The Impact of Repeal
The Administration last night released a series of talking points attempting to illustrate the negative impact of repealing the unpopular health care law. Here are some facts and figures about the impact of repeal that the Obama Administration and Democrats have failed to mention:
- Repeal means that future generations of taxpayers will not be subject to budgetary gimmicks that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office views as “difficult to sustain for a long period.” While Democrats allege that the health care law will reduce the deficit, the CBO and other independent experts have raised significant questions about the assumptions underpinning that claim, arguing that most of the major projected spending reductions are unsustainable. Likewise, Medicare’s chief actuary went so far as to encourage individuals to ignore the estimates included in the annual trustees report, and view an alternative scenario instead, because the official estimates included unrealistic savings provisions from the health care law that the actuary believes will never take effect.
- Repeal means that 7.4 million more seniors will participate in Medicare Advantage plans, according to the Medicare actuary, meaning these seniors will not have to give up health care plans they have and like. Repeal also means that seniors in Medicare Advantage will receive extra benefits, meaning senior beneficiaries in Medicare Advantage will not face an average increase of $873 per year in out-of-pocket costs between now and 2019. (The Heritage Foundation has a VERY helpful report indicating the impact of the health care law’s Medicare Advantage cuts, with details broken out district-by-district, that can be found here.)
- Repeal means that individual health insurance premiums will not increase by the $2,100 per family currently projected as a result of the law. Candidate Obama promised to cut insurance premiums by an average of $2,500 per family, but in reality the legislation he signed into law will result in massive premium increases because of all the new mandates and federal regulations associated with it.
- Repeal means that taxpayers will not face $569,200,000,000 in tax increases scheduled to take effect over the coming years – job-killing taxes that will harm an economy struggling to grow. Repeal also means that middle-class families will not face a new 40 percent tax on insurance policies the government will force them to buy, a tax that will hit more and more families over time, and could eventually generate more revenue than the federal income tax.
- Repeal means that half of all employers – and as many as 80% of small businesses – will not be forced to give up their current coverage within the next two years. The Administration’s own estimates revealed that its onerous regulations will force most businesses to give up their current plans, thus subjecting them to costly new mandates that will increase premiums. What’s more, repeal will remove the perverse financial incentives that could encourage employers to drop health insurance for their employees; one study found that the law could lead 35 million individuals to lose their current, employer-based coverage.
- Repeal means that the economy will not lose an estimated 750,000 jobs because the perverse incentives included in the health care law will discourage individuals from working. The Congressional Budget Office found that the law “will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market,” and said that “on net, [the law] will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy. At a time when America faces ongoing economic difficulties, repeal will remove provisions that Speaker Pelosi claimed would allow people to “leave your work” and go “be creative and be a musician or whatever.”
- Repeal means that national health spending will go DOWN by $310,800,000,000, according to the Medicare actuary. In June 2009, President Obama claimed that any health care legislation must control costs: “If any bill arrives from Congress that is not controlling costs, that’s not a bill I can support. It’s going to have to control costs.” However, the health care law the President signed in March 2010 will do just that.
- Repeal means that individuals will not be forced to buy government-defined health insurance – a massive and constitutionally dubious new intrusion by the federal government, which if upheld could give the federal government massive new powers to force people to buy particular products (like a house) or take certain actions (like eating three vegetables a day).
- Repeal means that more than 17 million seniors participating in Medicare Part D will not face higher premiums so that Big Pharma can benefit from its “rock-solid deal” struck behind closed doors with President Obama and Congressional Democrats.
- Repeal means that states will not be forced to shoulder the burden of what a Democrat Governor called the “mother of all unfunded mandates” – another massive expansion of government-run Medicaid at a time when states cannot afford their existing Medicaid programs. Repealing this expansion also lessens the likelihood that states will have to implement new job-killing tax increases to fund this new unfunded Medicaid mandate.