“Prudent insurers, employers and benefits advisors should take the same ‘better safe than sorry approach to planning for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that they’d take to planning for computer problems, or a major hurricane.”
“The International Franchise Association, a lobbying group that has long expressed concerns about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, released a study this month claiming that franchise businesses will be discouraged from growing and hiring in 2014, when new health-care mandates are scheduled to kick in. The report estimates that the law will negatively affect ‘tens of thousands’ of franchises. It will allegedly impose more than $6.4 billion in increased costs, not including expenses associated with regulatory compliance, and will impact some 3.2 million full-time employees who work for franchise businesses.”
“A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation underlines that many of the promises surrounding President Obama’s health care legislation remain unfulfilled, though the White House argues that change is coming. Workers at the Flora Venture flower shop in Newmarket, NH, remember when presidential candidate named Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., promised that their health care costs would go down if they elected him and his health care plan was enacted… Last year workers at the flower shop saw their insurance premiums shoot up 41 percent.”
“In the end, avoiding grants with significant policy strings attached, while important, is only part of the task for state lawmakers opposed to Obamacare. They should also be pursuing their own agenda of patient-centered, market-based reforms that will constitute the “replace” part of “repeal and replace.” Given that the political, judicial, and logistical impediments to implementing Obamacare are actually increasing over time, those alternatives might be needed sooner than anyone expected.”
“According to a new survey, the majority of doctors do not believe that the AMA represents their views and interests. Much of that dissatisfaction stems from the organization’s support for President Obama’s contentious health care reform package. That shouldn’t be surprising. The AMA declares that its core mission is to ‘help doctors help patients.’ But ObamaCare undermines that pursuit by making life harder for physicians and driving down the quality of care available to patients.”
“Now that ObamaCare is the law of the land we have to ask if privacy still exists. Or, if it is now a fiction, it will be honored in the breach rather than in the observance as far as the federal government is concerned. Confused? You shouldn’t be—not if you’ve followed what the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is doing as it prepares for Obamacare’s implementation. To put it simply, HHS is making plans to get its hands on your health care records, one way or another, whether you want them to have it or not.”
“The cost for businesses to buy health coverage for workers rose the most this year since 2005 and may reach $32,175 for a family in 2021, according to a survey of private and public employers… The health law enacted last year accounts for 1 to 2 percentage points of the premium increases in 2011, said Drew Altman, chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation.”
“The uninsured truly in need of help are those with household incomes below $25,000. They represent roughly a third of the uninsured, or 16.1 million.
Now, 16 million uninsured is nothing to sneeze at. But they represent only 5% of the American population. Finding coverage for them doesn’t require remaking one-sixth of the U.S. economy, as ObamaCare does. Many of these 16 million people are already eligible for public insurance, chiefly Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. They just haven’t signed up.”
“Jim Capretta, Andrew Stiles, and others have written in these pages about the looming fiscal disaster that is CLASS, Obamacare’s long-term care entitlement. This morning, CLASS’s chief actuary — the official in charge of designing the program’s structure — sent out an e-mail stating that ‘HHS has decided to close down the CLASS Office effective tomorrow.’ The actuary went on to tell National Journal that ‘all of the people [in the CLASS office] are being reassigned.'”
“A new study by the Small Business Administration shows the health insurance tax credit, effective starting in the 2010 tax year, may not be enough incentive for small businesses to offer their employees health care. Only about two-thirds — 2.6 million of the 4 million eligible small businesses — will benefit from the health insurance tax credit included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, according to the study.”