So it was “created” in 2003, eh? Your own cite says:
And, hey, those enhanced subsides in 2003 were a free lunch! Guess that’s why the voters supported them…
Actually, let’s go back to the first claim. I can’t even find a cite that the companies mentioned are “stopping” offering Medicare Advantage plans. Aetna was suspended earlier this year from taking new enrollments. The only thing I can find about Humana says they sent out a mailer “warning” people that benefits might be cut if the legislation passed (the warning mailing were stopped because they were against Medicare’s rules, as I read it).
If anyone campaigned for office based on a claim that the Medicare Part D could be done with little or no cost then it would be anologous. As it is, I think it was just Bush trying to be a “compassionate conservative” leading up to the 2004 election.
Nothing any politician does is removed from political considerations. But I don’t recall Medicare Part D being part of campaign promises upfront (though I could be forgetting something).
So it’s not as egregious. Because after legislation is actually passed, people have a better opportunity to see the actual details. When you promise things upfront, it’s much harder to pin down.
[When Obama was in campaign mode, he was going to save huge amounts of money by increasing efficiency in the HC system, through electronic record-keeping. Experts didn’t think much of this at the time, but their views were not prominently featured in the media. You don’t hear much about this notion now, though.]
Bush very clearly ran on a prescription drug plan for seniors in 2000. Here is a PBS dicsussion about it (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec00/rx_campaign.html). Here’s a story about one of his ads touting it (New Bush Ad Pledges Drug Plan for Seniors). Notice that part of Gore’s rebuttle in the PBS story to the Bush plan was that there was no money to pay for it, especially considering the tax cuts Bush was also promoting at the time.
And, once again, the person claiming the voters could get the free lunch won.
This is semantic nitpicking, in the context of this discussion.
That’s true.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. There are winners and losers of any system, and the HCR works better for some people than for others. It’s not surprising if the losers are unhappy with HCR.
I was responding to someone who erroneously thought that the decline in MA coverage was unrelated to HCR.
I don’t know about those specific companies in those specific areas. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you reduce subsidies to a plan, the rates will go up and/or the benefits will go down, which will render the plan less viable.
This is universally accepted by professionals in the field, and it’s not hard to see why.
If you need a “cite” specifically, then look at my prior cite, and the CBO estimate about MA enrollment in the aftermath of HCR.
This was absolutely smoke-blowing by the Obama campaign (and a larger part Clinton I think - electronic records has always been one of her big things). I distinctly remember a few NPR stories during that campaign where experts pointed out that the savings would be miniscule compared to overall health-care costs, so it wasn’t exactly uncovered.
The fact remains that as of now, the “Obamacare” bill is slated to save the federal government money. Whether that actually happens or not will be determined in the future. But at least it was nominally paid for - a far cry from the 2003 bill.
Very few people seriously think it will happen, especially the cuts to Medicare reimbursement, so the “nominally paid for” is not worth much.
In addition, even the nominal aspect is only an accounting gimmick, created by viewing a ten year window in which the benefits are only available for part of them. It’s not even nominally paid for on a long-term basis.
[Also, one other gimmicky aspect of the HCR financing is the way it relied heavily on hidden taxes that Obama could then blame of the entities that he was taxing. E.g. the makers of medical equipment etc., or even the excise tax. These will inevitably be passed along to people, most of whom are earning less than $250K. But they are designed in this way so as to allow for deniability and buck-passing by those who enacted the law.]
But we are venturing afield here, in turning this into a discussion of Bush vs Obama HC bills. My sole point is that if there is indeed anger at Obama from people in MA plans who will lose their coverage in the aftermath of the HCR bill, that anger is not misdirected.