ObamaCare encourages preventive care, which is of dubious value and wastes the valuable time of doctors who are already stretched thin. “Several notable studies of the supply side of preventive care suggest how ObamaCare, as the healthcare legislation is often known, plans to make a difficult situation impossible. In 2003, a team of Duke University researchers first estimated the amount of time required for a primary care physician to provide then-recommended preventive services to an average patient panel… They concluded that the preventive services recommended for the U.S. population back then simply required an unreasonable amount of physician time. The authors emphasized that the large number of screening recommendations for each patient, coupled with the large numbers of patients in a practice, were likely a major reason for the failure to provide these services.”
“To turn a phrase, there ought not to be a law; Obamacare should be booted from the U.S. Code and onto the ash heap of history. Think it can’t be done? Guess again — Congress has reversed course on health care reform before.”
“As businesses starts grappling with health reform, it’s becoming clearer that the Obama plan is predicated on some false assumptions about the health care industry. Three assumptions underlying the legislation are simply wrong, making it hard to see how the plan ever reduces costs. It assumes that health insurers are highly profitable, that doctors and hospitals operate on lean margins, and that the source of change and innovation in health care delivery is going to come from hospitals and medical practices that consolidate into more closed provider networks.”
“Politicians have deliberately written the ObamaCare rules, as they have for all entitlements, so the real costs are disguised and hard for taxpayers to figure out. During the ObamaCare debate, Mr. Foster was honest enough from his Medicare perch to expose the plan’s true costs, and his new Medicare demarche continues this public service. He ought to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or at least some media attention. But in Barack Obama’s Washington, his honesty will be rewarded with obscurity.”
With ObamaCare unlikely to be repealed until 2013 at the earliest, the promising tactic to defeat it is through defunding implementation. “Should Republicans regain control of Congress, they could theoretically use their new power of the purse to deny Obama the funding needed to administer his signature accomplishment. This prospect is already gaining steam among opponents of the law. The new group DeFundit.org has gotten more than 90 candidates and current members of Congress to sign a pledge supporting stripping ObamaCare of money.”
ObamaCare cut over $500 billion in Medicare payments to health care providers over the next 10 years. These cuts were in an arbitrary, across-the-board manner, and are unlikely to work properly because it’s difficult to second-guess how medicine will advance over the next decade. “This is an inherent defect of Medicare not found in markets. Competitive markets automatically translate productivity gains into lower prices for consumers. Medicare protects providers at the expense of enrollees and taxpayers.”
Indiana’s proven health reforms are about to be overturned by ObamaCare’s Washington-led directives. “A key part of American federalism is states’ ability to serve as laboratories where the consequences of various programs can be explored without committing the entire nation to what may turn out to be expensive blunders. For instance, Wisconsin successfully took the lead on welfare reform in the early 1990s, setting the template for national bipartisan legislation in 1996 that lifted millions of women and children out of poverty. But in health-care reform, President Obama and congressional Democrats didn’t wait for state experiments to run their course. State reform efforts—on the left and right—were still in their earliest stages in March 2010, when Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, committing the nation to trillions of dollars of new health-care spending. The consequences of this rush to national reform could be dire.”
“The precise number of new entities that will ultimately be created pursuant to PPACA is currently unknowable, for the number of entities created by some sections is contingent upon other factors, and some new entities may satisfy more than one requirement in the legislation. Although PPACA states that certain entities were ‘established’ by the legislation, in practical terms, these entities will not be able to function until members are appointed and appropriations are provided or made available… The degree of specificity in these provisions may have implications for congressional control and, conversely, the amount of discretion that agencies will have in the implementation of the legislation. PPACA significantly increased the appointment responsibilities of the Comptroller General of the United States, and it is unclear how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will be able to independently audit entities whose members are appointed by the head of GAO.”
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is the first Senate Democrat to endorse Sen. Mike Johann’s (R-NE) bill to repeal the restrictive new business reporting requirements in ObamaCare. The provision is entirely unworkable, and even the IRS has questioned its worth.
The Medicare Trustees issued their annual report outlining the financial status of Medicare last week. At the end of the document was a formal rebuke from the chief Medicare actuary, casting doubt on the rosy portrayal of the main report. “It is difficult to overstate how unusual this development is. The normal process with the annual Trustees’ Reports is for the Trustees to develop and publish the best available projections for the future finances of Social Security and Medicare. The respective Social Security and Medicare actuaries then sign a pro forma blessing of those projections, which is tacked to the back of the report when released to the public.”