“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just published, in two reports, its updated score of the 2010 health care law. The new score is bad news from almost any vantage point. CBO’s fiscal evaluation of the law is worse than before, even though the number of people receiving health insurance coverage is now projected to be fewer.”
“What the report doesn’t cover is the fact that the other legs of the ObamaCare stool designed to expand insurance coverage — the individual mandate, the employer mandate and the state insurance exchanges — are also buckling. As a result, ObamaCare will likely cover far fewer uninsured than advertised. There’s even a chance that, if all goes wrong, it could actually make the uninsured problem worse.”
“But if history is any guide, there will be one other inescapable truth: The Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2010 will generate the same unintended consequences that have shaped, distorted, and even perverted so many other important pieces of legislation in our nation’s history.”
“Around one in 10 employers in the U.S. plans to drop health coverage for workers in the next few years as the bulk of the federal health-care law begins, and more indicated they may do so over time, according to a study to be released Tuesday by consulting company Deloitte.”
“Opponents can level plenty of legitimate arguments against the Affordable Care Act (ACA), such as the $2 trillion it will add to the federal deficit in its first two decades or the $1.8 trillion in tax increases over the same period. But perhaps the most compelling case for repeal is a moral one. The health care law crosses ethical lines in the way it was sold and in its ultimate effects.”
“Americans are so focused on the availability of health care provided by the Affordable Care Act that they completely overlook the quality of care they might receive. Government interference, intrusive mandates and cumbersome regulations are making it impossible to continue providing high-quality care.”
“Essentially, the Court struck down the mandate while retaining the penalty. So those champions of Obamacare who relied on behavioral economics to argue that the law’s individual mandate could be sufficient to avert an insurance death spiral must now contend with the fact that the Court has closed off that argument.”
“But as they gathered here this weekend at a meeting of the National Governors Association, most governors in both parties said that faced with a choice they did not expect to have, they needed to study how to proceed with this significant change in federal-state relations. Not all Democrats were leaping at the chance to expand their programs, and not all Republicans were ruling it out.”
“How about the fact that health reform really isn’t paid for? That half the dollars needed to pay for it will require Medicare cuts so draconian that Congress is unlikely to ever let them take place? Hmm…You don’t remember reading about that? What about the fact that families at the same income level will get vastly different subsidies under the reform — differences that amount to $10,000 a year or more? Ahh…You didn’t read about that either?”
“Republicans on a House Appropriations subcommittee beat back Democratic efforts Wednesday to protect the health reform law, winning passage of a spending bill that would defund the Affordable Care Act, eliminate a decades-old health research agency and slash the budget for other health programs. The subcommittee approved the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill on a mostly party-line vote of 8-6.”