Health Care News
Medicare Roundup 10/12: Setting the Record Straight
In recent weeks, liberal politicians, editorialists, and policy analysts have vigorously attacked reform of Medicare based on a defined contribution financing. In fact, this approach to reforming Medicare has a long bipartisan tradition, going back to the 1980s and Representatives Richard Gephardt (D–MO) and David Stockman (R–MI). In fact, much of this criticism is distorted, misleading, or just plain wrong.
Here are some articles that set the record straight:
Commentary:
Obama’s Medicare Cuts Will Affect Benefits (Bob Moffit)
National Review Online, 10/12/12
“Question: If you cut funding for benefits, will you then affect persons dependent upon those benefits? Of course you will. Financing directly affects the quantity and quality of the benefits available to the beneficiaries.”
Vice Presidential Debate: True/False Quiz on Medicare (Alyene Senger)
The Heritage Foundation, 10/12/12
“During the debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Representative Paul Ryan, several claims were made about Medicare. Some of these were true, others false.”
Health Care News
Vice Presidential Debate: True/False Quiz on Medicare
During the debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Representative Paul Ryan, several claims were made about Medicare. Some of these were true, others false. See which ones you can guess right:
Biden: “We saved $716 billion and put it back, applied it to Medicare.”
False. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obamacare cuts Medicare by $716 billion and uses that money to fund new spending under Obamacare. It does not strengthen Medicare at all. (For all of the “fact checkers” out there, these are across-the-board administrative cuts based on a specific formula. They do not target waste, fraud, or abuse. They come from Medicare Advantage (MA), hospital services, nursing homes, and more. For a full list, click here.)
Ryan: “They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, turning Medicare into a piggybank for Obamacare. Their own actuary from the Administration came to Congress and said one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business as a result of this.”
True. According to the Medicare Actuary, “providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable and, absent legislative intervention, might end their participation in the program (possibly jeopardizing access to care for beneficiaries). Simulations by the Office of the Actuary suggest that roughly 15 percent of Part A providers [hospitals and nursing homes] would become unprofitable within the 10-year projection period as a result of the productivity adjustments.”
Health Care News
LIVE BLOG: Biden, Ryan Square Off in Vice Presidential Debate
Tonight at Centre College in Danville, KY, Vice President Joe Biden squares off against Representative Paul Ryan in their one and only encounter on the national stage. Both domestic and foreign policy topics are on the agenda for the vice presidential debate. Heritage is streaming it live and has a team of experts reacting on our Debate 2012 page.
Heritage’s policy experts are closely following every word of the vice presidential debate between Vice President Biden and Representative Paul Ryan. They are reacting instantly to the wide range of policy issues being discussed. The following is a compilation of their analysis.
Health Care News
Urban Institute Claims Wages and Other Benefits to Be Reduced Under Obamacare
Recent analysis by the Urban Institute says that Obamacare has “a negligible impact on total employer-sponsored coverage and its costs.” But a closer look at the results of the study uncovers some other important points:
- Two-thirds of employees observe decreases in wages while their employers deal with increasing costs. The Urban Institute claims that mid-size firms will see spending per person increase by 4.6 percent, while large firms will see spending increases by 0.3 percent per person. According to the U.S. Census, this accounts for 65.1 percent of employees—or roughly 79 million—in the U.S. who are employed by medium- or large-size firms. The study suggests: “Any increase in employers’ health-related costs will be offset by decreases in other compensation—whether wages or other benefits.” This means that individuals in mid- and large-size firms will receive less in take-home wages (or other benefits) and pay a greater proportion of their compensation to health care due to Obamacare.
- The study does not take into account a “wage floor.” The study assumes that adjustments to compensation can occur in benefits and wages for all workers, but there are instances where, if wages and benefits are already low, they could not be lowered any further to pay for increases in health care costs. We already observe service industries trying new methods through moving workers from full- to part-time employment in order to avoid increased Obamacare costs.
