Romney Business v ObamaCare

All along Romney has been saying he would repeal ObamaCare and recently he began saying he’ll repeal and replace it. In the October 3, 2012 debate he said he’s spoken with individuals and small businesses that said they could afford health insurance and that health care costs went up $2,500. For the last 2 years (after going up at 3 times the inflation rate for a decade) health care costs were under 4% for the first time in 50 years. In 2011 some health care premiums went up 9% and insurance companies received 45% more in profits than anticipated (ObamaCare made them refund more than $1 billion to the payees) and consumer out-of-pocket expenses fell from 40% to 14% making total health costs less than what Romney said. What the President told you about the benefits of ObamaCare is true – it allows people and businesses to go to a market place that allows individuals to get insurance basically at the group rate (about 18% less) and many other things. The commentator tried to stop Obama but in this case he stood his ground. The commentator tried to stop Romney from jumping in but he said that private industry competes, lowers costs and doesn’t need the government to interfere – if this is true why then have costs been so high; it’s only been since ObamaCare that costs are now being lowered.  

Romney said there was a survey regarding the effect of ObamaCare on small businesses and three-quarters said they wouldn’t be hiring anyone. In September 2012 according to Rhett Buttle of Small Business Majority, a San Francisco-based nonprofit advocacy group, of the 28 million small business owners in America, 22 million are self-employed and “Now that pre-existing conditions are illegal it is a huge boon to the entrepreneurship community. We hear from self-employed entrepreneurs all the time who are very grateful for the new healthcare law.” This means 78.6% are for it. However, according to a recent survey released by Deloitte about two-thirds of companies with 50-100 employees said the Affordable Care Act is a “step in the wrong direction” compared to 57% of employers with more than 2,500 employees who said the same (the average of these 2 groups is 62% not the 75% Romney stated). If you noticed, it’s the 21.4% of the larger companies that are against it – I guess they don’t want something that eats into their profits.