Health care costs are finally falling
In May, health care costs fell for the first time in almost four decades, the Wall Street Journal reports. Read more at Counterparties
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Vote could change direction of healthcare reform
Bottles for holding prescription medication rest in a shelf at a pharmacy in New York December 23, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Lucas Jackson
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With most Americans ambivalent about President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul or openly hostile to it, next Tuesday's elections could have a big impact on the reforms, experts said on Wednesday.
Major Republican gains could mean years of hold-ups on implementing the legislation -- but if Democrats manage to prevail against the odds, they may reward their base with even more extensive reforms, Robert Blendon and John Benson of the Harvard School of Public Health said.
They analyzed 17 recent major polls and said they show healthcare is an important but secondary voting issue in this election.
Between 41 percent and 49 percent said health care or health care reform would be extremely important, compared with 55 to 62 percent who consider the economy extremely important, Blendon and Benson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Broken down by party, 67 percent of Democrats said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported the new law, while 72 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote against such a candidate.
Some aspects of the law are universally popular, such as tax breaks for small businesses and expansion of Medicare's prescription drug benefits.
But 65 percent of those polled believe the law will increase the federal debt and 67 believe it will raise their taxes in five years. "These beliefs about the future may or may not be accurate, but they hold sway at the time of the election," Blendon and Benson wrote.
Polls show that 31 percent want reform to go even further -- perhaps adding a public insurance option -- but 41 percent believe Congress should repeal most of the major provisions.
Congress cannot repeal the legislation -- Obama would certainly veto that -- but Republicans could block funding to implement it, Blendon and Benson noted.
EXTENDING REFORMS
But if Democrats keep control of the House and Senate, they will be likely to expand healthcare reform, because their supporters want it.
Independent analysts project Republicans will pick up at least the 39 Democratic seats they need for control of the House of Representatives [ID:nN26176744]. Big gains in the Senate are considered less likely.
A second commentary in the Journal looked at legal challenges to the healthcare reform law.
More than 20 states have joined a suit in Florida and the state of Virginia has filed its own suit.
Earlier this month a U.S. judge upheld the law against a challenge by the Thomas More Law Center in Michigan arguing that the provision requiring Americans to buy coverage by 2014 under threat of penalty was beyond Congress' authority and an unconstitutional tax.
"The fundamental goal of the Affordable Care Act is no less than the preservation of the U.S. health care system," wrote Sara Rosenbaum of George Washington University Medical center in Washington.
"In a country that depends on health insurance to finance care, preservation cannot happen without a comprehensive regulatory scheme that reaches from coast to coast and sets the minimum rules of market entry and operation for health insurers," added Rosenbaum, an expert in health law and policy.
"The glide path to this new system is long and complex, but the law's end point is clear and visionary, and its constitutionality -- at least in this first round -- is incontrovertible."
(Editing by David Storey)
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I have read the tax portions of the bill. This will indeed increase our taxes along with the federal debt.
Here is what is in it. Look these up yourself:
Passed HR3590 bill:
Title IX
-Sec.9015 – Additional 0.90% tax increase on those making over $200k or $250k on families
-Sec.10907 – 10% tax on tanning services
Title IV
-Sec.4375 – $2 tax on self-insured plans “just because”
Senate Republican Committee’s summary.
Passed HR4872 reconcilliation bill:
Title I
-Sec.1002 – $695 fine on individuals without insurance or 2.5% tax on your income if you fail to carry coverage equal to average annual insurance premium after 2015
-Sec.1003 – $2000 fine on companies per employee without insurance
-Sec.1102 – Increased Medicare Advantage rates
Title IX
-Sec.1401 – 40% tax on health insurance plans that exceed $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families
-Sec.1402 – 3.80% capital gains tax increase on those making over $200k or $250k on families
-Sec.1404 – $4,100,000,000 annual taxes on drug manufacturers by 2018 and then $2,800,000,000 thereafter
-Sec.1405 – 2.3% tax on medical device manufacturers
-Sec.1406 – $14,300,000,000 annual taxes on health insurance providers by 2018.
The increased costs for companies will also result in a loss of jobs. The taxes alone on drug companies, insurance providers and medical device companies will result in an estimated $107B more taxes on Americans paying anything for healthcare. That is about a 7.5% increase in what the government collects per year in income tax. ~24 million people will still be without coverage.
It does not get activated for 5 years, because the crooks in Washington wanted to claim a deficit reduction. They can do this because the CBO only estimates out to 10 years and Obamacare does nothing, but collect taxes for the first 5! Original *estimates* were $4 trillion and overnight they magically became $1 trillion. There is the trick…
Obama was elected as a response to what the republicans had done to the country. Six months AFTER Obama took office, republicans were STILL denying that there was a recession.
The day Obama took office, the national debt was just over $9 trillion.
And now, after two years of obfuscation, filibustering, lying, deliberately misinforming the American people, calling the president names like facist, socialist, communist, alien, intellectual snob, elitist……. they have seemingly convinced the American people that they are fit to govern.
If the republicans regain control of the house or the senate or both, we will be the laughing stock of the entire world. We will deserve to become a third-world country – and that’s that the republicans will turn us into. We will become our greatest fear – A third-world country with nuclear weapons.
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