health law and rising costs

[Danzig]

fact check, from 1/4:

http://factcheck.org/2012/01/promises-promises/

Promises, Promises
Posted on January 4, 2012

President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign is circulating a video of promises the then-candidate made during an Iowa caucus victory speech in January 2008, claiming he kept the promises he made that night. Not quite.

To be sure, the president signed a major health care law, ended the long war in Iraq and signed multiple “middle-class” tax cuts, just as his campaign boasts.

But the health care law isn’t expected to make insurance “affordable and available to every single American,” as Obama promised. And though he pledged to be a president who “brings our troops home” from Iraq, thousands of those U.S. troops are now stationed in neighboring Kuwait. Most glaringly, he has failed at “bringing Democrats and Republicans together” as he so optimistically promised four years ago.




At the moment, the new law is making health care slightly less affordable. Independent health care experts say the law has caused some insurance premiums to rise. As we wrote in October, the new law has caused about a 1 percent to 3 percent increase in health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family plans because of requirements for increased benefits. Last year’s premium increases cast even more doubt on another promise the president has made — that the health care law would “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”