“Paul Ryan warned Wednesday night that President Barack Obama’s health care law was the greatest threat to the Medicare program, but mentioned few details of his own ambitious plans to reform the program.
In his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, Ryan attacked the president’s law and its cuts to the popular Medicare program.”
“Two articles over the weekend highlight the continuing effect of Obamacare on the health care industry – particularly how it is accelerating industry consolidation. In both the insurance and hospital industry, players are consolidating to lower costs, gain market share, and defend their bottom lines. The big question, however, is whether these trends will ultimately benefit consumers and the health care system as a whole, through improved quality and lower costs.”
“Under Obamacare, the industry is transfigured from an inefficient, barely competitive mess that tries, against the laws of health care gravity, to control medical costs, to a non-competitive, profit-regulated utility rewarded with 15 to 20 extra cents for every dollar it allows its medical costs to rise.”
“At first glance, it would seem that this graph vindicates the ACA – come 2021, the difference in growth rates between NHE pre-and-post ACA have fallen to less than a percentage point. What they gloss over, however, is the massive spike in growth rates starting in 2014, when the ACA’s coverage provisions go into effect. This adds to the absolute cost of the ACA over time, even though the growth rate slows down eventually, based on projections.”
“Such human misery, multiplied by tens of millions of people, rolls up into a bureaucratic colossus of breathtaking complexity. Running a Medicaid program involves coping with a jungle of paperwork, cacophony of regulations and, worst of all, sanctimony in nearly every conversation with every stakeholder. It requires constant vigilance against scam clinics, crooked providers, rogue labs, pill mills, vaporware vendors, and a scuzfest of health care bottom-feeders. A successful day in the Medicaid ‘business’ is measured not by goals achieved but catastrophes averted.”
“The future frightening payoffs of college loans are taking a backseat to the immediate and soaring costs of health insurance students are getting slapped with as they return to school this fall, all thanks to Obamacare. Because of a rule in the Affordable Care Act that lifts caps on policy payoffs, the cheap insurance policies typically healthy students previously got are skyrocketing, some over 1,000 percent.”