“Big companies may eventually look to dump their employees onto new state-run health insurance markets in the future if a key aspect of healthcare reform turns out to be successful, an Obama administration health official predicted Tuesday morning.”
“For Republicans committed to maintaining a vibrant and free society, there is no choice but to make genuine health care reform the centerpiece of their domestic agenda. If the health care debate is lost, then the fight for limited government is lost as well. That means that the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare and to fix our health care entitlements must be well underway by 2013.”
“The absolute worst feature of Obama Care (and it truly is inexplicable) is that close to 310 million Americans are going to get more primary care coverage than they had before. Not just welfare mothers, but Bill Gates, Bill Gates’ father, Warren Buffett — everyone in the whole country is going to have access to a long list of preventive care services with no deductible or copayment. If they respond to their new incentives, they will all try to get more care than they were getting before.”
“Bottom line: after we get through 10 years of spending our $1 trillion under ObamaCare, there is no convincing reason to believe that the bottom half of the income distribution will have more care, better care, or better access to care than they have today.”
“But one thing that is sometimes lost in this debate is the significant opportunity costs involved in passing ObamaCare. That is, the money that Democrats raised through tax hikes and Medicare cuts is slated to be used to pay for a new entitlement program instead of to fix problems with existing entitlements.”
“There’s ample evidence in the literature that physician productivity declines when doctors become owned employees rather than entrepreneurs. How then will the new marketplace that ObamaCare creates deliver efficiencies is downright quizzical.”
“On ObamaCare’s first anniversary, let’s give the president his due: It wouldn’t be in law today without his persistent push for its passage.
Not that his policy arguments carried the day or were persuasive. They weren’t. No, in the end, Obamacare was passed because the president had so tied his political fate to it that it became quite literally impossible for most members of his party in Congress to oppose it. And so it passed.”
“I am convinced that ObamaCare was designed to lead to a government takeover of our entire health-care system, which is one-sixth of our economy. As I traveled around Wisconsin in the last year, I asked thousands of people a simple question: ‘Do you think the federal government has the capability of running one-sixth of our economy?’ Only two people ever raised their hands.”
“Today marks the official one-year anniversary of enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Of course, the political honeymoon for the new health law’s original marriage of expanded coverage, income redistribution, interest-group deals, budgetary smoke, and unpredictable regulatory mirrors ended well before its final signing ceremony. Today, a clear plurality of the broader American public remains ready to return more than just a few of the defective or unwanted gifts it was offered. It does not seek further counseling. It wants a divorce from ObamaCare.”
“Perhaps more important than overall impressions are public perceptions about whether people will eventually be better off under the legislation. Unfortunately for the bill’s supporters, the polling evidence doesn’t suggest strong confidence. Twenty-six percent in the March 2011 Kaiser Family Foundation poll say they and their families will be better off, while 30 percent say they will be worse off. A strong plurality in March 2011 says the cost for them and their families will get worse. Twenty-three percent say it will get better. As for one of the bill’s selling points, the ability to get insurance, 26 percent in the latest Kaiser poll say it will get better, 25 percent worse, and 46 percent stay about the same.”