Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Ryan Doesn’t Repeal Obamacare: Maintains Cuts And Taxes, Eliminates Benefits

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) new budget pledges to repeal the Affordable Care Act in at least five different places and specifically promises to eliminate “the health-care rationing board,” the new health care exchange subsidies, regulations, and Medicaid expansion.

But the House Budget Chairman, who campaigned against the law so vociferously and voted to rescind it more than once, doesn’t get rid of Obamacare in its entirety. Instead, he guts the law’s benefit while maintaining its savings and revenue increases, holding on to the $716 billion in Medicare savings and keeping a baseline that includes tax increases from the law. Doing so helps Ryan achieve balance in the 10 year window:

PAGE 40: “The budget calls for directing any potential Medicare savings in current law toward shoring up Medicare, not paying for new entitlements.”

PAGE 78: A table called ‘House Republican FY2014 Budget versus Current Policy’ shows that the GOP blueprint will not raise more revenue than “Current Policy.” Current policy includes more than $800 billion in revenue from the Affordable Care Act.

Here is the table:




Ryan has argued that the Affordable Care Act inappropriately redirects savings from Medicare to fund a new health care entitlement and has claimed that his blueprint will generate revenue growth to ensure a balanced budget. But Obama doesn’t raid Medicare to pay for coverage expansion any more than Ryan “raids” it to finance his tax cuts for the rich. What’s worse, he pays for the big tax breaks by simply assuming revenue level will be high enough to cover the reductions.

No comments:

Post a Comment