“Sandy Chung is grappling with a new kind of request at her pediatrics office in Fairfax, Va.: prescriptions for aspirin and diaper-rash cream.
Patients are demanding doctors’ orders for over-the-counter products because of a provision in the health-care overhaul that slipped past nearly everyone’s radar. It says people who want a tax break to buy such items with what’s known as flexible-spending accounts need to get a prescription first.”
“ObamaCare goes the extra mile by only permitting approaches that are more coercive than itself. Its waiver provisions only apply to that law’s private-insurance provisions, and require states to preserve the law’s price controls prohibiting health rating, to cover the same number of people, and to provide coverage as comprehensive and subsidies as large as the new law does. These restrictions completely bar free-market reforms.”
“Recent district court decisions have fueled speculation over what the Supreme Court will do about ObamaCare if and when one of the challenges to the law’s ‘individual mandate’ arrives on the justices’ doorstep. Largely unnoticed amidst the agitation, though, cases that will have profound effects on ObamaCare’s future are already pending before the Court. They involve enormous amounts of money, and they have powerful implications for the implementation of the criminally misnamed ‘Affordable Care Act.’ The justices will get these cases right, to good effect.”
“The number of temporary healthcare reform waivers granted by the Obama administration to organizations climbed to more than 1,000, according to new numbers disclosed by the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago.”
“The few line items in the budget bearing the fingerprints of ObamaCare portend billions in expenses that have nothing to do with expanding access to care or making it more affordable.
For instance, in the 2011-2012 budget, the president has requested 1,270 new IRS agents to help implement the law. The agency will have to hire thousands more by 2014, when it will be tasked with making sure that all 300 million Americans comply with the law’s individual health insurance mandate.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also looking for some 4,700 new employees. Every single division of the HHS bureaucracy is set to grow.”