Nothing Ted Cruz Said About the ACA Today Is True

So this morning’s moment is as useful as any to examine claims that the ACA is so bad, the government almost had to default in order to get rid of it. (You can find Cruz’s full remarks here; we will just excerpt the claims about the ACA.)

CRUZ: The deal that has been cut provides no relief to all the young people coming out of school who can’t find a job because of “Obamacare.” It provides no relief to all the single parents who have been forced into part-time work, struggling to feed their kids on twenty-nine hours a week.

Obamacare is a job-killer: that is an article of faith among many conservatives. Their claims, and particularly the one Cruz is making here, is centered around the employer mandate, which requires businesses with fifty or more full-time employees, defined as those that work more than thirty hours, to provide health insurance or face a penalty. (Incidentally, this is the mandate Obama delayed for one year.)

The theory is that businesses will slash hours or reduce positions to stay under the limits for providing health insurance. (Never mind criticizing the businesses for screwing over their employees in this fashion—it’s naturally the government’s fault for imposing health coverage requirements.) That’s why Cruz is mentioning young adults and single moms—aside from being highly sought-after voting demographics for the GOP, they are also among those most likely to be searching for jobs that straddle the line between part-time and full-time.

But this isn’t actually happening on any significant scale. If it were, one would have seen the number of workers putting in twenty-six to twenty-nine hours increase in 2013, as businesses prepared for the employer mandate before it was delayed. According to a study from the Center on Economic and Policy Priorities, however, the opposite actually happened: there were slightly fewer twenty-six- to twenty-nine-hour workers in 2013 as the mandate date approached. Despite whatever individual examples Republicans may trot out, no significant amount of people are being forced to work less hours because of the ACA.

And what of positions being slashed? That is also not borne out by employment data, which shows private-sector jobs increasing at expected rates. “Health care reform does not appear to be significantly hampering job growth, at least not so far. Job gains are broad based across industries and businesses of all sizes,” Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics said earlier this year.

Why is all this? In part, because 94 percent of the businesses that would be affected already give health insurance voluntarily, and also because many of the rest don’t think cutting jobs and cutting hours is a particularly good growth strategy.

CRUZ: It provides no relief to all the hard-working families who are facing skyrocketing health insurance premiums…. President Obama promised the American people “Obamacare” would lower your health insurance premiums. I would venture to say virtually every person across this country has seen exactly the opposite happen, has seen premiums going up and up and up, and everyone who clicks on “Obamacare” and sees the premiums sees the premiums going up and up and up.

This is another article of faith for Tea Party types—that the ACA will skyrocket premiums.

It’s important to note off the bat that the “rate shock” being described would apply only to people buying insurance on the individual market. People who get their insurance through large employers or are on Medicare or Medicaid (i.e., a vast majority of Americans) won’t see a significant change in premiums because of ACA—job-based health insurance cost for single people rose about 5 percent last year, which is the norm.

For people buying on the individual market, through the ACA exchanges, will premiums go up? The short answer is: for some yes, for some no, and there’s usually a significant reason when premiums do go up: much more coverage is being offered. Cruz is wildly overstating his case by saying “virtually every person across this country” has seen higher premiums.

Jonathan Cohn has a comprehensive breakdown of the three major studies that have been done on this so far. What they found: sure, it’s true the “sticker price” of many individual market plans will increase, but that’s because pre-ACA, many of the plans on the individual market offered very sparse coverage and were allowed to exclude people with pre-existing conditions. Since the law beefs up coverage requirements and outlaws pre-existing condition inclusions, the sticker price goes up.

But what will also happen under ACA is that many people will get subsidies to buy health insurance—so relatively few people will actually pay the higher sticker price. The subsidies are offered at the point of purchase, not after the fact, so there isn’t any short-term burden.

In the end, many people will pay less—for example, people who are older or sicker and looking for insurance on the individual market will pay less because the ACA stops insurance companies from charging them more. People with relatively low incomes will also pay less because of the federal subsidies. People with higher incomes (more than four times the federal poverty line) might pay more because they won’t get subsidies, and the young and healthy may as well, because they were benefiting from the health insurance market that existed before, where bare-bones plans that excluded a lot of sick people were offered.

It’s also useful to note that, already, overall, the ACA premiums are less than what was expected when the bill passed.

Cruz could have a real conversation about whether preserving lower prices for the relatively affluent, young and healthy folks on the individual market is worth the extra financial burden for the older, poorer and sicker Americans—but he seems uninterested in doing that. Saying “virtually every person across this country” is seeing higher prices is wildly, wildly overstating his argument. One might even call it a lie.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/176711/nothing-ted-cruz-said-about-aca-today-true#

 

It is true that the Tea Party has a very unproductive message when it comes to the ACA. They would get far more support were they to accept that we are stuck with it and we ought to put our efforts into making it work better.

The thrust behind ACA was to bring group coverage, policy provisions, and rates to individuals. That much was achieved, so there is no longer any need to tie coverage to particular employers.

Now we need these additional measures to Make the ACA really work for us to bring down costs and expand coverage: 1. Eliminate the employer mandate, it is a bad idea; 2: Add prescribing pharmacists in all 50 States. This can reduce costs tremendously and free up physician time; 3. Add a public option to create a more competitive insurance environment. ; 4. Find a clever way to make it infeasible for any State to Opt out of Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion is an essential component for the ACA to work well. 5. Repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act.

In addition, FDA could do what Minnesota and Wisconsin have done and provide a list of approved Canadian Pharmacies. The U.S. should drop it's resistance to individuals importing prescription drugs.

 

When an article lies to the point of writing this...

"It’s also useful to note that, already, overall, the ACA premiums are less than what was expected when the bill passed."

can we agree its leftist propaganda?

 

Now CBO is leftist propaganda? You know, CBO actually came out with a report on that.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox...affordable_care_act_will_be_cheaper_than.html

 

The president told us premiums would go down.

we were all going to save 2500 bucks and keep our plans and keep our doctors. (that is what Obama told us.)

premiums are up (that is the opposite down... we have to clear for leftists) hence premiums are not lower than expectation they are higher.

Any conclusion without facts to the contrary... is a misrepresentation or a lie.


prop·a·gan·da
ˌpräpəˈgandə/Submit
noun
1.
derogatory
information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

 

Once proven wrong, change the subject.

First you claimed that the ACA claim is wrong, now when corrected, you moved on to something else.

Well done. NOT.

 

I have not changed anything...

This is what I wrote:

----
When an article lies to the point of writing this...

"It’s also useful to note that, already, overall, the ACA premiums are less than what was expected when the bill passed."

can we agree its leftist propaganda?
---

This is what I conclude...

Obama said premiums would go down.
Premiums are up. Hence....

You article is propaganda.

 

Mix two issues, declare propaganda and move on, worked out fine last year when you are crying about leftist propaganda polls. How did that work out for ya.

 

there is no mixing of issues.

here is the lie / propaganda...

"It’s also useful to note that, already, overall, the ACA premiums are less than what was expected when the bill passed."

test for lie:

are premium lower or higher than the expectations set by Obama and the dems when passing the bill?

 

Draw a circle around the name of the man you would trust with your checkbook:


Ted Cruz

Barack Obama