President Obama and Mitt Romney made some swift punches on healthcare in the first presidential debate Wednesday night. Healthcare was officially allotted 15 minutes in the 90-minute debate, so let’s check out their argument breakdown:
| OBAMA | ROMNEY | |
| Romney lacks details on how he would reform healthcare if he repeals the ACA. | What was accomplished by him in Massachusetts is a model for the nation state by state. | |
| Defended popular provisions of the ACA, including the coverage of pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans up to age 26, and removal of lifetime coverage limits. | Overriding aim is to create a much bigger retail market in healthcare, with transparency on pricing and services, more flexible insurance pools and interstate insurance markets. | |
| $716 billion in Medicare cuts went to reduced payments to hospitals and providers — payments reductions those groups agreed to. | $716 billion in Medicare cuts under the ACA will cause providers to drop out of the program. Some 15% of hospitals and nursing homes say they won’t take any more Medicare patients under that scenario, and 50% of doctors who say they won’t take any more Medicare patients. | |
| Romney’s plan will transform Medicare into a voucher system, giving seniors a choice between a private plan and traditional Medicare. But traditional Medicare would collapse in the arrangement, leaving seniors stuck with private insurers that have higher administrative costs than the government program, as well as a profit motive. It was estimated that this would cost seniors about $6,000 a year. | Get competition into the Medicare world so that people can get their choice of different plans at lower costs, better quality. For Medicaid, he would fund the states at what they’re receiving now plus inflation and 1% and allow them to decide how to treat their patients. | |
| Countered that the IPAB (unpopular with organized medicine) is prohibited under law from dictating a patient’s treatment. But it will, he said, promote the adoption of best practices found at high-quality, low-cost healthcare organizations. | Criticized ACA for establishing an unelected board that tells patients what kind of treatment they can have. | |
| Romney’s own proposal to provide coverage of preexisting conditions, he noted, merely duplicates current law, which guarantees coverage only within the first 90 days of someone’s loss of insurance. | “The right answer is not to have the federal government take over healthcare and start mandating to the providers across America telling a patient and a doctor what treatment they can have,” Romney said.”The private market and individual responsibility always work best.” |
