The Democrats promised to include a “doc fix” in ObamaCare to prevent doctors’ payments under Medicare from being cut, then pulled the “doc fix” to make ObamaCare’s financial projections look better, and now — with ObamaCare already using every obvious offset — can’t come up with the funds for something that would otherwise have had wide bipartisan support.
Independents’ overwhemling (2-to-1) support for repeal should give Republicans the confidence needed to advance a 1-sentence repeal bill — which would make it much harder for Democrats in swing districts to try to straddle the fence on ObamaCare.
“Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s new ‘grassroots advocacy organization,’ launched its first national campaign Wednesday evening with Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King’s filing of a discharge petition aimed at repealing Obamacare.”
The federal government has finalized the specific changes employers are allowed to make to their insurance plans to still remain “grandfathered” and exempt from ObamaCare’s new restrictions. Accordingly, the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of Labor estimate that 51% of all employers will lose their “grandfathered” status because of small changes they make to their health insurance plans and be subject to the full force of ObamaCare’s coverage restrictions by 2013.
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.