“In other words, Sebelius’ dilemma is whether or not to take away a perfectly good option—catastrophic coverage—that the market currently offers patients. And the expert advice is that she should not. I’m not sure whether to applaud this dawn of wisdom or weep that the Obama administration needed a panel to tell it the obvious. What’s next? An expert panel advising the administration that GM should, after all, keep its wheels round?”
“Staffing firms urged Congress Thursday to repeal the healthcare law’s requirement that employers provide insurance for their workers — even as they continue working with federal regulators to tweak the law.”
“In the end, the fate of Obamacare will almost certainly be decided in the political and legislative arena, not the courts, and the 2012 election is likely to be the decisive battle in that regard. Keeping this in mind, Republicans and conservatives should be doing all they can to make the 2012 election another referendum on the damage Obamacare will do to the American economy and health system.”
“This afternoon, the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania became the latest court to strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (Obamacare) individual mandate, holding that ‘[t]he power to regulate interstate commerce does not subsume the power to dictate a lifetime financial commitment to health insurance coverage.’ The challenge was brought by a Barbara Goudy-Bachman and Gregory Bachman, who are both self-employed and have chosen to drop their health insurance because it exceeded their monthly mortgage payments. Instead, Bachmans opted to pay for health care out of pocket. The Administration, unless it wants to concede that Obamacare is unconstitutional, will have to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.”
“The health insurance rate-review regulation included in last year’s health care overhaul goes into effect this week… So how will it be determined if insurers are engaged in a ‘pattern or practice’ of ‘excessive or unjustified’ increases? However the authorities want. As CRS notes, ‘the terms “pattern” and “practice” are not defined by law.’ If those recommendations are anything like previous state-based efforts to regulate health insurance, they’ll probably be inconsistent and inscrutable.”
“Alas, ObamaCare may poison the well for reform if Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decides that HSAs don’t meet the law’s requirements for mandated ‘essential’ coverage. Add this to the long list of ways that ObamaCare will inhibit innovation, but it’s getting hard to keep track of them all.”
“The survey found passage of the new health care law prompted health insurance carriers to stop selling new child-only health plans in many states. Of the 50 states, 17 reported that there are currently no carriers selling childonly health plans to new enrollees. Thirty-nine states indicated at least one insurance carrier exited the child-only market following enactment of the new health care laws. Accordingly, child-only health insurance access and competition in the market have declined significantly since passage of the Act.”
“It is three years before most of the new health-care law kicks in, but already some of America’s largest employers are peppering the Internal Revenue Service with concerns that making the changes will be far more complex than they anticipated. At issue is one of the law’s central requirements: employers with 50 or more full-time workers must offer affordable insurance or pay a penalty. It sounds simple enough. But in crafting the rules, the IRS and two other federal agencies are now tackling basic yet messy questions, such as who counts as a full-time worker and how do companies measure whether insurance is ‘affordable.'”
“Opponents of the new federal health care overhaul say they’ve gathered enough signatures to ask Ohio voters this fall whether the state should amend its constitution to keep people from being required to buy health insurance or face penalties.
The amendment’s backers acknowledge that approval of the measure won’t automatically exempt the state from the mandate in President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. But they say they hope to use the amendment to legally challenge the law.”
“ObamaCare creates incentives for state and federal politicians and bureaucrats to exert direct control over the premiums of health plans. However, because health plans largely pass through costs from medical providers, artificially limiting increases in premiums cannot actually result in lower health costs. Instead, it results in reduced access to care and threatens the solvency of health plans. ObamaCare also introduces at least five critical uncertainties that make it difficult to estimate future medical costs accurately, and suggest that Obamacare will be much more disruptive to health insurance than the Administration has advertised.”