
“You remember our president said our structural deficit would disappear if we had a consistent health care system in terms of cost with the French and Germans,” Clinton said.
“In the last three years, since we started doing this, rise in health care costs has dropped for three years in a row for the first time in 50 years,” Clinton later added. “Before that, the costs were going up at three times the rate of inflation for a decade.”
Obama praised the law for being fiscally responsible, arguing that costs will shrink and thus so will government expenditures.
“We’ve raised enough money to pay for providing health insurance for those who don’t have it through providing tax credits in the market place and at the same time, because we’re driving down costs, we actually end up saving a little money,” Obama said. “It is a net reduction of our deficit. The irony of those who are talking about repealing Obamacare because of it’s so wildly expensive is if they actually repealed the law, it would add to the deficit.”
But a non-partisan government report released last week said the slower rate of increased costs is due to the slow economy. The National Health Expenditures Report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) states that health care costs will be on the upswing.
“By 2022, the ACA is projected to reduce the number of uninsured people by 30 million, add approximately 0.1 percentage-point to average annual health spending growth over the full projection period, and increase cumulative health spending by roughly $621 billion,” the report states.
“Health spending growth through 2013 is expected to remain slow because of the sluggish economic recovery, continued increases in cost-sharing requirements for the privately insured, and slow growth for public programs,” the CMS report adds. “These factors lead to projected growth rates of near 4 percent through 2013.”
The increase will be in part because of Obamacare and anticipated economic growth, the report says.
“However, improving economic conditions, combined with the coverage expansions in the Affordable Care Act and the aging of the population, drive faster projected growth in health spending in 2014 and beyond,” the report continued. “Expected growth for 2014 is 6.1 percent, with an average projected growth of 6.2 percent per year thereafter. Over the 2012–22 period, national health spending is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.8 percent. By 2022 health spending financed by federal, state, and local governments is projected to account for 49percent of national health spending and to reach a total of $2.4 trillion.”
A recent Forbes magazine analysis found the law would increase health care costs by $7,450 for the average family of four.
In the face of a potential government shutdown over funding the law the president is going on the offensive to change public opinion on the law. Part of that offensive is turning to the politician who was instrumental in his 2012 reelection.
Obama was able to do what Clinton could not, which was push a massive health care overhaul through Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress shot down the Clinton-backed plan in 1994.
Obama reminded the former president of his failure bringing up the well known “Harry and Louise” ad campaign that helped sway public opinion against the Clinton universal health care plan.
“Sometimes people come up to me and say ‘well, if this is such a good deal, how come the polls show it’s not popular,” Obama said. One of the things that you and I both know is that when it comes to health care, there is no more personal and intimate decision, and this is something that people really care about. And frankly, the devil you know is often better than the devil you don’t know. That’s what Harry and Louise were all about back in the 90s. It was scaring people with the prospect of change.”
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