Posted by Phillipa on November 7, 2012, at 23:47:05
Sounds like a repeat of last four years to me. Hold off another year. Phillipa
UPDATED November 7, 2012) Voters tonight reelected President Barack Obama by a narrow margin, giving the Democrat 4 more years to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the face of continued opposition by Congressional Republicans.
The president punched his election ticket by carrying enough big swing states such as Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin while retaining typical Democratic strongholds such as Illinois, California, and New York. As of roughly 11:30 am ET on Wednesday, CNN had credited him with 303 electoral votes 270 of the total 538 are needed to win compared with 206 votes for Republican rival Mitt Romney. The remaining 29 electoral votes of too-close-to-call Florida were still up for grabs. Nationwide as of late Wednesday morning, 50% of the popular vote was going to Obama and 48% to Romney.
Obama's margin of victory in 2012 is shaping up to be much narrower than it was in 2008, when he won 365 electoral votes and almost 53% of the popular vote in his race against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
The GOP remains in charge of the House, as most pundits predicted. Democrats, however, retained their majority in the Senate, counting independent senators who caucus with them. Consequently, a second-term Obama will deal with essentially the same kind of divided Congress that was so gridlocked during his first term.
Jobs and the economy were the top issues on voters' minds this year, but healthcare may have given Obama a slight headwind going into today's election. A poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos November 2 showed that 42% of probable voters thought Obama had a better plan on healthcare compared with 39% who favored Romney. Likewise, Obama held a 42% to 35% edge over Romney when it came to public confidence in their plans for Medicare. However, Romney bested Obama on those issues among seniors, who said they preferred the Republican as president.
The same patterns on healthcare issues emerged in a tracking poll conducted last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which pointed to an additional Obama advantage: 51% of Americans trusted the president to make decisions about women's reproductive health choices and services. Romney's support level on this issue was only 33%.
Little Time to Celebrate With Fiscal Cliff Around the Corner
The only poll that really counts, however, happens in the voting booth, and tonight Team Obama is uncorking champagne bottles. But the president has little time to celebrate. On November 13, a lame-duck Congress returns to Capitol Hill, and its first order of business is steering the nation from the so-called fiscal cliff, a legislative crisis that experts say could cripple the economy as much as Hurricane Sandy crippled the East Coast. Physicians have much at stake in the outcome.
The fiscal cliff is a convergence of several deadlines. On January 1, the federal budget will feel the knife of roughly $1 trillion in automatic across-the-board budget cuts mandated by the failure of Congress to come up with that level of deficit reduction last year. The cuts, called sequestration, will lower Medicare reimbursement to providers by 2%.
Then there is the question of the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to expire at the end of the year. So far, lawmakers have been unable to agree on whether the tax cuts should be continued for all Americans, including the super wealthy, or just for the poor and the middle class. If partisan gridlock causes the cuts to expire on their own, the resulting jump in taxes could drive a struggling economy back into a recession, some have warned.
Finally, physicians face a 26.5% reduction in Medicare reimbursement on January 1 unless Congress acts to avert it. The pay cut was triggered by the program's sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. Merely repealing the SGR formula and freezing Medicare reimbursement for 10 years would cost some $270 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Postponing the cut another year the usual solution in the past seems more likely, assuming Congressional Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on this and other year-end issues.
Obama is expected to play a role in solving the fiscal-cliff crisis. At the same time, he will wield a veto pen over any legislation that he considers unfair to Americans.
After he takes his second oath of office in January, Obama will resume the long slog of carrying out the ACA, which is approaching a key phase in 2014. That year, the controversial individual mandate kicks in, requiring Americans to obtain healthcare coverage either through an employer or a state exchange. Individuals and households strapped for cash can receive federal premium subsidies. In addition, Medicaid eligibility requirements will expand, extending coverage to an additional 16 million Americans through 2019.
The second-term president probably will face continued resistance from House Republicans, who have tried to defund the law, and Republican governors and GOP-controlled state legislatures who are dragging their feet on setting up insurance exchanges. In addition, some states may opt out of Medicaid expansion, a right that was affirmed by this summer's Supreme Court ruling on the ACA.
poster:Phillipa
thread:1030891
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20121029/msgs/1030891.html