Posts Tagged ‘Paul Krugman’

August 23, 2012

Heritage Research

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Obamacare Loses Again in Deficit Reduction Debate

Niall Ferguson poked a hornet’s nest Sunday with his Newsweek cover story, in large part for its claim that Obamacare would increase the budget deficit.

“Anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] report knows that it found that [Obamacare] would reduce, not increase, the deficit,” wrote liberal economist Paul Krugman (referencing an outdated CBO analysis), “because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for.”

As usual, however, Krugman missed the more fundamental point underlying Ferguson’s argument: It’s Obamacare’s spending that matters.

In government budgeting, spending comes first; it drives all other fiscal consequences. Spending is how government programs and agencies do what they do. “In a fundamental sense, the federal government is what it spends,” says longtime budget expert Allen Schick.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

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December 3, 2010

Heritage Research

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The Future of Health Care Reform: Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” and Its Critics

Representative Paul Ryan’s (R–WI)  “A Roadmap for America’s Future” would reduce the deficit, make Medicare sustainable, establish equity and efficiency in the federal tax treatment of health insurance, and improve access to health care for middle-class and low-income families. Congressman Ryan’s critics have accused him of trying to destroy the Medicare system and claim that the Roadmap will increase the deficit. Click here for Heritage Foundation health policy experts’ explanation of how the Ryan Roadmap would really work.

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August 5, 2009

Health Care News

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Five Questions for Health Care Townhalls

From Long Island to Philadelphia to Austin, Texas, Democrats returning from Washington to host townhalls are getting an earful from constituents about their concerns over President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Despite the fact that all recent polls show that a majority of Americans do not support Obamacare, the left still has the audacity to claim that the concerned citizens showing up at these events are health insurance industry stooges.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told the Center for America Progress: “These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town hall meetings for visual impact on television.” But when actual journalists have reported on who is showing up at these events, they are telling a different story. Reporting on events in Pennsylvania and Texas, the New York Times describes the protests as “organized by loose-knit coalition of conservative voters and advocacy groups.”

This country deserves a respectful, honest debate about health care. And the hundreds of townhalls Members of Congress will be hosting across the country this August are just the place for that conversation to happen. Here are just five questions Americans should be pressing their elected leaders on over the coming month: (more…)

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August 3, 2009

Health Care News

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Paul Krugman’s Health Care Fantasies

Paul Krugman just can’t stop spreading misinformation about Medicare and health insurance. Today he writes:

“In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.”

This is just plain deceptive. The latest government figures available, from 2007 (see Table 12), show that 87.8 cents of every private health insurance premium dollar went to personal health care bills. And that remaining 12.2 cents? In addition to underwriting, administration, advertising, and (gasp!) profit, that 12.2 figure also includes some patient care that insurance companies provided themselves, like disease management and on-call toll-free nurse consultations. Krugman continues: (more…)

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