“But when applied from on high by government bureaucrats, CER can yield dangerous results.
A new study from my Pacific Research Institute colleague Dr. Ben Zycher indicates that the government-led CER process will depress investment in pharmaceutical and medical device research and development by 10% to 12% — about $10 billion per year.
Less investment in R&D means fewer revolutionary medical advances that can improve or extend our lives.”
“One of the striking things about today’s ruling is that, for the first time in one of these cases, a Democrat-appointed judge, Frank Hull, has ruled against the government. Just as the Sixth Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton made waves by being the first Republican appointee to rule in the government’s favor, today’s 300-page ruling shows that the constitutional issues raised by the healthcare reform—and especially the individual mandate—are complex, serious, and non-ideological.”
“The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that the health care reform law’s requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance is unconstitutional, a striking blow to the legislation.
The suit was brought by 26 states — nearly all led by Republican governors and attorneys general. The Department of Justice is expected to appeal. The 2-1 ruling marks the first time a judge appointed by a Democrat has voted to strike down the mandate.”
“Now, there’s a new study that suggests that employer dumping under Obamacare could be significant, leading to an explosion of the law’s costs and thereby the federal debt. A working paper by economists Richard Burkhauser and Sean Lyons of Cornell and Kosali Simon of Indiana, published by the National Bureau for Economic Research, examined various reasonable assumptions regarding the behavior of employers under the law.”
“State legislators are concerned that a new program in the healthcare reform law will reopen a series of problems that states tackled years ago. The National Conference of Insurance Legislators is worried about the law’s new long-term-care insurance program, known as CLASS.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Tuesday that it has awarded $28.8 million to 67 community health centers with funds from the Obamacare health reform law. Of that $28.8 million, ‘approximately $8.5 million will be used by 25 New Access Point awardees to target services to migrant and seasonal farm workers,’ Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Spokeswoman Judy Andrews told CNSNews.com. HRSA is a part of HHS. Andrews said that grant recipients will not check the immigration status of people seeking services.”
“The bad news for ObamaCare’s proponents? ObamaCare won’t help contain health costs, as the president so often claimed while lobbying for passage of his reform package. Instead, it will exacerbate them. Remember his oft-repeated statement that his plan would ‘cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.’ As the CBO rightly explained, premiums will rise by $2,100.”
“In any event, there is no problem that cannot be made worse when legislators convene. And when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) it definitely made things worse than they otherwise would have been… Here’s one immediate problem: no one knows how to define ‘administration.’ Just as there is no line item in the federal budget called ‘waste fraud and abuse,’ there is also no line item in any organization’s budget called ‘administrative costs.'”
“Investors believe that the government guarantee of millions of customers to health plans will lead to profits. Unfortunately, this optimism is likely unfounded.
ObamaCare distributes federal grants to states that encourage their insurance departments to increase power of prior approval of premium increases.
And the coming wave of political interference will threaten health plans’ very solvency. We already know that such laws do not keep a lid on health costs.”
“Reformers are mostly right when they argue that Congress hasn’t done a great job of controlling health costs or the growth of tax-financed health spending. But where they go wrong is in thinking that a small number of experts in positions of government-granted authority will somehow be more successful. The basic problem with the bureauwonk model of health reform is that it assumes that technocrats can not only identify but successfully scale local innovation to the national level.”