Politics
Election 2012: Obama health plan – the facts
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the number of workers getting employer-based coverage could drop by several million, as some workers choose new plans in the marketplace or as employers drop coverage altogether. Companies with more than 50 workers would have to pay a fine for terminating insurance, but in some cases that would be cost-effective for them.
Obama’s soothing words for those who are content with their current coverage have been heard before, rendered with different degrees of accuracy. He’s said nothing in the law requires people to change their plans, true enough. But the law does not guarantee the status quo for anyone, either.
So where does Romney come up with 20 million at risk of losing their current plans?
He does so by going with the worst-case scenario in the budget office’s analysis. Researchers thought it most likely that employer coverage would decline by 3 to 5 million, but the range of possibilities was broad: It could go up by as much as 3 million or down by as much as 20 million.
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ROMNEY: After saying the new law cuts Medicare by US$500 billion and raises taxes by a like amount, adds: “And even with those cuts and tax increases, Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt, and pushes those obligations onto coming generations.”
THE FACTS: In its most recent complete estimate, in March 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the new health care law would actually reduce the federal budget deficit by US$210 billion over the next 10 years. In the following decade, the law would continue to reduce deficits by about one-half of one percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the office said.
The congressional budget scorekeepers acknowledged their projections are “quite uncertain” because of the complexity of the issue and the assumptions involved, which include the assumption that all aspects of the law are implemented as written. But the CBO assessment offers no backup for Romney’s claim that the law “adds trillions to our deficits.”
