“The House on Wednesday afternoon approved legislation that would repeal the healthcare law’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), and also institute medical tort reform. Members approved the rule for the bill in a 233-182 vote that only five Democrats supported. While some Democrats support IPAB repeal, many oppose the GOP’s vision of tort reform, and are thus expected to oppose the package.”
“The IPAB puts rationing of health care on autopilot. The IPAB is to be composed of 15 unelected, unaccountable officials who will have the authority to make cuts in Medicare payments if per capita spending exceeds defined target rates. The IPAB epitomizes Obamacare’s command-and-control approach, and passing a targeted repeal bill is an excellent way to help people understand that.”
“Congress could have achieved this wealth transfer in perfectly constitutional ways. It could simply have imposed new taxes to pay for a national health system. But that would have come with a huge political price tag that neither Congress nor the president was prepared to pay. Instead, Congress adopted the individual mandate, invoking its power to regulate interstate commerce.”
“Two years after Congress passed President Barack Obama’s health-care legislation, despite all the assertions about what it will or won’t do, no one really knows how it’s going to work. The U.S. has rarely attempted anything of this scale before. If the law survives the Supreme Court and Republican repeal efforts, its impact turns on what Paul Keckley, head of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, a unit of the accounting firm, calls ‘four big bets.'”
“President Barack Obama promised over and over during the health care debate that ‘if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.’ It turns out that, for a lot of people, that isn’t true… And it’s not the only hard truth Obama and the law’s supporters are facing. No matter what they said about rising health care costs, those costs aren’t actually going to go down under health care reform. The talk about the law paying for itself is just educated guesswork. And people aren’t actually liking the law more as they learn more about it — and some polls show they are just getting more confused.”
“The sweeping health overhaul law turns 2 years old this Friday. And as it heads toward a constitutional showdown at the Supreme Court next week, the debate over the measure remains almost as heated as the day President Obama signed it into law. In fact, public opinion about the law remains divided along partisan lines to almost exactly the same extent it was when the law was signed on March 23, 2010, according to the latest monthly tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.”
“President Obama will not mark the two-year anniversary of his signing of the healthcare law — which takes place days before the Supreme Court offers a decision on the constitutionality of his signature legislative achievement. Senior administration officials said on Tuesday that Obama will not be offering a vigorous public defense of the law, holding events or even making public remarks in the lead-up to the Supreme Court case. “
“Young healthy men earning $28,000 a year can expect to pay nearly 100 percent more for health insurance, even after counting the new tax credits for which most will be eligible. Young healthy males at higher income levels earning about $45,000 a year can expect to pay two-and-a-half times more for health insurance in 2014, according to studies produced by independent actuaries who are helping the Hoosier state calculate the impact of Obamacare. The premium-cost increases are caused primarily by two key provisions in Obamacare — ‘essential health benefits,’ in which the government determines what must be covered by health-insurance policies, and the community rating provisions, which require health insurers to level out premiums so younger people pay more and older people pay less.”
“About 16 million people — half of the 32 million who are expected to get health coverage under the new health law — will be enrolled in Medicaid in January of 2014, with almost no changes to improve or modernize the cumbersome, complex, and wasteful program. This large Medicaid expansion could have catastrophic effects on those who provide society’s health care safety net.”
“The presence of externalities and other market imperfections does not justify a departure from the normal rules of the constitutional road. Health care is typically consumed locally, and health-insurance markets themselves primarily operate within the states. The administration’s attempt to fashion a singular, universal solution is not necessary to deal with the variegated issues arising in these markets. States have taken the lead in past reform efforts. They should be an integral part of improving the functioning of health-care and health-insurance markets.”