Forbes Magazine Says the Health Care Act is Actually Working
As Ezra Klein notes this morning, the health care bill is being redebated this morning, not being repealed. Whatever the House does to try to repeal the Act today or tomorrow will definitely die in the Senate, so remember that as you listen to the sound and fury. Sound and fury that is already useless and a waste of tax dollars. And one that doesn’t do anything to create a job, heal the economy or even to reduce the deficit.
A piece in Forbes recently works from an LA Times article that reports that early provisions of the ACA are definitely working:
The first statistics are coming in and, to the surprise of a great many, Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised.
The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees.
Why?
Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working.
To be sure, the full data are not in (and won’t be until well after Tax Day), but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the small employers targeted by the tax credit for new purchases of insurance are taking advantage of it (from the LA Times article):
Coventry Health Care Inc., an insurer in Maryland that focuses on small businesses, signed contracts to cover 115,000 new workers in the first nine months of this year, an 8% jump.
In California, Warner Pacific Insurance Services in Westlake Village, a major servicer of insurance brokers, has seen business grow more than 10% this year, a company executive said.
And Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, the largest insurer in the Kansas City, Mo., area, is reporting a 58% jump in the number of small businesses buying insurance since April, the first full month after the legislation was signed into law.
The independent nonprofit insurer has been particularly aggressive in marketing the new tax credit, which can mean a discount of as much as 35% for very small companies with low payrolls.
“One of the biggest problems in the small-group market is affordability,” said Ron Rowe, who oversees small-group sales for the insurer. “We looked at the tax credit and said, ‘This is perfect.'”
Small firms are signing up for employee coverage in the midst of the recession, but have found enough incentive in the tax credit portion of this bill to be able to make this investment in their employees. Remember this when you hear over and over again that there is something *job killing* about the ACA. Rather than harming businesses, small business owners are finding these provisions of the ACA helpful in expanding benefits for their employees AND certainly the new business isn’t hurting a single insurance company. In addition — large employers with large numbers of low-income employees (crazy, but another subject) got waivers from the Obama Administration that allow them to continue to offer the health care they currently offer (quite inadequate) until the subsidies like the small businesses have now and the exchanges come into effect in 2014. For those employers, the expectation was that they would either drop the coverage that they currently offer to these employees. And there isn’t much about tax credits actually working that counts as *socialism*.
And while I’m at it, you may want to have this piece from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities debunking the misinformation the GOP is spreading to try to redebate the ACA this week.
Forbes Magazine is a leftist socialist propoganda rag.
Please define “working.” If the goal of Obamacare is simply to have more folks getting or being offered insurance, then of course offering a tax break to small businesses in exchange for them offering insurance is hardly news, hardly groundbreaking, and hardly controversial.
Moreover, a tax incentive is not job killing, nor is anyone claiming this small part of the overall bill is a problem.
But, sadly, that is only one small part of the bill. If the law is so perfect, why are so many (including, for example, McDonalds) getting waivers from its effect? And remember that the individual mandate and many of the controversial aspects don’t phase in until 2013 (very convenient that that is after the 2012 election wouldn’t you say?).
So, please be careful when you cherry-pick, and how ’bout reading and evaluating with a more critical eye.
With all due respect, Ezra Klein lost most, if not all of his credibility as a journalist when he started ‘Journolist’ back in 2009.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40308.html
So basically our right-wingers have no counterarguments.
Not only do they have no counter arguments, they have no idea what it is that they are arguing against.
Publius, for instance, has no idea that the provisions of the ACA are meant to phase in over the next few years, with much of it done on 2014. The early phase in included provisions to try to help small businesses get insurance coverage for their employees. (You DO know this, right? I mean, this difficulty of small firms to get affordable coverage USED to be a right-wing talking point.) What appears to be working (if you had bothered to read the links) is that more small businesses are able to get some of their employees covered. This was one of the many goals of the ACA and this one seems to be working.
The business about waivers we can talk about when you seem to be up to speed on why they are getting said waivers and from what they are getting waivers. Because until you are actually fluent in the policy as currently written, you aren’t in any position to judge cherry-picking or anyone’s evaluation.
I’m not a “right winger” by anyone’s definition, but ACA is a horrible piece of legislation.
