“Governor Rick Perry has reportedly prevented State Representative John Zerwas and other legislators from making a potentially fatal blunder in the fight against Obamacare. According to local media, the governor’s office has discouraged Rep. Zerwas from championing legislation establishing a state-based Obamacare Health Benefits Exchange in Texas.”
“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.”
“ObamaCare’s middle class insurance subsidies are one of the law’s most popular features for obvious reasons. But the existence of the subsidies sets up a serious potential problem: What happens politically when it’s discovered that between two families making roughly the same amount of money, only one has access to a subsidy?”
“Today marks the one-year anniversary of Obamacare. While advocates spend the week highlighting the new law’s effects on different groups of Americans, we are doing the same. A review of the facts on the ground and the conclusions of Heritage research over the past year reveals the far-reaching negative consequences.”
“States establishing Obamacare exchanges are making a one-way, lose-lose bet. If Obamacare persists, exchanges will become bloated administrative nightmares. If Obamacare is defeated, states will have wasted time and energy that should have been directed towards that effort. Obamacare is President Obama’s problem. Don’t make it your state’s too.”
“Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said he won’t implement the federal health-care overhaul after a judge in Florida struck down the law as unconstitutional… Mr. Parnell, who sought the advice of his attorney general amid concerns implementing the law would violate his oath of office, told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce the state would pursue lawful, market-based solutions to making insurance affordable and accessible to Alaskans.”
“Back in a November 2009, Utah governor Gary Herbert complained in remarks at the Heritage Foundation that the federal government was ‘freezing out the states’ on health-care reform. How have things gone since then? According to the governor’s remarks (as reported by Jane Norman of CQ HealthBeat) when he returned to the Heritage Foundation last week, ‘Utah officials waited for eight months to find out if the state would be allowed to us e-mail rather than paper to communicate with Medicaid recipients and save $6 million a year.’ Herbert concluded — with bemusement – that ‘they sent us a denial by e-mail.'”
“Most fundamentally, the system we are proposing requires Washington to abandon most of the command-and-control aspects of the law as written. It steers away from nanny-state paternalism by assuming, recognizing and reinforcing the dignity of all our citizens and their right to make health care’s highly personal decisions for themselves.”
“A set of provisions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) gives the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sweeping new powers to impose a wide range of detailed benefit requirements on employer-sponsored health plans and major medical policies sold by health insurers. This will effectively make all health insurance benefits uniform—depriving patients of choices—increase the cost of coverage for tens of millions of Americans, and stifle insurance innovation.”
“Beginning in 2014, most U.S. residents will be required to have health insurance coverage. However, provisions of the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) will limit the choice of health plans offered. Health insurance that does not cover preventive care, plans with deductibles above the statutory limit and plans that cap benefits at predetermined levels will ultimately disappear.”