Click above to hear a great episode of one of my favorite programs, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, from WBUR in Boston.
Here’s Tom Ashbrook’s teaser for the show:
“The new GOP-led Congress has Obamacare in its sights — what’s ahead for American health care and the Affordable Care Act?
The new Republican Congress, all sworn in now and ready to roll. First up on the GOP target list: Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act. The first major bill of the 114th Congress would cut the number of Americans employers would be required to cover. House vote scheduled for tomorrow. That’s a tweak. The bigger GOP rallying cry has been repeal. And then there’s a court push to gut the funding side of Obamacare. What changes are really plausible? Politically possible? And what would they mean for you? This hour On Point: Obamacare, and the GOP plan of attack. – Tom Ashbrook“
For this show, his guests were Julie Rovner (senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News and former health policy correspondent for NPR News), Kim Alfano (Republican strategist), David Cutler (professor of applied economics at Harvard University, and former senior health policy adviser on the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign).
Tom Ashbrook also suggests the following reading list:
“CBS News: GOP to target Obamacare when new Congress begins — ‘GOP leaders have vowed a push to change the definition of full-time work to 40 hours per week, and when the new Congress begins, they’ll make good on that promise. When a similar bill passed the House last April, President Obama issued a veto threat, saying it would increase the deficit and leave too many without employer-provided health coverage.’
New York Times: Harvard Ideas on Health Care Hit Home, Hard – ‘Members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the heart of the 378-year-old university, voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care. The university says the increases are in part a result of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, which many Harvard professors championed.’
The Wall Street Journal: Affordable Care Act Creates a Trickier Tax Season — ‘Millions of Americans who got subsidies under the law may find they are getting smaller-than-expected refunds or owe the IRS because credits they received to offset their insurance premiums were too large. As many as half of the roughly 6.8 million Americans who got subsidies may have to refund money to the government, based on one estimate by tax firm H&R Block Inc.’
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