"So, if repeal is not a viable short-term option, reveal must be. Dissecting Obamcare's defective anatomy while offering alternatives is the way to get our health care system back on track. That's why the two committees we chair will continue our aggressive oversight, exposing Obamacare's failures - and discussing ways to provide more affordable health care to all Americans. What have our efforts 'revealed' so far?"
"A recent decision by HHS illustrates the arbitrary nature by which some implementation decisions are being made at CMS while highlighting the problem of a top-down approach in Obamacare. After months of small businesses anxiety in Massachusetts surrounding the impact of fewer rating factors due to an ACA mandated one-size-fits all policy, the Federal government recently pulled a piecemeal delayed implementation of the regulations out of thin air."
"Obamacare is designed to destroy the insurance market. Markets do not function without prices, and Obamacare ensures that prices will not be allowed to emerge. There is a medical price associated with smoking, but the District of Columbia has decided to suppress that price by law. Pretending that smoking has no relationship with health-care costs does not make it so — it is only a way to push costs around in a way that is agreeable to the likes of Barack Obama, converting a system that prices risk into a system of entitlements."
"President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats sold many Americans on the Affordable Care Act largely by emphasizing two arguments: The law would help to reduce overall health-care costs, and it would provide health insurance to those who, for financial or health reasons, cannot get it now. Unfortunately, both of these arguments are flawed."
"Want to apply for Obamacare this fall? Start the paperwork now. The Obama Administration quietly released a draft copy of its 'single streamlined application' for Obamacare. This is the form that the government will use to certify eligibility for the program’s subsidies. The on-line version of that form requires 60 printed pages to spell out all the queries. (A condensed paper version of the same application fills 21 pages)."
"If you buy your own health insurance now, you'll be in for a big change when you sign up for coverage in 2014. Just over half of the individual plans currently on the market do not meet the standards to be sold next year, when many key provisions of President Obama's Affordable Care Act kick in, according to a University of Chicago study."
"A new fight is brewing over health insurance companies letting millions of Americans renew their current coverage for another year — and thereby avoid changes under the federal healthcare law."
"But Sebelius' answer suggests another explanation: the Democratic opposition to catastrophic plans was not strategic, or vengeful, but entirely heartfelt. The Secretary of Health and Human Services genuinely believes that health insurance should do more than just, well, protect your ability to keep paying the mortgage. Unfortunately, "more" is very expensive and inefficient."
"As the Affordable Care Act (ACA) celebrates its third anniversary, the law has already imposed $21 billion in private-sector burdens, $9.8 billion in unfunded state liabilities, and 111 million paperwork burden hours. When the American Action Forum (AAF) reviewed the law’s regulatory impact last year, the ACA had imposed a combined cost of $12.4 billion and 50 million hours, meaning in the last year the administration has more than doubled the cost of implementation and added 21 million compliance hours."
"The problem is that the benefits in question are neither 'free' nor likely to produce valuable savings. ObamaCare’s rules eliminated individual cost-sharing for a number of preventive services, but, as the administration admitted a few months after the law passed, at the cost of higher insurance premiums on average. It’s like a gym that suddenly makes all the drinks and snacks at its café 'free'—but raises the price of membership."
