The impact of ObamaCare on doctors and patients, companies inside and outside the health sector, and American workers and taxpayers
“In short, Obamacare marked a decisive pro-abortion shift. Representatives who voted for it should not be surprised if their constituents hold them accountable for doing so.”
ObamaCare’s Medicare Advantage cuts will especially hit the Latino community. “In fact, according to my colleagues’ estimates, nearly 300,000 Hispanics will lose or be dropped from their Medicare Advantage plan, or find that the plan they were in is no longer financially attractive, facing an estimated $2.2 billion loss in annual benefits. Plus, approximately 56 percent of New York seniors would lose their Medicare Advantage plans. So much for the President’s repeated promise that we would be able to keep our current health coverage if we liked it.”
“These are the enrollees in Medicare Advantage plans, health plans operated by private insurers (Cigna, Aetna, United Health, etc.) that provide extra benefits to the elderly and the disabled on top of standard Medicare coverage. The price they will pay for health reform will be a double whammy: less spending on Medicare coupled with reduced subsidies for their Medicare Advantage plans. In many areas, Medicare Advantage enrollees will lose about one-third or more of their health-insurance benefits.”
By tying its subsidy program to the federal poverty rate, ObamaCare strongly discourages marriage. The level of subsidization is based on a family’s income as a percentage of the federal poverty level, which changes based on a person’s marital status. Thus two individuals living together would receive a substantial decrease in their subsidy were they to get married.
Obamacare would offer major financial rewards for couples who live together but avoid marriage — and it’s extreme marginal tax-rates on a marriage’s second income would provide a strong incentive for the lower-earning spouse (most often the woman) to leave the workforce.
While ObamaCare doesn’t explicitly declare that it would fund abortions with taxpayer dollars, its end run around Hyde Amendment protections would provide that result — which is why Planned Parenthood is declaring “victory” in the wake of ObamaCare’s passage.
“Is the Pill preventive, in the sense meant when preventive medicine got debated during ObamaCare? Not at all. Democrats specifically called out early diagnosis of diseases such as diabetes….That never included an explicit argument that lowering the birth rate would be an overall cost-saver, or that it was a legitimate government interest to suppress the birth rate. “
As this slide-show depicts, subsidies provided through ObamaCare for lower- and middle-class workers who receive health-care through the government-run exchanges would be much greater than the tax-breaks provided to lower- or middle-class workers who receive employer-provided health insurance. This would lead employers to drop these workers’ insurance and let them be covered through the exchanges, at taxpayer expense. Thus, ObamaCare is not only a new health-care system but a new welfare and tax system, which would lead to the segregation of the labor market: upper-income workers would continue to get insurance through their employers; lower- and middle-class workers would eventually get it through the government.
Under Obamacare, getting married would cause couples to lose large amounts in insurance exchange subsidies. Depending on their ages and incomes, married couples would lose up to three-quarters of their exchange subsidies and up $10,425 a year that would be available to couples who simply live together.