ObamaCare’s cuts to the Medicare Advantage program will result in millions of seniors losing the extra benefits that program provides because of its increased choice and competition. “The average nationwide per capita reduction in the value of coverage for MA and would-be MA enrollees will total about $3,700 annually by 2017, or a nearly 27 percent cut from what would have occurred without the new law. At the state level, the average cut ranges from $2,020 (21 percent) in Nevada, the state with the smallest cut on a per capita basis, to $4,693 (36 percent) in Hawaii, the state with the highest reduction in the per-capita value of MA-covered benefits. All together, the aggregate cut in payments to MA plans in 2017 will reach $55 billion.”
“The new law gives the Administration extensive authority to achieve broadly outlined goals, allowing it to control every aspect of health care finance and delivery and to impose its view of how the health care system should operate… The structure of the health care system will be determined by one central authority, reducing flexibility and denying Americans the ability to make their own choices.”
“Faced with the fact that the new health-care law was driving up insurance premiums, Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned that the administration would have ‘zero tolerance’ for anyone who blamed them for those price hikes… At the very least, she noted ‘bad actors’ could be excluded from new government-run health-insurance exchanges that will begin operation in 2014 under the law. That could cost insurers as many as 30 million customers nationwide. People also might not be able to use government subsidies to buy insurance from companies that don’t toe the administration line. What’s next? Only companies that write checks to the Democratic National Committee can participate? Have too many employees contribute to the wrong candidate, and you get a visit from the insurance commissioner?”
“Sebelius is threatening to put health insurers out of business in a substantial portion of the market if they state that Obamacare is boosting their costs. ‘Congress shall make no law,’ reads the First Amendment, ‘abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ Sebelius’ approach is different: ‘zero tolerance’ for dissent.
The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone’s business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration’s transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government.”
“[T]he Democrats wanted to provide benefits they could tout during the election. So they tucked all these fine sounding goodies into the law to take effect early. Unfortunately, until the individual mandate kicks in (and maybe/probably even after it does), some of these provisions give people every incentive to game the system by waiting until, say, their kid gets leukemia to buy a policy… If you really think that insurance price increases have nothing to do with costs, and everything to do with insurer greed, you need to explain a few anomalies. First of all, why did insurers all suddenly get much greedier now? And if they haven’t gotten greedier, then why did they wait until the middle of a recession to impose price increases just at the time when they are most likely to cost the insurers their healthiest customers?”
“This paper presents updated national health spending projections for 2009–2019 that take into account recent comprehensive health reform legislation and other relevant changes in law and regulations. Relative to our February 2010 projections under prior law, average annual growth in national health spending over the projection period is estimated to be 0.2 percentage point higher than our previous estimate. The health care share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to be 0.3 percentage point higher in 2019. Within these net overall impacts are larger differences for trends in spending and spending growth by payer, attributable to reform’s many major changes to health care coverage and financing.”
The government’s Medicare actuaries determined that national health spending would increase under ObamaCare, with families paying an average of $265 more annually. This is assuming Congress allows hundred of billions in Medicare spending cuts to be enacted, which they have consistently voted to repeal. “Factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019, according to the actuary’s office. Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. That works out to $265 more with the overhaul. The big picture numbers are $4.6 trillion with the overhaul in 2019, and $4.5 trillion without it. The nation will spend $2.6 trillion on health care this year.”
“Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported today in Health Affairs that overall health spending will constitute 20 percent of the economy by 2019, up from 17 percent now. An Associated Press article about the report says that ‘factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019. . . . Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. That works out to $265 more with the overhaul.’That hardly ‘bends the cost curve down,’ as Mr. Obama and his allies in Congress repeatedly promised the law would do. And it does not take the burden of rising health-care costs off the backs of struggling consumers or businesses — again, as they promised.”
ObamaCare’s new mandates and regulations are causing insurers to significantly raise premiums or drop out of the market and cancel existing policies. This directly contradicts promises by supporters that if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. “In the letter sent to the Alcantaras and other customers, Grand Prairie-based National Health Insurance Co. said it could no longer offer individual accident and health insurance policies. It blamed its decision on the company’s inability to meet requirements of the health care overhaul signed into law this year.”
ObamaCare was supposed to have “bent the cost curve” and lowered health spending in family budgets and the federal budget. But it does nothing to lower costs, and Instead the huge new government program will accelerate spending growth.