Even though ObamaCare was thousands of pages of legislative text, tens of thousands more pages of regulations are required to be written to implement the new law. Much of that is at the discretion of Administration bureaucrats and state officials. “Congress has left some of the most difficult decisions about health care reform to state insurance commissioners — handing a group of relatively obscure officials enormous power over the implementation of the law and the success or failure of President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement.”
“The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is a new long-term care insurance program. The concept had floated around Washington for years before Congress inserted it into the Obamacare health law — most likely to provide a $70 billion piggybank that could be raided to cover up Obamacare’s initial deficits. Yet this ticking entitlement time bomb could cost future taxpayers trillions of dollars.”
The National Council on Aging released a poll suggesting that seniors are uninformed on the health law. But it turns out that the experts are misinformed, because seniors are right that ObamaCare will cut their benefits, lower the quality of their care, and worsen the nation’s fiscal position.
“Proponents of Obamacare claim that it will simultaneously provide millions of Americans with health insurance and reduce the budget deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet Obamacare’s proclaimed budgetary discipline rests on unlikely assumptions and budget gimmicks—none worse than the CLASS Act, a national long-term-care insurance program. CLASS is essentially a Ponzi scheme that will run initial surpluses followed by massive deficits—virtually guaranteeing program bankruptcy or, more likely, massive taxpayer bailouts. The surest way to avoid this fate is to repeal the program—preferably before it enrolls participants on January 1, 2011. The Heritage Foundation’s Brian M. Riedl and Visiting Fellow James Capretta explain why repeal is the right action for Congress to take.”
ObamaCare will raise costs for existing insurance policies. The state of Arizona recently notified employees that their costs will go up as a result of the new law. “The Department of Administration cited federal health reform as the reason the state’s health plans will carry ‘greater expenses and higher premiums for members,’ according to a June 30 letter sent to about 135,000 state and university employees and their dependents.”
“A tax is when the government takes money from individuals, puts it in the Treasury, and plans to spend it. With the health-insurance mandate, the government is not taking money from private individuals; rather, it is commanding them to give their money to another private entity, not to the Treasury. If individuals don’t obey the mandate, they pay a penalty to the Treasury. But penalties aren’t taxes. The mandate is legally separate from the penalty.”