Obama claims it will control costs. How exactly will that happen?
Costs will only be controlled when the (profit-driven) insurance companies are ELIMINATED from the health care equation.
Obama didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to push through meaningful Health Care reform. Obama’s plan is a joke, much like Clinton’s “Welfare Reform” was a joke.
Note to Democratic Presidents–Invest in a set of testicles. Keep them away from overweight interns, but put them on the line for worthwhile legislation that benefits the American Public.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
yes, it’s a WONDERFUL Bill that adds millions and billions of Profits to health care giants, Wheeeeeeee, Obamacare is wooonderrrrrrful! And will do nothing to keep costs down:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/09/health-spending-may-jump-new-report-says.html
Oh, I forgot though, pre-existing people can’t be dropped so it’s a win for the country.
Gee, Cassandra, all I did was read the “analysis,” which states in part:
“Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working”
Recognizing that businesses respond to tax cuts is hardly news, and is only a small part of the legislation; but, it is on this basis that the author claims they are working.
The article goes on to state:
“The independent nonprofit insurer has been particularly aggressive in marketing the new tax credit, which can mean a discount of as much as 35% for very small companies with low payrolls”
So, once again, we see businesses responding to tax incentives. I am shocked. But, I am really shocked to think that on this basis Obamacare is working as a whole. Hardly.
We can see you doing the cherry-picking here, yes? The tax incentives are part of the ACA. And they are working to some degree. The ACA is meant to phase in over several years. The bits that have phased in so far are working. No one is making any claims about the *future* bits. Just about the portions that are live now.
But hey, you are quite welcome to your alternate universe.
It’s hard not to cherry pick from a 1400 page give away to big business. You know, the folks Obama wants to meet with and make sure he slashes regulations for.
“Oh, I forgot though, pre-existing people can’t be dropped so it’s a win for the country.”
what does it say about the country when making it against the law to force sick people to die is a BFD?
Plubis, “Obamacare” (actually written by that evil socialist, Dole)”as a whole” hanst even gone into effect yet. You cant bitch about the medicine not working if you havent even opened the bottle.
However, “Obamacare” was supposed to bankrupt the country, enslave white people to the chinese, and force every girl to have an abortion. So i guess no, no it hasnt worked the way your puppet masters told you it would.
what does it say about the country when making it against the law to force sick people to die is a BFD?
the same thing it says about the country when it comes to accepting that it’s ok to profit off of people’s health, or lack their of.
More than half of the states—27 out of 50—are now challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare in federal court. Six additional states–Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming–petitioned in federal court on Tuesday to join Florida’s law suit challenging the constitutionality of the health care law President Barack Obama signed last March. Nineteen states had previously joined with Florida in this suit, making the total number of states that are now a party to the suit 26. Virginia, which has filed its own lawsuit against Obamacare, is the 27th state challenging the constitutionality of the health-care law in federal court.
I get that the profiting health insurance companies are where you draw your line, but that line seems easier drawn by someone with insurance. Ezra Klein paints a another picture. There are lives at stake; people who desperately want this law even with the flaws.
If you have health insurance debating the health insurance industry’s profits and ACA is a luxury. I’m not saying that it’s wrong… just a luxury.
“More than half of the states—27 out of 50—are now challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare in federal court.”
So what? Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Our system doesn’t work that way. If it’s unconstitutional, all it takes is one state to win the challenge. The rest of it is known as “posturing” — something your side constantly mistakes for “governing.”
Obama was the second president in recent times who made it a priority to make health care affordable for more people. It didn’t work for him for the same reason it didn’t work for Clinton:
Moneyed conservatives, eager to keep their money, financed campaigns to convince nervous morons, afraid of losing their money, that government is why their in-laws’ homes are in forclosure.
And the ad campaigns worked. Turns out you can’t lose in America banking on the moron demographic. Who knew?
It didn’t help that DLC and conservative Democrats pushed out the ideas of the current version of reform that *were* popular — the public option and Medicare buy-in. Interestingly, while polls asking if the reform should be repealed report majorities saying Yes — polls asking if specific major portions of the bill have large majorities NOT supporting repeal. The only thing that people agree (according to polls) should be repealed is the insurance mandate. And I can’t see the insurance lobby letting Boehner and his minions turn that loose.