“From the beginning, the Obama Administration made it clear that a critical part of the success
of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was offering insurance to uninsured
individuals through a modern website that was simple and easy to use. To that end, the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid
Services (CMS) invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing the HealthCare.gov
website (website) to make it the showcase of PPACA, since it would be the first tangible
product the American public would associate with the law. Both metaphorically and factually,
the website was designed to be the public face of President Obama’s signature achievement.
However, the Obama Administration failed to task any one individual or entity within HHS or
CMS with ensuring the success of the public face of Obamacare. While there were individuals
and entities tasked with building and coordinating many of the business level components of
the website, there was no central coordinator fully responsible for the development of the
website, and no single contractor had the authority to direct other contractors. Furthermore,
rather than delegate responsibility fully to HHS and/or CMS, the White House continually
meddled in technical decisions and put pressure on CMS officials to launch the website on time,
regardless of operability and security concerns. As a result, officials ignored countless red flags
to launch a website with thousands of defects. In the end, the launch failed miserably, crashing
on takeoff.”
“There are hundreds of aspects of Obamacare that people argue over. But there’s one question that matters above all others: does the Affordable Care Act live up to its name? Does it make health insurance less expensive? Last November, our team at the Manhattan Institute published a study indicating that Obamacare had increased the underlying cost of individually-purchased health insurance in the average state by 41 percent in 2014, relative to 2013. We’ve now redone the study on a county-by-county basis, complete with a brand-new interactive map. Depending on where you live, the results may surprise you.
Our new county-by-county analysis was led by Yegeniy Feyman, who compiled the county-based data for 27-year-olds, 40-year-olds, and 64-year-olds, segregated by gender. We were able to obtain data for 3,137 of the United States’ 3,144 counties.”
“If you offer it, will they come? Insurers and some U.S. senators have proposed offering cheaper, skimpier “copper” plans on the health insurance marketplaces to encourage uninsured stragglers to buy. But consumer advocates and some policy experts say that focusing on reducing costs on the front end exposes consumers to unacceptably high out-of-pocket costs if they get sick. The trade-off, they say, may not be worth it.
“It’s a false promise of affordability,” says Sabrina Corlette, project director at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “If you ever have to use the plan, you won’t be able to afford it.””
“The Supreme Court’s decision on contraceptives and employer health plans could affect companies and workers far beyond Hobby Lobby and the other plaintiffs.
But nobody seems to know how far.
The ruling applies to “closely held for-profit corporations,” a small subset of employers, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggests the impact will be far broader.
“Although the court attempts to cabin its language to closely held corporations, its logic extends to corporations of any size, public or private,” she said.”
“The Supreme Court today rang a victory bell for religious freedom as it ruled 5-4 that “HHS’s contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion” of three closely held companies – Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Specialties, and Mardel.
The companies objected to the Obama administration’s mandate that they must provide, at no cost to their employees, coverage for products that can terminate life in the womb, violating their religious beliefs.”
“By a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court has ruled that family-owned, closely held corporations do not have to comply with the health law’s contraception coverage requirements if they violate the owner’s religious views. Legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. joins us now to discuss the decision. Thanks for being with us.
STUART TAYLOR: Nice to be with you.
MARY AGNES CAREY: Why did the court rule this way?
STUART TAYLOR: Well, the court held that under an act of Congress passed in 1993, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the right is conferred on all religious groups, including, the court said in this case for the first time, for-profit corporations as well as churches and, say, nonprofit religious groups — they all get broad protection of their religious freedoms.”
A sampling of news articles on the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision:
“Kaiser Health News: Supreme Court Limits Contraceptive Mandate For Certain Employers
A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that at least some for-profit corporations may not be required to provide contraceptives if doing so violates the owners’ religious beliefs.But the five-justice majority writing in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, et al., took pains to try to limit their ruling only to the contraceptive mandate in the health law and only to “closely held” corporations like the family-owned businesses represented by the plaintiffs in the case (Rovner, 6/30).
The Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court Makes Religious Exception To Health-Care Law
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a 5-4 split said “closely held” companies can on religious grounds opt out of a federal health-care law requirement that companies provide contraception coverage for employees, carving another piece from President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement”
(continued)
“Two years ago Saturday, the Supreme Court changed the law that changed an industry.
The Court’s June 28, 2012, decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act—by the slender margin of a single vote—did more than allow the law’s ambitious agenda to proceed. It famously altered the law itself, by allowing states to choose whether or not to opt into Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.”
“The Supreme Court today rang a victory bell for religious freedom as it ruled 5-4 that “HHS’s contraceptive mandate substantially burdens the exercise of religion” of three closely held companies – Hobby Lobby, Conestoga Wood Specialties, and Mardel.
The companies objected to the Obama administration’s mandate that they must provide, at no cost to their employees, coverage for products that violate their religious beliefs by terminating life in the womb.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, noted that the companies have “sincere Christian beliefs that life begins at conception and that it would violate their religion to facilitate access to contraceptive drugs or devices that operate after that point.” The administration had argued that the plaintiffs were for-profit corporations and therefore couldn’t have religious beliefs.”
In the four years since passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we have heard a wide range of speculative predictions about how private employers sponsoring health coverage would respond. More recent evidence from one of the oldest and largest annual surveys of employer plans, by human resources consulting firm Mercer, provides stronger indications that employer sponsors are neither heading for the exit doors nor sitting by passively as broader implementation of Obamacare unfolds.