Little Hope Seen For Millions Priced Out Of Health Overhaul

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about strengthening the economy for the middle class and measures to combat gun violence during a visit to Hyde Park Academy in Chicago, Illinois February 15, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

By Tom Brown

MIAMI | Tue Mar 26, 2013 5:39pm EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - Millions of Americans will be priced out of health insurance under President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul because of a glitch in the law that adversely affects people with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by their employers, a leading healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday.

Tax credits are a key component of the law and the White House has said the credits, averaging about $4,000 apiece, will help about 18 million individuals and families pay for health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, beginning in January 2014.

The tax credits are geared toward low and middle-income Americans who do not have access to affordable health insurance coverage through an employer. The law specifies that employer-sponsored insurance is affordable so long as a worker's share of the premium does not exceed 9.5 percent of the worker's household income.

In its rule making, or final interpretation of the law, the IRS said affordability should be based strictly on individual coverage costs, however.

That means that, even if family coverage through an employer-based plan far exceeds the 9.5 percent cutoff, workers would not be eligible for the tax credits to help buy insurance for children or non-working dependents.

"It's an issue. It needs to be fixed," Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an influential healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday, referring to what he called "the family glitch problem."

He spoke on a teleconference calling attention to a report, released by his organization on Tuesday, that said more than 1.7 million Floridians will be eligible for the new premium tax credits next year.

'TEA PARTY INFUSION'

"The tax credit subsidies are a game changer. They will help make health coverage affordable for huge numbers of uninsured families in Florida who would have been priced out of the health coverage and care they need," Pollack said.

He had no estimate for the number of people in Florida affected by the affordability question and IRS policy. But he said there was little hope for a legislative fix in Congress, where the House is controlled by Republicans still bent on repealing Obamacare.

The problem comes on top of another more contentious healthcare issue in Florida, where the state legislature has opposed Republican Governor Rick Scott's endorsement of an expansion of Medicaid. Without the expansion, envisioned under Obama's 2010 reforms, Pollack said about 1.8 million Floridians would be left without healthcare coverage.

"It would mean that the poorest of the poor really would be left out in the cold," he said.

Pollack was joined on the teleconference by Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congressional champion of healthcare reform who also chairs the Democratic National Committee.

"I think one only has to look at the budget the Republicans crammed through the House last week, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act attached to it, to know that the odds of adding coverage and improving coverage in Obamacare in this Tea Party-infused House of Representatives is very unlikely," she said.

"The way to improve this law and to address concerns that have come up with it is not to repeal it, not to throw it out, but to simply make modifications to it. It would be wonderful if we had Republican colleagues in our chamber, on the other side of the aisle, who were willing to sit down and do that."

Speaking after the call, Families USA health policy director Kathleen Stoll told Reuters recent studies showed that anywhere between 2 million and 4 million people across the United States would be adversely affected by the federal rule limiting aid and the IRS interpretation of whether an employer's health plan is affordable.

"We'd like to see it fixed because it clearly doesn't reflect what Congress intended," Stoll said.

"It could mean the difference between being able to move in to purchasing private insurance and not purchasing private insurance. Hopefully within the next couple of years there will be room to fix it."

(Reporting by Tom Brown. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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Little Hope Seen For Millions Priced Out Of Health Overhaul

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about strengthening the economy for the middle class and measures to combat gun violence during a visit to Hyde Park Academy in Chicago, Illinois February 15, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

By Tom Brown

MIAMI | Tue Mar 26, 2013 5:39pm EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - Millions of Americans will be priced out of health insurance under President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul because of a glitch in the law that adversely affects people with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by their employers, a leading healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday.

Tax credits are a key component of the law and the White House has said the credits, averaging about $4,000 apiece, will help about 18 million individuals and families pay for health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, beginning in January 2014.

The tax credits are geared toward low and middle-income Americans who do not have access to affordable health insurance coverage through an employer. The law specifies that employer-sponsored insurance is affordable so long as a worker's share of the premium does not exceed 9.5 percent of the worker's household income.

In its rule making, or final interpretation of the law, the IRS said affordability should be based strictly on individual coverage costs, however.

That means that, even if family coverage through an employer-based plan far exceeds the 9.5 percent cutoff, workers would not be eligible for the tax credits to help buy insurance for children or non-working dependents.

"It's an issue. It needs to be fixed," Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an influential healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday, referring to what he called "the family glitch problem."

He spoke on a teleconference calling attention to a report, released by his organization on Tuesday, that said more than 1.7 million Floridians will be eligible for the new premium tax credits next year.

'TEA PARTY INFUSION'

"The tax credit subsidies are a game changer. They will help make health coverage affordable for huge numbers of uninsured families in Florida who would have been priced out of the health coverage and care they need," Pollack said.

He had no estimate for the number of people in Florida affected by the affordability question and IRS policy. But he said there was little hope for a legislative fix in Congress, where the House is controlled by Republicans still bent on repealing Obamacare.

The problem comes on top of another more contentious healthcare issue in Florida, where the state legislature has opposed Republican Governor Rick Scott's endorsement of an expansion of Medicaid. Without the expansion, envisioned under Obama's 2010 reforms, Pollack said about 1.8 million Floridians would be left without healthcare coverage.

"It would mean that the poorest of the poor really would be left out in the cold," he said.

Pollack was joined on the teleconference by Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congressional champion of healthcare reform who also chairs the Democratic National Committee.

