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Romney Praises Poland’s Economy, Where Government Plays A Larger Role Than The U.S.

By Rebecca Leber posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Aug 1, 2012 at 10:35 am

Visiting Poland for the final leg of his gaffe-filled trip abroad, Romney praised how the nation has “lifted the heavy hand of government” to become one of the fastest growing economies in Europe.

The problem with Romney’s speech, however, is that the the Polish government plays a larger role in its economy than the U.S. government plays here. The Associated Press noted that the reality of Polish government spending doesn’t match Romney’s rhetoric:

While it’s true that Poland is one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies and boasts dynamic entrepreneurs, Romney’s depiction of Poland as a place of small government is debatable. Even 23 years after throwing off a communist command economy, the Polish government continues to have a strong presence in people’s lives: it gives women $300 for each baby they have, doubling that sum for poor families; it fully funds state university educations; and it guarantees health care to all its 38 million citizens.

And while Poland’s economic growth has certainly been impressive in recent years, this is partly the result of economic redistribution in the form of subsidies that have been flowing in from the European Union since it joined the bloc in 2004.

In addition to praising higher government spending, this is also the second time Romney has inadvertently lauded universal health care — a far cry from his criticisms of the individual mandate. He first complimented universal health care in his comments on Israel’s relatively low health spending.

NEWS FLASH

Massachusetts Passes Bill To Control Health Costs | The Massachusetts legislature approved a bill today that aims to save $200 billion over the next 15 years by connecting health care cost increases to the state’s economic growth. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is expected to sign the legislation, which passed the House 132-20 and was unanimous in the Senate. The new measure follows up on the state’s 2006 health care overhaul that then-Gov. Mitt Romney (R) backed. The original law focuses primarily on insurance coverage, so the new bill will address the underlying costs of health care that push up the prices for insurance premiums.

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jul 31, 2012 at 5:51 pm

Economy

STUDY: Companies With Women On Their Boards Perform Better

By Guest Blogger posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jul 31, 2012 at 4:10 pm

Sheryl Sandberg, recently named the first female member of Facebook's board of directors

A new report by the Credit Suisse Research Institute shows that businesses with women on their boards outperformed comparably sized companies with all-male boards by 26 percent, suggesting that a mixed-gender board provides an important boost for a business. According to the study:

Our key finding is that, in a like-for-like comparison, companies with at least one woman on the board would have outperformed in terms of share price performance, those with no women on the board over the course of the past six years. [...]

In the middle of the decade when economic growth was relatively robust, there was little difference in share price performance between companies with or without women on the board. Almost all of the outperformance in our backtest was delivered post-2008, since the macro environment deteriorated and volatility increased. In other words, stocks with greater gender diversity on their boards generally look defensive: they tend to perform best when markets are falling, deliver higher average ROEs through the cycle, exhibit less volatility in earnings and typically have lower gearing ratios. We can therefore conclude that relative share price outperformance of companies with women on the board looks unlikely to be entirely consistent, but the evidence suggests that more balance on the board brings less volatility and more balance through the cycle.

When it comes to the upper echelons of U.S. business, many barriers to women still exist. In one specific example, women make up more than half of the financial industry’s workforce, but fewer than 3 percent of U.S. financial companies employ a female chief executive. Overall, 36 percent of U.S. companies have no women on their boards of directors. Moreover, a female CEO makes only 69 cents for every dollar that a male CEO makes.

– Steven Perlberg

Meet Mitt Romney’s Health Care Team

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jul 31, 2012 at 2:00 pm

As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney instituted health reforms that have expanded coverage to almost all residents and created a successful model for increasing access across the nation.

But Romney has walked away from that plan as a Republican candidate for president and has instead adopted a traditional market-driven approach that encourages the uninsured to purchase coverage in the unregulated individual market, push the sick into state-based high-risk insurance pools, and do little to lower health care costs or encourage providers to deliver care more efficiently. Below are the people who are advising him in this effort:

SCOTT ATLAS


Atlas is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor and the chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center. He opposes Obamacare, writing in a Politico op-ed that “continued access to the world’s best medical care…is certain to dramatically decrease” if the Affordable Care Act is not stopped. But in 2007, when Atlas supported former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, Atlas also attacked Romney’s “federalist” health care plan, trying to discredit the plan by pointing to Romney’s support of an individual mandate in Massachusetts. “Mitt Romney’s legacy is the creation of a multi-billion dollar government health bureaucracy that punishes employers and insists middle income individuals either purchase health insurance or pay for their own health care,” Atlas said in 2007.

PAUL HOWARD

Howard is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of the institute’s Center for Medical Progress. And like Atlas, Howard has gone on the record in opposition to Romney’s signature health care reform law in Massachusetts. “It’s no secret that the template for President Obama’s health-reform legislation was the Massachusetts health-care plan enacted in 2006,” he wrote in 2010. And Howard added that “small businesses face higher health-insurance costs” as a result of Romneycare.
Read more

NEWS FLASH

Members Of Congress Call On Governors To Support Medicaid Expansion | Forty-three members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent letters to state governors imploring them to support the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in their states. An estimated 17 million Americans who can’t afford health insurance will benefit from the expansion, but some Republican governors have already pledged to reject the expansion. “We ask that you refuse to play politics with people’s health and publicly support expanding health care access to the thousands of people in your state who need it today,” the members wrote in their letter.

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jul 31, 2012 at 12:45 pm

Eight More Ways Women Will Benefit Under Obamacare Starting Tomorrow

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jul 31, 2012 at 11:17 am

When an Obamacare regulations goes into effect tomorrow, 47 million women will benefit from the guaranteed coverage of preventive services — including contraception coverage — without co-pays. The new rules will require most insurance plans to begin including the services at no additional cost at the next renewal date that falls on or after August 1, according to a news release from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Center for American Progress graphic breaks down what will be covered and how women will benefit:

But even as millions of women will benefit from even more provisions of the Affordable Care Act, nine states are attacking the contraception coverage requirement because of the claim that the provision violates religious liberty. Even though President Obama announced an “accommodation” for religious institutions so that the employer does not have to pay for the birth control coverage, states have considered legislation or ballot measures to either reject the federal regulation or undermine contraceptive coverage in state law. And ongoing challenges against the contraception regulation continue in federal courts.

POLL: Majority Of Americans Favor Expanding Medicaid Under Obamacare

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Jul 31, 2012 at 9:18 am

A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that a majority of Americans support the Obamacare provision that expands Medicaid coverage to an estimated 17 million low-income people, with 67 percent of Americans in favor of expanding Medicaid nationwide. Rising public support for the program is also reflected in the public hospital employees who have come out in strong favor of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and the 16 Democratic governors who have already pledged to implement it in their states.

Kaiser found that broad support for the expansion dropped off when respondents were asked about the policy in their own state, mainly because “people had an exaggerated sense of the likelihood they would face a penalty in 2014 for not carrying insurance”:

However, the Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that only one in 10 Americans will end up in the position of needing to choose between buying insurance or paying a penalty. Furthermore, the Obama administration will ensure that low-income Americans in states that have opted out of Medicaid expansion will not be penalized.

Outsized concern about the penalty that state residents may incur for not carrying insurance may stem from the Republican governors who are currently leading a crusade against Medicaid expansion in their states, despite the significant benefits to expanding the program. Republican governors in states including Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Louisiana have threatened to refuse the Medicaid expansion.

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