Barack Obama, Health Care Reform | featured news

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's new promise to restore the Medicare cuts made by President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law could backfire if he's elected. The reason: Obama's cuts also extended the life of Medicare's giant trust fund. By repealing them, Romney would move the program's insolvency eight years closer, toward the end of what would be his first term in office.

President Obama fought back against Republican criticism over Medicare today, saying he has improved the program by eliminating wasteful spending. "Here's what you need to know -- I have strengthened Medicare," Obama told supporters in Dubuque, Iowa, on the third and final day of his bus tour of the state.

One way or another, Barack Obama, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney all have supported the $700 billion in cuts to Medicare spending now in place under the Affordable Care Act. But you wouldn’t know that by listening to the current debate.

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough... Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don't qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That's especially true in states where conservative governors say they'll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama's health law.

Republican Paul Ryan's blueprint for Medicare could prove as polarizing in the campaign as President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has been. Even Mitt Romney may not want to go there....

Romney's latest problem with conservatives flowed from a spokeswoman's reflections this week on the benefits of the Massachusetts health care law. That Romney-proposed law remains a touchy topic, since it was a model for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — which Romney now condemns. In criticizing an outside group's ad linking Romney to the cancer death of a laid-off steelworker's wife, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told Fox News, "If people had been in Massachusetts under Gov. Romney's health care plan, they would have had health care."

President Obama is now happy to call it "Obamacare." Once a term of derision used mostly by Republicans who have vowed to repeal the new health care law, Obama deployed it in both of his Colorado appearances on Wednesday. "The Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare," Obama said to applause from backers at the University of Denver.

"I actually like the name," he added. "Because I do care -- that's why we fought so hard to make it happen."

The White House casts today's House Republican vote to repeal the health care law as a waste of time while Americans are hurting economically. "We do not need to refight the battles of two years ago, three years ago," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "We need to help the American economy now." The GOP-run House is likely to support repeal of Obama's health law with a vote this afternoon. The repeal proposal would go nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate... Carney said that, by his count, this is the 33rd time that congressional Republicans have voted to repeal or defund health care. He says the GOP is engaged in "a quixotic effort to try and score political points.

Here they go again. Again. Again. Curious to know how many times the House has voted to strip away all or part of the health-care reform law? The magic number is 32 — and it will be 33 after today, as House Republicans plan to vote again to repeal the entire law... And even if today’s vote never gets signed into law by President Obama, Republicans vow to keep trying.

Mitt Romney's campaign is aligning itself with President Barack Obama—and breaking from Republican leaders—by saying the government will be imposing a penalty, not a tax, on people who don't buy insurance as required by the new health-care law. The break from his Republican allies illustrates the difficulty the presumptive GOP presidential nominee faces in criticizing the president for a national health-care law that resembles the one Mr. Romney signed as Massachusetts governor. Both laws include a requirement that most individuals buy insurance coverage.