Curtis Dubay, The Heritage Foundation
Thu, 2011-01-20
"The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) imposes numerous tax hikes that transfer more than $500 billion over 10 years—and more in the future—from hardworking American families and businesses to Congress for spending on new entitlements and subsidies. In addition, higher tax rates on working and investing will discourage economic growth both now and in the future, further lowering the standard of living."
Edmund Haislmaier, The Heritage Foundation
Thu, 2011-01-20
"A set of provisions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sweeping new powers to impose a wide range of detailed benefit requirements on employer-sponsored health plans and major medical policies sold by health insurers. This will effectively make all health insurance benefits uniform—depriving patients of choices—increase the cost of coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and stifle insurance innovation."
James Capretta, The Heritage Foundation
Thu, 2011-01-20
"Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are private insurance options available to Medicare beneficiaries. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) cuts deeply into the projected payments to MA plans. Millions of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in MA plans, or who would have been enrolled if not for the cuts, will experience very substantial reductions in the value of health care services provided to them by the Medicare program."
Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation
Wed, 2011-01-19
"Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Congress has enacted record-breaking Medicare payment reductions. Most of these are reductions in Medicare payment updates to non-physician providers. To a lesser degree, these reductions are attributable to certain health care delivery reforms. The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers the Medicare and Medicaid programs, estimates an initial 10-year savings from the total set of Medicare changes amounting to $575 billion."
Chuck Donovan, The Heritage Foundation
Wed, 2011-01-19
"The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) contains several provisions that weaken longstanding federal policy denying public subsidies for elective abortion and health care plans that provide coverage of elective abortion. In addition, PPACA fails to adequately protect the conscience rights of health care insurers, providers, and personnel who decline to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions. These defects in PPACA not only fail to fix the patchwork of laws that have been passed to bar federal support for elective abortion; they also create new avenues for federal subsidies and promotion of elective abortion."
Brian Blase, The Heritage Foundation
Wed, 2011-01-19
"Roughly half of the anticipated gains in insurance coverage from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are achieved through a massive expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal–state health insurance program for the poor. The Medicaid program, with its soaring price tag and dubious level of care for recipients, is in serious need of reform, not expansion. Increasing enrollment in this program by a third is a major flaw of the new health care law."
Brian Blase, The Heritage Foundation
Wed, 2011-01-19
"One of the central goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was to increase the number of individuals with health insurance coverage. To encourage employers to offer coverage, the new law creates a tax penalty on firms with more than 50 workers that fail to provide “adequate” coverage for their employees. The result is government intrusion into voluntary arrangements made between employer and employee. The cost of the tax penalty will ultimately be borne by workers (lower wages and fewer jobs), shareholders (lower profits), and consumers (higher prices)."
Stuart M. Butler, New England Journal of Medicine
Wed, 2011-01-19
"The Wyden–Brown legislation is thus much less than meets the eye. In practice, it will not grant the states, especially conservative ones, the degree of flexibility that Wyden claims, nor will it defuse state resistance to major parts of the ACA."
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Michael Ramlet, and Cameron Smith, American Action forum
Tue, 2011-01-18
"The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an impediment
to economic growth and federal fiscal balance, threatening
nearly 700,000 jobs and increasing the deficit by nearly
$300 billion in the near term. At a time when too many
Americans remain unemployed and the country faces a
daunting budgetary outlook, alternative approaches to
health care reform would be preferable."
Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., The Heritage Foundation
Tue, 2011-01-18
"Under Section 1334, [Office of Personnel Management]-sponsored plans would compete nationwide against private health insurance. In effect, Congress is creating a special set of plans, governed by special rules, in a closed national 'market.' Instead of fair competition with private health plans, Congress is sponsoring the equivalent of a national monopoly. That the OPM-sponsored plans are offered by private contractors (like Medicare contractors) is irrelevant. For consumers, it is hard to imagine anything worse than a government-sponsored 'private' monopoly."
