Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Policy Racket

A year later, battle over health care reform rages on

Sun Coverage

Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the passage of the federal health care law, meaning everyone affiliated with Washington is taking the opportunity to re-establish his or her well-hewn positions on the issue in as fresh a light as possible.

But this is no ordinary anniversary lip-service. With courts around the country scrutinizing the constitutionality of the individual mandate, and Republicans in both houses of Congress itching to render it at least effectively, if not legally dead, the health care debate is in many ways as alive as it was a year ago -- and a resolution to it, just as fleeting.

On the Republican side, the cry for repeal wasn't much different than it's been in months past.

“This legislation, which included nearly a half-trillion dollars in tax hikes, can be linked to large increases in health insurance costs and decreasing access to medical care over the last year,” said Nevada Rep. Dean Heller. “It is becoming clearer every day just how stifling this law is on job growth.”

"One year later ObamaCare fails to deliver on costs, spending and preserving existing coverage," Nevada Rep. Joe Heck tweeted Wednesday morning. "We need patient-centered, not govt, solutions!"

“Birthdays are cause for celebration, but the anniversary of $2.6 trillion worth of bad policy is hardly something to applaud,” Nevada Sen. John Ensign said last week. “This law fails to address the number one problem facing health care, and that’s cost.”

But Democrats refute that assessment, and spent the health care anniversary packaging their support for the law tight with positive statistics, such as $40 billion in tax credits to small businesses, reaching 30,000 Nevada businesses that will be able to claim 35 to 50 percent of their premium payments; 25,000 Nevada seniors relieved of the “donut hole” gap in Medicare drug coverage at $250 apiece -- and $1.4 billion: that being the projected spike that the self-employed and small businesses would see in their health care premiums by 2018 if the health care act is repealed and not replaced.

“As our economy continues to recover, we must make Nevada’s small businesses our top priority by lowering their costs,” said Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who shepherded the bill through Congress last year. “The health insurance reform law is a major step toward achieving that goal.”

"Nevadans will also save hundreds of dollars on their medicines as a result of the 50-percent discount on covered brand-name drugs that we included in The Affordable Care Act – but not if these protections are repealed," said Nevada Rep. Shelley Berkley.

The individual numbers game isn’t exclusively the purview of the Democrats’ side though. While Democrats have been trumpeting the gains for small businesses -- which both parties have spent months heralding as the would-be saviors of the economy, because they create two-thirds of jobs in the country -- Republicans have been trotting out their own battery of small and large business owners to put a damper on the Democrats’ attempted cry of good news.

“Nevada employers are already being forced to choose between hiring employees and paying the higher health care premiums for the ones that they do have,” said Ensign, citing the case of casino magnate Steve Wynn, who said his company’s health care premiums went up 50 percent in the last year (about $900 per person) as a result of the new requirements of the health care law, dwarfing past annual hikes. “How do we repair Nevada’s economy when our employers cannot afford to provide health care coverage?”

Democrats are crying foul on that assessment, too.

“Over the past decade, average premiums for workers at small firms increased by 123 percent while small firms offering coverage fell from 65 to 59 percent,” said U.S. Health and Human Services Regional Director Herb K. Schultz, illustrating the problem prior to the health care law. “Early signs show that after years of decline, the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees is actually rising.”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy