“Obamacare’s tinkering with the current program will essentially end Medicare as we know it by replacing the existing fee-for-service (FFS) payment system, the heart of traditional Medicare, with top-down payment and delivery schemes independent of the consumer choice and competition that would enable them to prove their value. Worse, new layers of bureaucracy and compliance will discourage physicians who are already wrestling with reams of paperwork and will undermine their professional independence in the practice of medicine.”
“The House on Wednesday evening voted to repeal a section of the 2010 health reform law establishing a voluntary, long-term healthcare program that the Obama administration has since said is not financially viable.
Members voted 267-159 in favor of the bill, H.R. 1173, which repeals the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program. While 28 Democrats joined Republicans in support of the bill, House passage sends the bill to a Democratic Senate that is expected to ignore the bill completely.”
On Tuesday, January 31st, e21 held an event exploring the implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), which was sold to the American people with the promise that “If you like what you have, you can keep it.” New academic research is clearly disproving this claim. The health law provides strong incentives for employers to move their sick and low-wage workers out of job-based plans and into publicly subsidized coverage. The result will be soaring costs for taxpayers, and millions of people losing the coverage they have today.
The event featured a presentation by Professor Daniel Schwarcz of the University of Minnesota Law School, a speech by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), and commentary from James C. Capretta.
Read Prof. Schwarcz’s paper, “Will Employers Undermine Health Care Reform by Dumping Sick Employees?” here.
Event video:
“Multiple physician groups have come out in strong opposition to the Obamacare legislation and to the under-handed, self-serving fashion in which the American Medical Association (AMA) gave its support for the law. The AMA sought to curry favor with the government to preserve their lucrative royalty monopoly on the medical billing codes that must be used to file all medical claims in the United States. These codes netted the AMA 72 million in the year 2010 alone, and evidently provided enough incentive that the AMA all but ignored the will of the majority of doctors in the country in their Obamacare endorsement.”
“Under the health care overhaul, the federal government will start taxing itself and the states beginning in 2014. And that’s giving state Medicaid directors heartburn. A report released Tuesday by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. said the tax will cost the Medicaid program between $36.5 billion and $41.9 billion over 10 years. At least $13 billion will be borne by states, and at least $23.5 billion by the federal government, based on the state-federal Medicaid matching formula.”