Republicans Proven Wrong About Obamacare as The ACA Boosts Personal Income and Spending

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Republicans have been proven completely wrong as the ACA helped both personal income and spending increase in January.

The Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal delivered the bad news to the GOP:

The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Barack Obama’s signature health law, is already boosting household income and spending. The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumer spending rose a better-than-expected 0.4% and personal incomes climbed 0.3% in January. The new health-care law accounted for a big chunk of the increase on both fronts.

On the incomes side, the law’s expanded coverage boosted Medicaid benefits by an estimated $19.2 billion, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. The ACA also offered several refundable tax credits, including health insurance premium subsidies, which added up to $14.7 billion.

Taken together, the Obamacare provisions are responsible for about three-quarters of January’s overall rise in Americans’ incomes.

Republicans have spent years screaming from the highest peaks of Bulls–t Mountain that the ACA was going to kill jobs, drive healthcare costs up, and trash the economy. It turns out that the exact opposite is true.

What’s happening here is a matter of common sense. Millions of Americans are spending less on healthcare. People have more money to spend on other things. The ACA’s refundable tax credits are giving people billions of dollars back into their own pockets. The $19.2 billion in expanded Medicaid coverage is helping some people who paid for their own insurance or who were uninsured and paid for healthcare services out of pocket.

The fact that Obamacare is boosting the economy adds even more urgency to the Republican desire to get rid of it. The Republican mission is to stagnate all economic growth while Barack Obama is president. If his signature health insurance law is boosting the economy, it must be destroyed.

Reality is going to stop Republicans from campaigning hard against the ACA in both the 2014 and 2016 elections. The GOP is going to keep trying to destroy something that is not only helping millions of people get access to healthcare, but is also boosting the national economy.

Republicans were utterly, fantastically, completely wrong about the ACA, and as the law takes full effect, the news is only going to get worse for the Republican Party.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association