The Mercatus Center at George Mason University released a new working paper on the Affordable Care Act. The study, authored by Brian Blase of the Mercatus Center, Doug Badger of the Galen Institute, and Ed Haislmaier of the Heritage Foundation contains two key findings:
First, insurers incurred substantial losses overall despite receiving much larger back-end subsidies per enrollee through the ACA’s reinsurance program than they expected when they set their premiums for 2014. Second, it is estimated that in the absence of the reinsurance program, insurers would have had to set premiums 26% higher, on average, in order to avoid losses—assuming implausibly that the overall health of the risk pool would not have worsened as a result of the higher premiums. The findings raise serious questions about the ACA’s future, particularly when the reinsurance program ends and premium revenue must be sufficient to cover expenses.
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During the healthcare debate of 2009 and 2010, conservatives screamed a simple fact from the rooftops: ObamaCare will not work. No one wanted to listen then, but their warnings are now coming into fruition.
ObamaCare, as constructed, attempted to fix a dysfunctional health care payment system by creating an even more complicated system on top of it, filled with subsidies, coverage mandates, and other artificial government incentives. But its result has been a system that plucked Americans out of coverage they like and forced them to pay more for less.
Now the insurers are beginning to realize that in spite of all the subsidies and mandates working in their favor, and despite all of the cost-cutting they have had to do at the expense of consumers, they just can’t make money in this system.
A new note from JPMorgan economist Jesse Edgerton looks at what is happening with Americans who are working part-time for “economic reasons” — or Americans involuntarily working part time. As you can see in the above chart — the red line — the numbers remains elevated despite big declines in the U-3 and U-6 jobless rates. Edgerton:
There has been little recent relationship between the number of “extra” part-time workers and the level of U3 unemployment, questioning the idea that driving U3 down further will reduce involuntary part-time employment. . . In a note last year, we pointed out that the shift strikingly coincided with the passage of the ACA, which included an employer mandate to provide health insurance to employees working 30 or more hours per week. . . passage of the ACA preceded a large and unprecedented shift from workers working more than 30 hours per week to just under 30 hours. We continue to believe that the ACA can explain a significant number of the “extra” involuntary part-time workers.
The Association of Medical Colleges released a report that says America will be short a million doctors by 2025 and that the shortage of primary care physicians makes up a third of that number. There are several reasons for the shortage of primary care physicians including “fee for service” payment model and the mandate for doctors to switch to electronic health records (EHR), which is a time consuming, costly addition to physician’s duties.
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Obama promised that Obamacare would “save all of us money and reduce pressures on emergency rooms all across the country.” However, a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows, that by doling out insurance coverage to millions more people without doing anything to address America’s growing doctor shortage, the president’s health reform law may make the ER crisis even worse.
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The Affordable Care Act has created many problems and the American people are left with rising costs, and higher taxes, mountains of red tape, and arrogant bureaucratic attacks on personal and religious liberty.
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The GOP committee chairmen issued subpoenas for Health and Human Services (HHS) documents related the “Basic Health Program,” which they say the administration is unconstitutionally funding despite a lack of appropriation from Congress.
Republicans say the Obama administration is paying out these funds for the program even though Congress has not appropriated the money. The administration argues that it already has a permanent appropriation under the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans say that permanent appropriation was only for the law’s tax credits, not for the Basic Health Program.
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The Supreme Court asked for additional information from both sides on “whether and how” employees of religious nonprofits could get contraceptive coverage through other means that would be less objectionable to their employers.
The goal, is to address how employees could still get contraceptive coverage “but in a way that does not require any involvement” from the religious employers, meaning they would not have to sign the form that they currently object to.
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In a report, the Department of Health and Human Services said Monday that there are around two million low-income, uninsured people in those 20 states who have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder.
Medicaid has long been a joint federal-state program that offers near-free care to the very poor. Under the health law, Washington pays almost all of the costs of insuring people who have slightly higher incomes.
Opponents of expansion argue that neither states nor the federal government can afford to further swell the program, and that a shortage of providers to treat the newly insured poses an additional challenge in trying to enroll more people in it.
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The Food and Drug Administration said this month that it will delay enforcement of menu labeling rules – again – until next year. Passed as part of the health care overhaul in 2010, the rules will eventually require restaurants and other establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of food “clearly and conspicuously” on their menus, menu boards and displays.