"I think one only has to look at the budget the Republicans crammed through the House last week, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act attached to it, to know that the odds of adding coverage and improving coverage in Obamacare in this Tea Party-infused House of Representatives is very unlikely," she said.

"The way to improve this law and to address concerns that have come up with it is not to repeal it, not to throw it out, but to simply make modifications to it. It would be wonderful if we had Republican colleagues in our chamber, on the other side of the aisle, who were willing to sit down and do that."

Speaking after the call, Families USA health policy director Kathleen Stoll told Reuters recent studies showed that anywhere between 2 million and 4 million people across the United States would be adversely affected by the federal rule limiting aid and the IRS interpretation of whether an employer's health plan is affordable.

"We'd like to see it fixed because it clearly doesn't reflect what Congress intended," Stoll said.

"It could mean the difference between being able to move in to purchasing private insurance and not purchasing private insurance. Hopefully within the next couple of years there will be room to fix it."

(Reporting by Tom Brown. Editing by Andre Grenon)

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Paul Ryan Budget Contemplates Selling Off ‘Millions Of Acres’ Of Public Land

This morning House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) offered his fiscal year 2014 budget, which the Wall Street Journal called “almost identical” to the Romney-Ryan presidential platform last year.  In addition to cutting taxes for the rich and preserving tax breaks for Big Oil, the budget offers an extreme and flawed view of public lands and energy development.

For example, in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last night, Ryan offered a confused vision of government programs designed to purchase lands from willing sellers:

America has the world’s largest natural gas, oil and coal reserves—enough natural gas to meet the country’s needs for 90 years. Yet the administration is buying up land to prevent further development. Our budget opens these lands to development, so families will have affordable energy.

In actuality, there are only limited instances in which the federal government buys land, which can occur via two programs.  First, the Land and Water Conservation Fund uses receipts from offshore oil and gas drilling (not taxpayer dollars) to purchase inholdings from willing sellers within national parks, monuments, and other areas.   As an example, a piece of the Flight 93 Memorial was protected through an LWCF land acquisition.

Additionally, there are already statutes and regulations in place that allow the government to sell or dispose of certain public lands (see, for example, Sections 203 and 209 of the Federal Land and Policy Management Act).  Importantly, there must be willing sellers before the government purchases additional land to make it public, and so it is unclear what Ryan means when he says the administration is trying to “prevent further development.”

And, despite the fact that we already have a program in place to sell and dispose of federal lands, the Ryan budget explicitly calls for selling off public lands:

In the last year alone, Republicans put forth proposals to sell unneeded federal property.  Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah has proposed to sell millions of acres of unneeded federal land… Such sales could also potentially be encouraged by reducing appropriations to various agencies.

Selling off public lands to then be used for extractive purposes is not supported by the American public.  Indeed, a recent poll from Colorado College State of the Rockies project determined that only 30 percent of voters in six western states agreed with the statement that “too much public land” is a serious problem.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

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Top Republican: Obama Should Avoid Looming Budget Cuts By Delaying Health Care To Millions

A top Republican is suggesting that President Obama delay health care services to millions of middle and lower-income Americans to offset the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that will go into effect on March 1 if Congress does not reach a spending deal.

Appearing on Meet The Press on Sunday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) advised Obama to put off implementing the Affordable Care Act’s health care exchanges that are due to go online in 2014 and the expansion of the Medicaid program to offset the looming sequester cuts:

JINDAL: Just delay the Medicaid expansion, delay the health care exchanges so they can work with states on waivers, on flexibility. You can save tens of thousands of dollars there and you’re not even cutting a program that’s started yet — just delaying.

Delaying implementation of these key coverage expansion provisions would throw the law into chaos and deny health services to millions of Americans, many of whom are at or just above the federal poverty line and are struggling with medical bills. 771,600 adults and 124,200 children currently go without health care coverage in Jindal’s home state of Louisiana, for instance. The governor has declined to move forward with a state-run exchange for consumers to buy insurance, leaving its operation to the Department of Health and Human Services, and opted out of the Medicaid expansion under the law.

Defunding the Affordable Care Act has become a popular sequester offset on the right. Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the government should protect the Defense Department from automatic spending cuts by slashing $1.2 trillion from the law. “Well, all I can say is the Commander-in-Chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — take Obamacare and put it on the table,” Graham said.

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Kansas Governor’s Tax Plan Will Cost Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars, Despite Raising Taxes On The Poor

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R), like Republican governors all across the country, aims to implement a regressive tax plan that involves cutting income taxes for the rich while, in his case, maintaining a sales tax hike that primarily hurts the poor. The sales tax increase was supposed to be temporary when it was adopted in 2010, but Brownback now wants to make permanent.

Sales taxes disproportionately impact the poor, who are more likely to spend all or most of their income. According to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Brownback’s plan will raise taxes on the poorest Kansans, but still lose hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue due to huge tax cuts for the rich:

– The poorest 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $22.

– The middle 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.2 percent less of their income in taxes each year, or an average cut of $104.

– Upper-income families, by contrast, reap the greatest benefit with the richest one percent of Kansans, those with an average income of over a million dollars, saving an average of $6,528 a year.

The plan would cost the state $340 million in revenue, despite hiking taxes the poor. And Kansas already has a regressive tax system, with the poorest residents paying a rate more than twice as high as the richest 1 percent.

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