“Consultants have told some large employers they can save money by dropping health insurance in 2014 and funneling employees into insurance exchanges under the new health-care law, according to a report by congressional Republicans.”
“So how is Medicare, the nation’s biggest health care entitlement, doing now? Not so well. Two years after the passage of the Patient Protection Protection and Affordable Care Act, the program’s Trustees are reporting that the seniors’ health program is on a glide path to insolvency—perhaps by as soon as 2016. The technocratic reforms that were supposed to remake the program aren’t working nearly as well as hoped.”
“Earlier this week we learned that former Obama Administration official Elizabeth Warren is calling for a repeal of one of Obamacare’s many taxes, and today The Hill is reporting that several Democrats in Congress are starting to regret President Obama’s signature health care law. First there’s Representative Brad Miller (D-NC), who is retiring at the end of this session of Congress:”
“The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 3.4 million people in the individual market will receive $426 million in consumer rebates because of the Affordable Care Act’s new MLR rules… The average cost of employer-provided family health insurance is now about $13,000 per year. A family rebate of perhaps $200 will amount to only about 1.5% of premium for the relatively few people who will even get one.”
“The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said it’s not clear that the $8.3 billion Medicare Advantage bonus program will improve quality because most of the money is going to plans just rated average. The auditors did find, however, that the bonuses would temporarily ease the pain of unpopular cuts to insurance plans under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law.”
“The most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to voters… But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare Advantage program… But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.”
“Two years into the law’s implementation, conservative emissaries have contributed to impressive stats. Almost all red states are holding off on exchange legislation at least until the Supreme Court decides on the Affordable Care Act, and in most of those states, exchange-building legislation has crawled to a stop.”
“Last week the Mercatus Center published my study showing that the health care law of 2010 (the ACA) will add at least $340 billion to federal deficits over the next ten years, and more than $1.15 trillion to net federal spending. The study has received a great deal of attention, which has highlighted the need for wider public understanding of federal budget procedures. In this article I will explain some of those budget rules while further substantiating that my basic conclusion is correct.”
“But it is telling that this progressive champion of higher taxes, who delivers viral mini monologues about the greatness of giving back and paying one’s corporate fair share in exchange for valuable government services, can so easily transform her Senate campaign into a vehicle for obvious industry talking points. This is one of the reasons why the cost savings schemes in the 2010 health care overhaul probably won’t work. Those provisions generally save money by either taxing someone’s benefits (specifically the sort of expensive health plans held by many union members) or reducing someone’s payments (higher payments to Medicare advantage plans).”
“President Obama’s new health-care law will be his greatest liability as he attempts to once again win the critical swing state of Virginia, Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) warned Wednesday. ‘I’ll be real frank here,’ Webb said at a breakfast organized by Bloomberg News. ‘I think that the manner in which the health-care reform issue was put in front of the Congress, the way that the issue was dealt with by the White House, cost Obama a lot of credibility as a leader.'”