Gail Wilensky, former head of the Health Care Financing Administration, believes that government agencies will be overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of pages of new regulations ObamaCare instructs them to develop. “The national health reform law includes the phrase “the secretary shall” more than 1,000 times, each of which refers to a new task for the Health and Human Services secretary.”
ObamaCare was sold with rosy promises that insurers would be immediately banned from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. But that just means higher costs. “Some families might face higher insurance premiums because of a requirement in the new healthcare law that plans cover sick children, state insurance commissioners said Friday… But the new rules are leading some health plans across the country to stop issuing new child-only coverage, the state officials said. That could force parents to buy costly family coverage where in the past they could have saved money by buying separate policies for themselves and their children.”
Despite successfully passing a law beginning a government take-over of the health care sector, the Left won’t stop until they get their “public option” and then a full-blown single-payer system. “The new national health care law may represent the largest expansion in the role of government since the Great Society, but for liberal activists, it was just the appetizer. Here at the annual Netroots Nation conference for self-described progressives, organizers discussed their strategy for pushing toward their ultimate goal of a fully government-run, or single-payer, health care system.”
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.”
“[A]lthough the PPACA adds a number of significant elements to the U.S. health care system (in particular, the exchanges), it’s primarily an entrenchment and expansion of the existing system. Given the failures of that system, though, that presents a serious problem.”