Audits and investigations into the effects of ObamaCare from congressional committees, government auditors, advocacy groups, and others.
“Buried deep within President Obama’s $3.77 trillion budget is a tiny little proposal to increase Medicaid spending by $360 million. In a budget as large as this one, $360 million is scarcely worth mentioning. It amounts to less than one-hundredth of one percent of total outlays. But this 0.01 percent is worth mentioning, because it proves the president’s health-care law will not work.”
“In the coming years, treatment programs and medical colleges will face pressure to ramp up to create a larger system. But until then, addiction treatment may represent an extreme example of one of the Affordable Care Act’s challenges: actually delivering the care that people are supposed to receive.”
“Hospitals that treat the most vulnerable patients may have the toughest time weathering spending cuts under President Obama’s health-care law… Under the Affordable Care Act, the safety-net hospitals will gain a new source of revenue when millions of the uninsured gain coverage. At the same time, the law’s spending cuts could prove challenging for hospitals that tend to operate with relatively small profit margins.”
“Illinois Medicaid Director Julie Hamos is warning that there won’t be enough doctors to treat the expected surge next year of new Medicaid patients unless more physicians participate in the health care program for the poor… About 1.2 million uninsured people in Illinois are expected to gain some form of health insurance coverage on Jan. 1 under the landmark overall of health care. About half of those people will be newly eligible for Medicaid.”
“President Obama often claims he wants to cut the budget smartly, using a “scalpel”—not a meat axe, machete, cleaver or chainsaw, to list a few of his favorite metaphors. He’ll need a more inspired term to describe what he’s now doing to Medicare Advantage, perhaps napalm or WMD. The Affordable Care Act drained $306 billion from this growing version of Medicare that 29% of seniors use to escape the traditional entitlement and obtain modern private insurance, but the Administration is imposing the cuts in ways that are even more harmful than the law requires.”
“Big government likes big providers. That’s why ObamaCare is gradually making the local doctor-owned medical practice a relic. In the not too distant future, most physicians will be hourly wage earners, likely employed by a hospital chain. Why? Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do.”
“Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance plans are required to give new mothers equipment and services to enable them to breast feed. What that means in practical terms for most moms is that insurers have to cover the cost of a breast pump – either a rental or a new one. What the law doesn’t say, however, is what kind of pump has to be provided. It is left to the insurance companies, following doctors’ recommendations, to decide whether to cover the cost of an electric or a manual pump.”
“In short, Obamacare has made it so challenging for doctors to operate private practices that many have decided not to do so anymore. And as doctors become salaried workers, their allegiances will shift. The interests of their employers will supplant those of their patients.”
“Though Democrats denied it during the 2012 campaign, Obamacare cut Medicare by $716 billion in order to partially fund $1.9 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next ten years. A big chunk of those Medicare cuts came from the market-oriented Medicare Advantage program. Cleverly, the Obama administration postponed the Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election, so as to persuade seniors that everything would be just fine. But the election is over.”
“Two hospice care centers are struggling to make ends meet, and Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare are to blame.
Hospices—health care facilities for the terminally ill—along with other Medicare providers are facing Medicare pay cuts. Of the $716 billion in payment reductions, hospice care was hit by a $17 billion payment cut from 2013 to 2022. Now, contrary to all of the misleading claims, this effect is already beginning.”