Romney’s Misleads on Obama Health Cost: Reality Check
By Bloomberg News - Aug 31, 2012 12:13 AM ET
Each side has made statements about the other’s positions in the presidential campaign. How do some assertions in Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention square with the facts?
Obamacare’s Cost
The claim: “We must rein in the skyrocketing cost of health care by repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
The background: Though President Barack Obama’s health-care plan was modeled after one enacted in Massachusetts by Romney, and its mandate that Americans buy insurance was initially proposed by Republican lawmakers, Republicans have opposed the law. Republican-led states unsuccessfully sued to overturn it.
The facts: Connecting current inflation in health care to the new law, which doesn’t take full effect until 2014, is a stretch. Health-care costs have been rising faster than prices in general for many years, though the pace has been slowing recently, in part because of the recession. Health costs rose 3.4 percent in 2010 from 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the U.S. inflation rate was 1.6 percent.
Obama’s health-care law cuts future Medicare costs by more than $700 billion over 10 years, in part by reducing payments to hospitals and insurance companies, including those that provide costlier Medicare Advantage plans. Romney says he would restore that money. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that repeal of the law would increase the federal deficit by $100 billion over 10 years.
Republicans have yet to offer full details of how they would replace the health-care law. They have pushed measures to limit compensation for patients injured by medical malpractice. A 2009 Congressional Budget Office report found that a $250,000 cap on damages would reduce health costs by $54 billion over 10 years, or 0.5 percent of annual health-care spending.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-31/romney-s-critique-of-obama-health-cost-misleading-reality-check.html
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