“Yet another provision of ObamaCare has been found unworkable… Now it turns out the much-vaunted tax credit for small employers is also a bomb. At a recent (November 15, 2011) hearing of the Ways and Means Committee, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General J. Russell George reported that as of mid-October 2011 only 309,000 taxpayers had claimed the credit, for a total payout of $416 million — far below the 4.4 million the IRS thought would be eligible or the CBO estimate of $2 billion that would be paid out in 2010 alone.”
“The final medical loss ratio (MLR) regulations will likely create a vacuum for affordable coverage that cannot be filled by Bronze plans under the state insurance exchanges. If the ‘essential benefits’ and ‘actuarial value’ requirements are equally as discriminatory, there will be no affordable options available and the cost of subsidies will skyrocket. As a result, millions of Americans that have policies today that could have qualified as Bronze plans will be forced to change their coverage or drop coverage because they can no longer afford it.”
“The Obama administration is headed into a Supreme Court case over healthcare reform without a clear answer to significant questions about Congress’s power… Several lower courts have said the mandate falls within the bounds of the Commerce Clause, but even they have been wary about the Justice Department’s inability to clearly define a limit on Congress’s power.”