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Ryan: Obamacare Will ‘Destroy’ America’s Health Care System
Ryan: Obamacare Will ‘Destroy’ America’s Health Care System
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told CBS' "Face The Nation" Sunday that he believes Obamacare will "destroy" the country's health care system, even though his budget assumes key savings from the law.
"I really believe it's going to destroy the health care system in America," Ryan said. "We believe the law will collapse under its own weight and that people will be eager for alternatives as the gorey details unfold in the future with its implementation."
Ryan's budget calls for the repeal of Obamacare, although it includes the deficit reduction from the law's tax hikes and Medicare spending cuts.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ryan-obamacare-will-destroy-americas-health-care-system
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) told CBS' "Face The Nation" Sunday that he believes Obamacare will "destroy" the country's health care system, even though his budget assumes key savings from the law.
"I really believe it's going to destroy the health care system in America," Ryan said. "We believe the law will collapse under its own weight and that people will be eager for alternatives as the gorey details unfold in the future with its implementation."
Ryan's budget calls for the repeal of Obamacare, although it includes the deficit reduction from the law's tax hikes and Medicare spending cuts.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ryan-obamacare-will-destroy-americas-health-care-system
Know why Ryan and Republicans are so dead set against ACA? It did the unthinkable: raised taxes on the rich.
There is a debate about the impact of the recent tax deal, but simple arithmetic shows the reality.
Pre Bush tax cuts: lowest tax bracket 15 percent and top tax bracket 39.6 percent.
Bush tax cuts: lowest tax bracket 10 percent and top tax bracket 35 percent.
President Obama's tax deal, lowest rate 10 percent, top rate 39.6 percent.
Do the math and it will show that the gap between someone earning $50,000 and someone earning $500,000 closed to more than what it was in the 1990s. Add the health care law tax and the gap closes even more.
<...>
Perhaps the best prism through which to see the Democrats’ gains is inequality. In the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama said that his top priority as president would be to “create bottom-up economic growth” and reduce inequality...In the 2009 stimulus, he insisted on making tax credits “fully refundable,” so that even people who did not make enough to pay much federal tax would benefit. The 2010 health care law overhaul was probably the biggest attack on inequality since it began rising in the 1970s, increasing taxes on businesses and the rich to pay for health insurance largely for the middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/politics/for-obama-fiscal-deal-is-a-victory-that-also-holds-risks.html
Perhaps the best prism through which to see the Democrats’ gains is inequality. In the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama said that his top priority as president would be to “create bottom-up economic growth” and reduce inequality...In the 2009 stimulus, he insisted on making tax credits “fully refundable,” so that even people who did not make enough to pay much federal tax would benefit. The 2010 health care law overhaul was probably the biggest attack on inequality since it began rising in the 1970s, increasing taxes on businesses and the rich to pay for health insurance largely for the middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/politics/for-obama-fiscal-deal-is-a-victory-that-also-holds-risks.html
Obama and Redistribution
Some notes for myself: how much impact have Obama’s policies actually had on current and prospective inequality?
The main policies to consider are PPACA (the health reform) and ATRA (the fiscal cliff deal with its associated tax rise).
I’m not a fan of the Tax Foundation’s work, but their analysis of the distributional effects of Obamacare looks about right: significant benefits to the bottom half of the income distribution, paid for largely by taxes on the top few percent (the Medicare surcharge and the extra tax on investment income). The Tax Policy Center — whose work I do trust — has the Act reducing the after-tax income of the top 1 percent by 1.8 percent, the top 0.1 percent by 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, ATRA raises taxes relative to a continuation of the Bush high-end tax cuts: after-tax income down 4.5 percent for the 1-percenters, 6.2 percent for the top 0.1 percent.
Putting this together, we have a roughly 6 percent hit to the 1 percent, around 9 to the superelite. That’s only a partial rollback of these groups’ huge gains since 1980, but it’s not trivial.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/obama-and-redistribution/
Some notes for myself: how much impact have Obama’s policies actually had on current and prospective inequality?
The main policies to consider are PPACA (the health reform) and ATRA (the fiscal cliff deal with its associated tax rise).
I’m not a fan of the Tax Foundation’s work, but their analysis of the distributional effects of Obamacare looks about right: significant benefits to the bottom half of the income distribution, paid for largely by taxes on the top few percent (the Medicare surcharge and the extra tax on investment income). The Tax Policy Center — whose work I do trust — has the Act reducing the after-tax income of the top 1 percent by 1.8 percent, the top 0.1 percent by 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, ATRA raises taxes relative to a continuation of the Bush high-end tax cuts: after-tax income down 4.5 percent for the 1-percenters, 6.2 percent for the top 0.1 percent.
Putting this together, we have a roughly 6 percent hit to the 1 percent, around 9 to the superelite. That’s only a partial rollback of these groups’ huge gains since 1980, but it’s not trivial.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/obama-and-redistribution/
Do the math.
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