A new study conducted by The Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based private foundation working toward a high-performance health care system, has revealed that the number of uninsured Americans would skyrocket were Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney‘s health care overhaul be implemented.
Source: The Commonwealth Fund, October 2012.
According to the fund, 72 million U.S. citizens would end up with no health insurance coverage by 2022 if the former Massachusetts governor’s care plan came into force. In contrast, President Barack Obama‘s signature law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, would reduce the number of uninsured citizens from 47.9 million in 2011 to an estimated 27.1 million in 10 years’ time. This number, the fund emphasizes, assumes that all the states would fully participate in the voluntary Medicaid expansion.
In addition, the study reports that, under Mr. Obama‘s plan, the number of uninsured Americans would drop in every single age group, whereas it would increase under a Romney-Ryan administration. Whereas 10 percent of non-senior citizens would be uninsured under the Affordable Care Act in 2022, around a quarter (26 percent) would have no health coverage under his opponent’s plan. The Commonwealth Fund states that the significant difference between the two health care schemes can be explained by Mr. Romney‘s planned changes to Medicaid.
Other studies, however, suggest that Mr. Romney‘s scheme, which would provide federal funds directly to the states in the form of block grants, would enable citizens to get more health care for each dollar the state receives. In addition, the states would be allowed to run those programs with a lot more flexibility than is currently the case, enabling them as a result to shop around for cheaper alternatives.
Ryan Williams, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign, told Politico that the fund’s latest report was “flawed.”
“Under ObamaCare, Americans have seen their insurance premiums increase, small businesses are facing massive tax increases, and seniors will have reduced access to Medicare services. The American people did not want this law, our country cannot afford this law, and when Mitt Romney becomes president he will repeal it and replace it with common-sense, patient-centered reforms that strengthen our health care system,” he wrote in an email.
Finally, the fund calculated that Medicare would be insolvent by 2017 if Mr. Romney‘s plan was implemented. Under Mr. Obama‘s signature law, the government-administered social insurance program for senior citizens would not go into the red until 2024.