“Public opposition to the health care reform law spiked to a record high in a new poll out today — but Americans don’t necessarily want Republicans to spend time trying to dismantle it. Fifty percent of Americans have unfavorable views of the law, according to a joint survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. Opposition to the law jumped 9 percentage points from last month and is the highest since April, when Kaiser began asking the question every month.”
“The following chart shows that ObamaCare‘s unfavorables reached 50 percent in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. That’s higher than at any point since KFF started tracking ObamaCare’s unfavorables in January 2010. The KFF poll also found that opposition is much more intense than support; 19 percent view the law very favorably, while 34 percent view the law very unfavorably.”
“Who will be hurt the most by the health reform legislation Congress passed last year? Answer: The most vulnerable segments of society: the poor, the elderly and the disabled. That’s right. Virtually everyone in Congress who is left-of-center voted for a law that will significantly decrease access to care for the people they claim to care most about.”
“It will become clearer in the next few years that the costs and revenues of health reform are seriously out of whack, even if the new reform law survives repeal efforts. Exploding deficits and debt will force huge strategy changes and a choice between three politically difficult roads.”
“Medicare Advantage (MA) plans are private insurance options available to Medicare beneficiaries. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) cuts deeply into the projected payments to MA plans. Millions of Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in MA plans, or who would have been enrolled if not for the cuts, will experience very substantial reductions in the value of health care services provided to them by the Medicare program.”
“A set of provisions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sweeping new powers to impose a wide range of detailed benefit requirements on employer-sponsored health plans and major medical policies sold by health insurers. This will effectively make all health insurance benefits uniform—depriving patients of choices—increase the cost of coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and stifle insurance innovation.”
“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) imposes numerous tax hikes that transfer more than $500 billion over 10 years—and more in the future—from hardworking American families and businesses to Congress for spending on new entitlements and subsidies. In addition, higher tax rates on working and investing will discourage economic growth both now and in the future, further lowering the standard of living.”
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009, there were approximately 540,000
physicians working in the United States. If these physicians react similarly to pediatricians, and
the PPACA Medicaid expansion is proportionately similar to the implementation of SCHIP, this
reduction would amount to a decrease in hours spent on patient care of approximately 15,000 full
time equivalent physicians. While there are a multitude of other components in the PPACA that
should affect physician labor supply, it is clear that the expansion could have a large effect on the
number of hours spent on patient care in the short run.”
“If Congress is serious about reducing the deficit and controlling spending, lawmakers should set aside easily manipulated rules like PAYGO and require scoring that reveals the true long-term impact of legislation. This would make it more difficult for legislation like PPACA, which increases the size of government and creates unsustainable new spending, to become law. To reduce the deficit, PPACA must be repealed.”
“In a Jan. 7 letter to President Obama, more than 30 current and former GOP governors urged the White House to remove ‘excessive constraints placed on us by healthcare-related federal mandates.’ The letter says that ObamaCare and spending mandates from the stimulus bill passed in 2009 ‘prevent states from managing their Medicaid programs for their unique Medicaid populations.'”