Ready for a little TRUTH IN POLITICS?...

Here, as a service to clarity and sanity, is the story of the Obama administration in raw, irreducible numbers. The unspun numbers sometimes benefit the administration, and sometimes they do not, but they always act as a corrective to the serial crimes against the truth that are playing out daily in the ongoing election fight — served up by the White House, the campaigns, the billionaires and their unaccountable super-PAC money, a million screaming blogs, and the unholy propaganda machine that is Fox News.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-by-the-numbers-1012#ixzz26kAOBrmd

As a public service, the Gazette Blog will post a series of topic pieces from The Politics Blog that attempt to cut through the lies and exaggerations being perpetrated by both sides during this presidential campaign.  The series is brought to you courtesy of readersupportednews.org

FIRST UP...

HEALTH CARE

For as sweeping and revolutionary as it's reputed to be, the health-care plan really has quite modest core proposals. Everyone has to have health insurance. If you can't afford it, the government will help you pay for it, and if you don't want it, you'll have to pay a small penalty (or tax, or whatever) to compensate the rest of us should you find yourself in the emergency room and we're stuck with the bill. Insurance companies, for their part, can't refuse you coverage if you're already sick. That, more or less, is what we're talking about with both Mitt Romney's health-care reforms in Massachusetts and Barack Obama's near-identical scaling-up at the national level, and when broken down thusly, you realize that the high drama surrounding the passage of the Affordable Care Act has not so much to do with sickness or health. It's simply another round in the age-old game of "Who Needs Government?" Or rather, it is another round in the fight between public interests and private interests, with the winner often being the one who demagogues best.

WHAT THEY SAY:

"Because of the new law, 34 million more Americans will gain coverage — many who will be able to afford insurance for the first time. Once the law is fully implemented, about 95 percent of Americans under age 65 will have insurance." —BarackObama.com

Carston Koall/Getty

"Obamacare raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion. Obamacare cuts Medicare — cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion, and even with those cuts and tax increases, Obamacare adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt and pushes those obligations onto coming generations." —Mitt Romney, June 28, 2012

"The facts are clear: The health-care law provides a significant tax cut, averaging about $2,000 for more than 18 million middle-class people and families — a tax cut Republicans in Washington are vowing to repeal, socking it to the middle class once again." —White House advisor David Plouffe, June 29, 2012
"What we really have here is a bill that, without question, will kill jobs, will limit access to health care, will raise taxes, and will lead to a government takeover of health care." —Senator Roy Blunt, July 14 2009

BENEFITS:
30 million: The number of additional people expected to gain health-care coverage by 2022 through the establishment of private exchanges and expansion of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program.
57.2 million: The number of people under 65 with a preexisting condition who will have access to health care due to the ACA.
105 million: The number of people who will no longer contend with lifetime caps on health insurance.
3 million: The number of people who will not get health coverage due to the Supreme Court's decision regarding the constitutionality of the Medicaid expansion.
30 million: The number of people predicted to remain uninsured in 2022.

BASIC NUMBERS:
$1.7 trillion: The projected cost of the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA through 2022, including $1 trillion for the cost of subsidies to the newly established exchanges, through which individuals and families may purchase insurance; $642 billion in increased outlays for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP); and $23 billion in tax credits for certain small employers.
$514 billion: The total projected revenue from the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA through 2022, including $55 billion in tax penalties from individuals and families who go without insurance and $117 billion from large employers — those with 50 employees or more — who provide no coverage or inadequate coverage to employees; and a variety of new taxes.
$700 billion: The total projected savings, over the coming decade, of the Medicare-reform provisions of the ACA.
$210 billion: The total projected reductions to federal budget deficits over the decade following the ACA's enactment.
$109 billion: The total amount that would be added to federal budget deficits over the next decade in the event of an ACA repeal.

TAXES/PENALTIES:
0.9%: Increase in amount wealthy individuals (earning > $200,000) and/or families ( > $250,000) will start paying into Medicare from their income.
3.8%: New tax on a portion of investment income for high-income taxpayers.
10%: New tax on indoor tanning services.
$2,500: Limit on the tax-deductible amount a worker may contribute to a flexible spending plan.
40%: Excise tax on employer-provided, high-premium insurance plans. (Starts in 2018.)
$95, or 1% of taxable income (whichever is higher): The penalty (or tax, or mandate) an individual must pay if he does not possess health insurance, beginning in 2014. (This number gradually rises to $695 in 2016.)

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-by-the-numbers-1012#ixzz26k9ixNA7