“The hard truth is that the federal government cannot be trusted today with these kinds of decisions, and there’s no prospect of that changing anytime soon. That’s a big reason why Obamacare should never have been allowed to pass in the first place. Just the sight of Catholic leaders’ being forced to go begging before federal officials ought to be enough to convince most Americans that handing over so much power over such sensitive matters to the federal government was a terrible, terrible mistake.”
“The individual mandate may be getting more attention, but in a time of persistently high unemployment there needs to be just as much concern about the employer mandate. While these results are specific to Indiana, there are likely other states where small and mid-size businesses are responsible for a significant portion of the job growth. Reforming healthcare need not compromise jobs and small businesses, but unfortunately the Affordable Care Act will do just that.”
“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.”
“CLASS stands for Community Living Assistance Services and Supports. It would have paid $50 a day — $18,250 a year — for long-term care services for anyone who had paid premiums for five years. Participation was voluntary, and it was inevitable that the program would attract older, sicker people, sending CLASS into a death spiral. Some estimates concluded premiums would have had to be $3,000 a month for the program to break even. Any takers?”
“President Obama’s largest legislative accomplishment to date was the passage of the health care reform law, which has been going into effect in stages, with regulations currently being written for the most substantial changes due to take effect in 2014. So it is odd the President mentioned health care only briefly, and in passing, in his State of the Union address last night. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the law remains deeply unpopular with a skeptical public, or the fact that despite some provisions ‘to increase coverage’ have already gone into effect, the percentage of American adults without health coverage has increased to an all-time high of over 17%.”
“Nineteen rural state hospital associations have signed onto a letter urging President Obama to nix the healthcare reform law’s special deal for Massachusetts hospitals in his 2013 budget proposal next month. The hospital groups say a provision in the law shifts $367 million annually in Medicare funding from 49 states to the Democratic-led commonwealth. The provision’s aim was simply to increase Medicare payments for a single, 15-bed hospital in Nantucket but ended up raising payment rates for the state’s 60 urban hospitals by 8 percent.”