June 28,2012

Press Contact:

Julia Lawless, Antonia Ferrier, 202.224.4515

Why ObamaCare Must Be Fully Repealed

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee and a current member and former Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today the President’s partisan health spending law is still bad policy and must be fully repealed. Here’s why:

1)    56 percent of Americans oppose the President’s health spending law, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted from June 19-23. (Most Americans oppose health law but like provisions, June 24, 2012)

2)    $2.6 trillion is the price tag of the law when fully implemented over a ten year period.  (Senate Budget Committee analysis of Congressional Budget Office score of PPACA, March 10, 2010)

3)    $500+ billion increase in taxes that will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices for patients, lower wages for employees, and fewer jobs in the economy. (Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, March 20, 2010 and the Joint Committee on Taxation, March, 20 2010)

4)    8 percent increase in premiums largely fueled by ObamaCare’s collective mandates.. (2012 National Health Expenditure Projections, June 12, 2012)

5)    $118 billion in new costs if states choose to implement the health spending law’s Medicaid expansions—budgetary costs that will crowd out other state programs like education or law enforcement (Joint Report by the Senate Finance Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee, Medicaid Expansion in the New Health Law: Costs To The States, March 1, 2011)

6)    800,000 fewer jobs because ObamaCare provisions “will effectively increase marginal tax rates, which will also discourage work.” (Testimony of Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director, Congressional Budget Office, House Budget Committee Hearing “The Congressional Budget Office’s Budget and Economic Outlook,” February 10, 2011)

7)    $60 billion in taxes imposed on health insurance plans. The JCT also notes that the tax will be borne by “consumers in the form of higher prices; owners of firms in the form of lower profits; employees of firms in the form of lower wages; or other suppliers to firms in the form of lower payments.” (Joint Committee on Taxation letter to Jon Kyl, June 3, 2011)

8)    7.4 million, the number of seniors who will lose enrollment in Medicare Advantage under the new law after 2017, according to CBO. (OACT analysis of PPACA, April 22, 2010)

9)    $37 trillion is the amount of unfunded obligations faced by the Medicare program, which the health care law did not attempt to resolve.  (2012 Report from the CMS Office of the Actuary to the Medicare Board of Trustees, May 18, 2012)

10)    60 percent - the number of doctors who believe the health care law will have a negative impact on overall patient care.  (Survey by The Doctors Company, February 29, 2012)

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