Audits and investigations into the effects of ObamaCare from congressional committees, government auditors, advocacy groups, and others.
House Republicans on Wednesday jumped on rising premium rates and co-op closures to slam the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats lamented another hearing not focused on fixes to the Affordable Care Act.
At a joint Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, Republicans raised concerns about how rising premiums have affected their constituents, as well as the potential for fraud under the Obamacare exchanges. The subcommittee released a slate of reports earlier this week that slammed the future sustainability of the federal and state-based exchanges.
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The state-run insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act may not be sustainable, a GOP report released Tuesday by a House committee concludes.
The Energy and Commerce Committee report concludes that the $5 billion the federal government committed to building state-based exchanges has resulted in a failed experiment, and says that none of the exchanges are currently financially self-sustaining. The report comes ahead of a hearing Wednesday on the Affordable Care Act called by the committee’s health and oversight subcommittees.
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Five Senators are questioning Aetna’s decision to retreat from nearly a dozen Obamacare markets next year and how the decision is tied to the federal government’s attempt to block its proposed merger with Humana, which is being challenged by a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) sent a letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini Thursday questioning the insurers’ change in perspective about its participation in the Obamacare exchanges this summer after the Department of Justice sued to block the proposed merger.
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Leading progressive senators are demanding an explanation from the insurance giant Aetna about its abrupt decision to pull out of most ObamaCare exchanges this year, which they said appeared to be politically motivated.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced Thursday they are launching a probe into Aetna, which bailed on ObamaCare just weeks after the Justice Department moved to block its multi-billion merger with another top-five insurer.
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Former Obama administration official Donald Berwick once called the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) “the jewel in the crown of health-care reform.” The metaphor is apt: CMMI, more than any other aspect of Obamacare, is an imperial enterprise.
Congress established CMMI in the Obamacare statute with the goal of finding ways to reduce federal spending on medical care without diminishing its quality. That, of course, is the responsibility of Congress, which created the Medicare program and which alone bears responsibility for making legislative changes to it.
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Our constitutional system was carefully designed to prevent any one branch from seizing too much control over the entire government. Only Congress can write legislation; only the President can execute the laws; only the courts can judge whether the laws are constitutional.
This balance of powers, however, does not maintain itself. It is a dynamic equilibrium requiring each branch of government to protect and fully exercise its rightful authorities. When one branch encroaches on another, that balance is endangered — and so are the freedoms the separation of powers were intended to protect.
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The Obama administration proposed this week new rules for its Risk Adjustment program, a critical component of the Affordable Care Act. There are actually some better-late-than-never parts of the proposal. Most notably the new rules will try to compensate for the extra expense insurers incur when people exploit ACA regulatory and enforcement weaknesses to time their insurance purchases to cover only expensive medical emergencies.
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When is a government program not a government program?
When the insurance industry says it isn’t.
In its effort to keep billions in unlawful ObamaCare corporate subsidies flowing, the industry is trying to persuade Congress that it receives no federal funds through the federal “reinsurance” program. Good luck with that.
The ObamaCare statute established the temporary, three-year (from 2014 to 2016) reinsurance program for two purposes: 1) to provide $5 billion to the Treasury; and 2) to provide $20 billion to issuers of individual ObamaCare policies.
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Most health policy experts knew, and many warned, that the Affordable Care Act would lead to massive consolidation in the health care industry, including hospitals, physicians’ practices, and especially health insurers. Now the Justice Department is pushing back by opposing the mergers of four large health insurers—Aetna with Humana and Anthem with Cigna—as they try to survive the Obamacare wasteland.
The Obama administration defended its opposition by claiming the mergers would reduce competition.Attorney General Loretta Lynch explained, “If allowed to proceed, these mergers would fundamentally reshape the health insurance industry.” That’s rich, since nothing has reshaped the health insurance industry more than Obamacare—and by design.
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A company that offers health insurance plans in New Hampshire under the Affordable Care Act is suing the federal government over a part of the health care law.
The lawsuit from Minuteman Health aims to block the current form of the federal Risk Adjustment program, which aims to stabilize the health care market by spreading the costs that come from covering sicker people among insurers with healthier clients.
CEO Tom Policelli says what’s actually happened is that health care co-ops like Minuteman pay millions to their larger competitors that offer more expensive plans.
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