HHS Secretary Sebelius wrote a letter to Medicare Advantage insurers and threatened the companies not to increase costs or decrease benefits for seniors. Since ObamaCare includes $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage, it will be nearly impossible for insurers not to cut benefits or raise costs for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, and Democrats are maneuvering to avoid taking the blame.
Foreshadowing the new health IT provisions in ObamaCare, the funding system for electronic medical records in Obama’s $862 billion stimulus bill are frustrating medical providers, “offer[ing] a cautionary tale of what could happen when good intentions meet the reality of America’s fragmented health care system.”
“The New York Times reports President Obama will begin a new media effort Tuesday designed to convince skeptical American voters that Obamacare is a good thing….Kicking off the propaganda push is “a nationally televised question-and-answer session” with seniors where the administration will highlight a $250 Medicare Part D rebate check. Yet relatively few seniors will actually receive the check.”
“Consider the case of nHealth, a relatively new insurance provider based in Richmond, Va. nHealth recently announced it will close its doors due to the combination of stringent new regulations and future uncertainty—both the product of the new health care law.”
ObamaCare’s Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act — with its design that invites adverse selection by precluding the ability to adjust premiums for health risk — is yet another entitlement program that is destined to add to the federal government’s unfunded obligations.
After much discussion about the need to bend the cost curve down, and Democratic assurances that ObamaCare would do just that, a report by the Medicare Chief Actuary has predicted that costs will in fact rise – estimating that the health care overhaul will actually increase health care spending by $311 billion over the next decade.
As part of its long-running campaign to sell America on ObamaCare, the administration has now added a Medicare mailer, sent directly to America’s seniors, which makes some rather debatable claims about the recently passed health care overhaul.
Claiming that Virginia has standing to sue by virtue of a law passed by the state’s General Assembly, making it illegal to require citizens of the commonwealth to buy health insurance, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has asked a federal judge to deny the Obama administration’s request to have Virginia’s case challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare be dismissed.
A former CBO Director says that ObamaCare would likely raise deficits by $600,000,000,000 more than the CBO projects, could result in 40 million more Americans being shifted from employer-provided to government-provided insurance than the CBO projects, and would impose such high effective marginal tax-rates on those who are shifted onto government-provided insurance that it would be very hard for them to pursue the American Dream of making a better life.
As a so-called improvement to the insurance market, ObamaCare outlaws many inexpensive, more affordable types of insurance to force people into Washington-approved, comprehensive plans that are more expensive which “could strip more than 1 million people of their insurance coverage, violating a key goal of President Barack Obama’s reforms.”