Health Care News
SLIDESHOW: Obamacare’s Impact—in Pictures
As health care becomes an increasingly debated topic, it is critically important for every American to understand the impact of Obamacare. The Heritage Foundation’s newly updated “Obamacare in Pictures: Visualizing the Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” shows through charts and graphs Obamacare’s far-reaching negative effects on all Americans. (continues below slideshow)
Obamacare in Pictures: Visualizing the Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act from The Heritage Foundation
Here are a few examples of what the chart series depicts:
- Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare. Obamacare cut $716 billion out of the Medicare program to pay for new spending in Obamacare. These cuts come from Medicare Advantage, hospice services, nursing homes, and more. Taking this money out of Medicare will have serious implications on seniors’ ability to access care. For instance, the Medicare Actuary predicts that by 2017, 50 percent of the seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage—7.4 million—will have to leave their private plans and move into traditional Medicare—which offers less generous benefits, no cap on catastrophic costs, and separate plans for drug coverage.
Health Care News
Medicare and Seniors: Answering the $6,400 Question
Opponents to Medicare reform have been making plenty of erroneous claims about Medicare premium support lately, one of the worst being that Representative Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) premium-support model, co-authored by Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR), would cost future seniors an extra $6,400 a year. This claim is simply false.
Buried beneath the wild and scary allegations are the facts, which Heritage expert Rea Hederman details in his recent paper “Why Medicare Premium Support Would Not Cost Future Beneficiaries $6,400 More.”
Health Care News
Top 5 Obamacare Promises to Remember
Remember when former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) told the American people that “we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it”?
Well, it’s been over two years since the enactment of Obamacare, and we’ve found out a lot. Not only are the provisions currently in place falling short; the promises made about the health care law look to be broken. Here are five of them.
1. The law won’t raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.
Obamacare includes over 18 new taxes (including the individual mandate) that will hit the middle class. These taxes come in all forms: on insurers, prescription drug manufacturers, medical device makers, and even tanning salons. Of course, the Administration would be quick to point out that none of these taxes is on individuals. But common sense tells us that these taxes will be passed on to the consumer.
As a result of the Supreme Court decision, the individual mandate is now a tax and one that the Administration can’t run away from. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office shows that nearly 70 percent of the individual mandate will be paid for by those earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level.
Health Care News
Chart of the Week: Poor, Middle Class Hit by Obamacare Mandate Tax
With campaign season in full tilt, Americans are being inundated with rhetoric regarding the various tax proposals touted by President Obama and Governor Romney.
Given that these discussions usually involve paeans to the middle class and promises to keep their tax rates low, one tax in partcular has received surprisingly little attention: the “penalty” levied on all Americans who do not buy health insurance.
As shown in the chart above, this new tax – defined as such by the Supreme Court, which ruled it constitutional under Congress’s taxing power – hammers not just the middle class, but roughly 600,000 Americans whose incomes fall below the federal poverty line, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.
Heritage health care expert Alyene Senger explained the distribution of the tax in a recent Foundry post:
Despite claims made by Obamacare’s advocates that the law will help middle- and low-income Americans, CBO’s table reveals that the distribution of the tax falls heavily on those making less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL)—meaning the majority of this new tax falls on the very people the law was supposed to help. For instance, a family of four making about $24,600 per year, the projected FPL in 2016, could be subject to this egregious tax penalty.
Health Care News
Medicare Roundup 10/5: Setting the Record Straight
In recent weeks, liberal politicians, editorialists, and policy analysts have vigorously attacked reform of Medicare based on defined-contribution financing. In fact, this approach to reforming Medicare has a long bipartisan tradition, going back to the 1980s and Representatives Richard Gephardt (D–MO) and David Stockman (R–MI). Much of this criticism is distorted, misleading, or just plain wrong.
Here are some articles that set the record straight:
Health Care News
HHS Awards Another Multi-Million-Dollar Obamacare PR Contract
As Congress probes expensive public-relations contracts to market the unpopular Obamacare law to the American public, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently announced that it has inked a deal worth more than $3 million to promote Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
CMS, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, will pay PR firm Weber Shandwick at least $3.1 million for the new contract, according to a report in PR Week. Weber will promote state-based health care “exchanges” established by Obamacare.
The contract is the second major HHS contract landed by Weber. It inked a $3.4 million deal in 2010 to help Medicare patients spot and prevent fraud.
PR Week reports:
Weber will create a strategic plan with short- and long-term tactics for exchange outreach and education. The agency will also promote early awareness and foster engagement with consumers to help them learn more about coverage that they may be eligible for, as well as to promote upcoming enrollment periods, according to the RFP.
News of this latest PR contract comes on the heels of criticism from congressional Republicans over efforts to market Obamacare through popular television shows. “Americans’ hard-earned money should not be taken by government to subsidize Hollywood and insert propaganda into the popular culture,” a group of lawmakers said of that effort.
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