New rules determining how much a company’s insurance plan can change before it’s considered a new plan, and thus no longer exempt from ObamaCare’s mandates, are likely to lead to people losing the plans that they currently have and like. “The regulation, released by the Department of Labor, the Treasury and HHS, estimates that 13 percent to 42 percent of employers would lose their grandfathered status by next year, and 34 percent to 80 percent would by 2013. Small businesses are considered more likely than larger companies to lose their grandfathered status.”
The pharmaceutical industry was first out of the gate to cut a deal with the White House and Senate Democrats, limiting the new costs to their industry in exchange for funding ads supporting ObamaCare. But what seemed like a good deal to the industry actually creates substantial disincentives to finding new cures and developing innovative new drugs. “It will inevitably increase drug costs inside Medicare, inviting the kind of politically driven price controls that discourage investment. For good measure, the Obama health plan is full of new tools that will enable Medicare to set rules not only on prices, but the clinical criteria for accessing new medicines.”
“The number one question on my patients’ minds as the new health reform bill passed was whether they would be able to keep their current health care plan, like the president promised. This past week, when the new 83-page draft of regulations was released jointly by the IRS, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor, an answer was offered. Unfortunately, it’s a resounding no.”
With the Medicare chief actuary predicting that ObamaCare would cause overall health-care costs to rise, with an Obama administration study predicting that perhaps a majority of private employers would be forced to change and/or drop their health plans, and with the CBO estimating that ObamaCare would cost $115 billion more than previously predicted, even government sources seem to be confirming that Congress did indeed “have to pass the bill” for the fog to lift so that Americans could “find out what was in it.”
Though President Obama has repeatedly asserted that he is opposed to instituting British-style, government-run health care in America, his nomination of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under ObamaCare suggests otherwise. Dr. Berwick has continually professed his “love” for a British health-care system that doesn’t remotely offer the high-level quality of care received in the United States.
Consumer-directed health plans have been tremendously successful at controlling otherwise rising health care costs for families and businesses. High-deductible health policies, coupled with health savings accounts, empower patients to choose the best care for the best value, but ObamaCare threatens to take away such plans, because of new regulations to standardize health insurance policies and mandate more expensive, less flexible plans.
From the reality sinking in that there would be a strong financial incentive under ObamaCare for businesses to stop providing health insurance, to the administration’s own estimate that recently drawn-up draft regulations could cause over 100 million Americans to lose their coverage, it is becoming obvious to more and more Americans that ObamaCare is nothing like its Democratic proponents promised it would be.
Increased spending from ObamaCare will destroy up to 700,000 jobs over the next 10 years. This result was found using the methodology of a study by the Center for American Progress, pushed by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, which claimed that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created “almost immediately” by ObamaCare. The difference in results is because CAP assumed the bill would lower health spending, while this new study is based on the conclusions of both the Congressional Budget Office and Medicare’s chief actuary that the bill will substantially increase national health spending.
When drafting ObamaCare, Congress left the decision of how to manage the transition for current plans to meet the new Washington-approved health care mandates up to the Administration. The Department of Health and Human Services has issued new rules, which will require many firms to drop their current coverage to comply. “Although President Obama and many Democrats promised during the health care reform debate that ‘if you like your health plan, you can keep it,’ the health insurance plans that are now offered by small businesses probably will not survive the transition to a regulated marketplace.
Early retiree insurance costs are significant for many employers, and one of ObamaCare’s selling points was $5 billion in new funds to be given away to companies to cover those costs. But the fund won’t help much and businesses won’t get the benefits they were promised, because the fund is so small it will quickly run out. “Confusion over how the money will be distributed is frustrating employers, consultants and applicants say. ‘They’re already getting nervous,’ said Derek Guyton, a partner and actuary with human resources consultancy Mercer LLC in Chicago. ‘At some point, the money will just run out,’ he insists. Mr. Guyton said midsize employers are questioning whether it’s worth applying for the funding since it requires time-consuming calculations.”