Tag: ACA

Dean Baker on Medicare (and pundit amnesia)

August 15, 2012 at 12:58 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

(Cross-posted from the blog of the Center for Economic and Policy Research)

By Dean Baker

It is popular among Washington elite types to tut-tut criticisms of the plan put forward by Representative Ryan and the Republicans to replace Medicare with a voucher program by claiming that “at least he has a plan.” This is supposed to be in contrast to President Obama and the Democrats who have no plan to deal with Medicare’s projected shortfall.

It’s possible that these Washington insiders missed it, but President Obama and the Democrats pushed through a piece of legislation called the “Affordable Care Act.” This bill proposes a number of mechanisms for containing costs within the Medicare program. As a result the projected shortfall has fallen by almost two-thirds, from 3.88 percent of taxable payroll in the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report to 1.35 percent of taxable payroll in the 2012 Medicare Trustees Report.

People can criticize the mechanisms the ACA put in place or complain that they did not go far enough, but to claim that President Obama and the Democrats did nothing to address the projected shortfall in Medicare is not true.

ACA’s Medicaid expansion: A great deal for the states

July 13, 2012 at 7:07 amCategory:Uncategorized

by

The experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have more hard and compelling numbers on the facts surrounding the inexplicably controversial Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act.

The takeaway: North Carolina (and all other states) would be foolish not to participate.

Consider the following:

  • The federal government will pick up nearly 93 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion over its first nine years (2014-2022), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
  • States will spend just 2.8 percent more on Medicaid with the expansion than they would have without health reform, CBO finds.
  • This 2.8 percent figure overstates the net impact on state budgets because it doesn’t reflect the large savings Read More…

Things we’ll lose, things we won’t get if health care reform is repealed

July 11, 2012 at 4:01 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

Shannon Spillane of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has two excellent posts in which she spells out, respectively, four things we will lose and four things we won’t achieve if health care reform is somehow repealed. And here’s a graph that from the second post that makes the stakes very plain, indeed. 

  

Health reform’s Medicaid expansion a very good deal for states

June 28, 2012 at 4:43 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

(Cross-posted from Off the Charts, the blog of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) 

By Judy Solomon

Today’s Supreme Court decision essentially means that states can decide whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover low-income adults.  The typical (or median) state only covers working parents who make less than 63 percent of the poverty line ($12,790 a year for a family of three) and non-working parents with incomes below 37 percent of the poverty line ($7,063 a year).  Only a handful of states provide coverage to any low-income adults without dependent children, regardless of how far below the poverty line they fall.  The Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act would cover these poor and low-income adults by expanding Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty line ($25,390 for a family of three).  CBO assumed an additional 17 million adults would receive Medicaid coverage by 2022, as a result.

The Medicaid expansion is a very good deal for states: Read More…

Obama hits a home run

June 28, 2012 at 1:01 pmCategory:Uncategorized

by

To watch President Obama’s calm, rational and pragmatic statement on the Affordable Care Act ruling is to be reminded of how and why it is the man got elected four years ago.

It also reenforces just how much the President himself embodies so many compelling and frustrating aspects of a democracy that is is in so many ways the worst possible form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.