Depending on how Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius decides to calculate medical loss ratios — the proportion of premiums that insurers spend on actual medical care (as opposed to on things like 24-hour nurse hotlines or chasing down fraudulent claims) — ObamaCare could cause massive dislocation in the health insurance industry, thus reducing competition and leading to more insurance monopolies, which would then be decried by the very people who caused them.
Richard Epstein argues that ObamaCare would unconstitutionally coerce the states.
The Senate bill, which became the enacted version of Obamacare (in connection with the “reconciliation package”), was never intended to be final law — and it reads like it.
If nothing else, ObamaCare may prove a stimulus to the paper industry, as its expansive utilization of IRS Form 1099 would force Americans to spend countless irritating and unproductive hours filling out and transmitting additional federal paperwork.
Insurance companies largely supported ObamaCare because it would require all Americans to buy their product under penalty of law, but ObamaCare’s requirement that insurers cover higher costs without raising prices puts a noose around insurers’ necks — and while they deserve their predicament, the rest of us don’t deserve to be shuttled into government-run health care after the private insurance market’s inevitable collapse.
“Most health policies that cover small groups and individuals in Florida – including the state’s own Cover Florida plan – likely will flunk federal requirements that take effect in September, the governor’s office says. “
Saying that ObamaCare, if implemented, would cost America its status as the “greatest country in the world,” Sen. Orrin Hatch is advancing legislation that would repeal ObamaCare’s individual and employer mandates (two cornerstones of the overhaul) as the first steps toward full repeal.
“The Obama administration’s inept handling of the oil leak foreshadows what will happen when hapless government bureaucrats begin administering our healthcare.”
The federal government responded to the lawsuit brought jointly by 20 state attorneys general who argue that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. In addition to claiming that the states lack the standing to sue and that ObamaCare is a valid regulation of interstate commerce, the Department of Justice argued that the individual mandate is part of Congress’s broad power to tax. This directly contradicts frequent claims, but Congressional Democrat leadership as well as President Obama, that suggestions that the individual mandate was a tax were misleading and disingenuous fear-mongering.