Presidential Candidates Respond to SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling

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Presidential Candidates Respond to SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling

REUTERS/The Fiscal Times
By Josh Stelzer
June 25, 2015

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Thursday may have kept the health care law and its insurance subsidies in place, but that doesn’t mean Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” the law are done. Major GOP presidential candidates took to Twitter following the Supreme Court’s announcement to blast the high court’s decision. Here are their responses and those from the Democratic candidates.

Stat of the Day: 0.2%

U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S. January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Jonathan Ernst
By The Fiscal Times Staff
August 8, 2018

The New York Times’ Jim Tankersley tweets: “In order to raise enough revenue to start paying down the debt, Trump would need tariffs to be ~4% of GDP. They're currently 0.2%.”

Read Tankersley’s full breakdown of why tariffs won’t come close to eliminating the deficit or paying down the national debt here.

Number of the Day: 44%

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff
August 2, 2018

The “short-term” health plans the Trump administration is promoting as low-cost alternatives to Obamacare aren’t bound by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to spend a substantial majority of their premium revenues on medical care. UnitedHealth is the largest seller of short-term plans, according to Axios, which provided this interesting detail on just how profitable this type of insurance can be: “United’s short-term plans paid out 44% of their premium revenues last year for medical care. ACA plans have to pay out at least 80%.”

Number of the Day: 4,229

U.S. President Trump delivers remarks in Washington
JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS
By The Fiscal Times Staff
August 1, 2018

The Washington Post’s Fact Checkers on Wednesday updated their database of false and misleading claims made by President Trump: “As of day 558, he’s made 4,229 Trumpian claims — an increase of 978 in just two months.”

The tally, which works out to an average of almost 7.6 false or misleading claims a day, includes 432 problematics statements on trade and 336 claims on taxes. “Eighty-eight times, he has made the false assertion that he passed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history,” the Post says.

Number of the Day: $3 Billion

iStockphoto
By The Fiscal Times Staff
July 24, 2018

A new analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services finds that Medicare’s prescription drug program could have saved almost $3 billion in 2016 if pharmacies dispensed generic drugs instead of their brand-name counterparts, Axios reports. “But the savings total is inflated a bit, which HHS admits, because it doesn’t include rebates that brand-name drug makers give to [pharmacy benefit managers] and health plans — and PBMs are known to play games with generic drugs to juice their profits.”

Chart of the Day: Public Spending on Job Programs

Martin Rangel, a worker at Bremen Castings, pours motel metal into forms on the foundry’s production line in Bremen
STAFF
By The Fiscal Times Staff
July 19, 2018

President Trump announced on Thursday the creation of a National Council for the American Worker, charged with developing “a national strategy for training and retraining workers for high-demand industries,” his daughter Ivanka wrote in The Wall Street Journal. A report from the president’s National Council on Economic Advisers earlier this week made it clear that the U.S. currently spends less public money on job programs than many other developed countries.