“The Obama administration has failed to meet more than half of the new health care law’s deadlines, from submitting plans for new, value-based Medicare purchasing programs to publishing criteria for determining the medically underserved. A report requested by Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, indicates that the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies missed 18 of 30 deadlines since the Affordable Care Act was passed in March 2010.”
“A new technical analysis by Oliver Wyman estimates that the new health insurance tax in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ‘will increase premiums in the insured market on average by 1.9% to 2.3% in 2014,’ and by 2023 ‘will increase premiums 2.8% to 3.7%.'”
“Now that Obama’s CLASS Act has crashed and burned, you may be wondering what ever happened to his much-vaunted high-risk pools. The administration has not been making much of it — a sure sign that it must be failing. And so it is. On October 14 it posted the enrollment data as of August 31, 2011. It turns out that 13 months after the pools went into effect, 33,958 people had enrolled, less than 10% of the 375,000 CMS predicted would be enrolled by the end of 2010.”
“Under President Obama’s health care plan, the United States Preventive Services Task Force now wields great power to decide which health services (like mammograms) doctors should provide, yet it has few checks on its sweeping authority.
Its mandates are likely to raise health insurance costs and premiums, while reducing the number of covered preventive services.
To improve accountability for an agency that is both out of date with the medical community and out of touch with the public, Congress should closely monitor the impact new mandates have on patient care.”
“We’re economists, not political consultants, so we offer no unique insight on whether the administration’s proposed rule will hold in the face of political pressure. But we do know that this unpopular definition and its possible revision hold significant implications for everyone impacted by this law’s provisions. Either millions of dependent families of employees will be stuck without an offer of affordable coverage-or taxpayers will be stuck with significantly more subsidy costs than originally projected.”
“What the Supreme Court will focus on, what it will decide, and whether or not a portion of the law can be severed from the act is open to debate. Importantly, the Supreme Court will be able to decide which lower court decisions to review. They are not required to look at all of the cases or every issue in each case. Central questions exist regarding standing, the individual mandate, the employer mandate and state Medicaid expansion. Furthermore, if the individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional, will it render the entire health reform law void- or can the mandate simply be severed from the law?”
“A $5 billion fund created as part of the health-care overhaul to pay for health insurance for early retirees will run out of money by September 2012, according to a federal report released Monday… The money was supposed to be available through the end of 2013.”