“November 16th is the deadline for states to submit a blueprint to the federal government for Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — a key component of the new healthcare law. Already, the exchange system is proving to be an unmitigated disaster.”
“In the time of Caesar, all roads led to Rome. In the time of ObamaCare, seemingly every path heads straight for a cliff.
The health law is filled with cliffs where the returns for more work take a nose-dive.”
“President Obama is campaigning hard on his promise to give women access to free oral contraceptives and surgical sterilization, benefits that are guaranteed under ObamaCare. But women should also know about all of the health services they stand to lose. ObamaCare empowers a host of new boards and committees to arbitrate over what insurance will pay for, and what remains uncovered. They’ll rule over not just health plans sold inside the ObamaCare exchanges, but even private insurance.”
“The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has signed at least 2 PR contracts to promote the president’s landmark Affordable Care Act. HHS signed a $20 million deal to raise awareness of new coverage for preventive services, and a separate $3 million contract is focused on the federally run insurance exchange, which will begin operating in 2014. Ways and Means Republicans previously requested documents about the PR work, but said the administration failed to respond.”
“President Obama likes to say his campaign is about building up the middle class, but his signature initiative in office — ObamaCare — will pile thousands of dollars in new taxes and higher health costs on top of America’s middle class. How so? Through redistribution, of course. The president has made no secret of his fondness for using the government’s tax and spending powers to spread our diminished wealth around from one group of Americans to another. And ObamaCare is nothing if not a massive redistribution machine.”
“Citing Obamacare, the Infirmary Health System this afternoon announced it would close its Infirmary West Hospital on Girby Road by the end of the month. Mark Nix, the president and CEO of the Infirmary Health, said in a prepared statement that officials decided to close the 124-bed hospital after a yearlong evaluation.”
“During oral arguments in the Supreme Court challenge to the individual mandate, NFIB v. Sebelius, the plaintiff’s lawyer Paul Clement warned the justices not to make the same mistake they made in the 1970s with Buckley v. Valeo. In Buckley, the Court upheld portions of the post-Watergate campaign-finance reforms while invalidating others. The result was a muddled statute that Congress and the courts would repeatedly revisit for years to come. Repeating this approach with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Clement cautioned, could produce similar undesirable results. It’s too soon to know how quickly Congress will revisit the PPACA, but Clement’s warning already seems to be coming true in the courts.”
“We are about to spend $1.8 trillion over the next ten years insuring about 32 million people. About half of the newly insured will go into Medicaid and half will get private insurance. If the above chart is to be believed, which half you’re in makes a real difference. That tiny little sliver of difference between the green line and the red line is the differential survival between those who are uninsured and those who are in Medicaid. Even after five years, the differential survival is a little more than 1%.”
“As the state’s largest safety net hospital, Hennepin treats a disproportionately large number of patients who cannot pay for some or all of their care. For more than 20 years, hospitals have relied on subsidies provided by the federal government to help defray those costs. But that funding is set to decline starting in 2014 with the full implementation of the federal health law.”
“A provision in the national health-care law that lets young adults stay on their parents’ insurance plan is popular with many families—but not ones in the military. Families covered by Tricare, the health program for active and retired members of the military, must pay as much as $200 a month to let an adult child stay on their plan until age 26. Most families in private plans now pay no fee to extend such coverage. Military families are starting to complain about the disparity, saying they can’t afford those premiums and have let their children go uninsured.”