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View Full Version : Obamacare's First Year: How'd It Go?



Captain Obvious
10-02-2014, 09:25 AM
From the liberal rag wasteland known as NPR:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/10/01/353015519/obamacares-first-year-howd-it-go


Lots of experts disagree with that last part. They say we really don't know if, or how much, Obamacare has restrained health care cost increases. But, even skeptics of the law, like Bob Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, agree with the first part.


But Laszewski argues that current premium costs are distorted by a government program that protects insurance companies from losses in the first three years of the marketplace.

Health Costs Inch Up As Obamacare Kicks In

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/12/347944961/health-costs-inch-up-as-obamacare-kicks-in


But analysts called the second-quarter increases modest and said there is little evidence to suggest that wider coverage and a recovering economy are pushing health spending growth to the painful levels of a decade ago.

Cigar
10-02-2014, 09:45 AM
Yes, Obamacare is cutting the deficitToday the Congressional Budget Office released its latest economic and fiscal projections (http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45653-OutlookUpdate_2014_Aug.pdf), and guess what: The news is pretty good. In fact, all the “deficit hawks” out there who are deeply concerned about too much borrowing and the terrible choices our grandchildren will confront might want to write a letter of thanks to one Barack Hussein Obama.

To start things off, the CBO says the deficit this year will be $506 billion, or 2.9 percent of GDP. In 2013 it was $680 billion, so that’s a pretty steep drop. And in terms of GDP, not only is that slightly lower than the average deficit of the last 40 years (3.1 percent), it’s also a 70 percent decline from Obama’s first year in office, where because of the Great Recession, which brought both the need for more spending and a plunge in tax revenues, the deficit peaked at 9.8 percent of GDP.

We should note that a lot of people thought that the deficit was cut too fast, and that we switched prematurely from stimulus to austerity, dragging out the nation’s suffering and keeping the recovery from taking hold in a meaningful way. But whether or not you agree, you can’t say that there hasn’t been dramatic progress on reducing the deficit under this president.

The other thing to note is the CBO’s new projections on Medicare. Ask any conservative, and they’ll tell you that the real threat to our future is entitlements, and Medicare in particular. With all those Baby Boomers retiring and eating up more and more of the nation’s wealth through health care costs, Medicare will eventually devour the entire federal budget, drowning us in debt and rendering us unable to do anything except care for our elders.

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/08/27/yes-obamacare-is-cutting-the-deficit/