“Liberal consumer groups are aghast to learn that the Obama health team are really monopolists at heart, bent on handing hospitals a cartel in their local markets. Sunday’s New York Times report on this horror confirms what I wrote about in these pages weeks ago… I warned that the creation of ‘accountable care organizations,’ which put hospitals in control of all the doctors in their outlying areas, would lead to concentrated power over the provision of medical care–turning physicians into salaried employees and reducing consumer choices.”
ObamaCare mandates that plans allow children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. This raises premium costs, driving many plans to drop coverage for dependents altogether. “One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said.”
ObamaCare was rushed through the legislative process, and a drafting error could sharply limit access to life-saving drugs for children. “The error was a simple and unintentional omission in the final, frenetic days of drafting the landmark legislation and reconciling House and Senate versions. Con gressional staff intended to allow children’s hospitals continued access to the portion of a federal program that offers below-market prices on 347 specific medicines for rare, life-threatening conditions. But that language was accidentally altered.”
“ObamaCare’s fatal conceit is that government bureaucrats can determine and deliver what is good for patients. Consumers will continue to feel the pain – costs will continue to rise and more insurers will flee the marketplace – until Congress gives up that conceit and repeals this law.”
“Squads of health care experts and political pundits envisioned a Pax Obama for heath care once the political hubbub quieted down. It won’t happen. Without major steps to overhaul or repeal ObamaCare, government by waiver will become standard operating procedure to the detriment of us all.”
ObamaCare is filled with perverse incentives and unintended consequences which will lead to declining patient care. “Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve — by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.”
“First, the House should introduce legislation to repeal ObamaCare, which almost certainly will pass. Yes, it is very unlikely the legislation would also make it through the Democratically controlled Senate—or even brought up for consideration in the relevant committees. But a repeal vote would throw down the gauntlet and demonstrate the current mood in the House, which reflects the country as a whole. Members could then proceed to introduce legislation that might find some bipartisan support.”
“While we applaud the Chairs’ initiative and efforts to reduce future federal outlays, we feel their proposals ultimately fail to provide an adequate plan for the fiscal future, especially for the unsustainable rise in federal health care costs. We believe that the proposals can contribute to the ongoing budget debate, but are not a roadmap. To help inform the healthcare budget discussion, we outline below the good, the bad, and the ugly policy prescriptions in the co-chairs proposal.”
“Survey after survey shows that Americans oppose Obamacare and want to see it repealed. In a new Gallup poll, for example, opponents of the law outnumber supporters more than 2 to 1: 42 percent said it went too far, while 20 percent said it was ‘just right.’ A recent Rasmussen poll found that 53 percent of likely voters favor repeal.”
CMS Administrator Don Berwick testified at his first and only Senate hearing for such a brief time, that he was unable to be thoroughly questioned. “Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called the hearing ‘pathetic’ and said the time constraints made any real questioning difficult. ‘It’s like asking us to drain the Pacific Ocean with a thimble,’ he said. ‘We ought to have time to ask the most important man in healthcare sufficient questions.'”