“The Society for Human Resource Management conducted the poll in late December, before a federal judge struck the law down and the House voted for repeal. At the time, 48 percent of respondents said they were waiting for more regulatory guidance on specific provisions, while 13 percent said they were hoping for full repeal.”
“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.”
“The free-rider problem was caused by clumsy government policy. The solution to the problem, therefore, isn’t to add more clumsy government policy on top: it is to fix the original policy. PPACA’s individual mandate is not needed to address the free-rider problem. Furthermore, aspects of the individual mandate have nothing to do with the free-rider problem.”
“A week after Republicans announced plans to investigate waivers granted to organizations for healthcare reform provisions, President Obama’s health department made public new waivers for more than more than 500 groups.”
“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.”
“One of the central goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was to increase the number of individuals with health insurance coverage. To encourage employers to offer coverage, the new law creates a tax penalty on firms with more than 50 workers that fail to provide “adequate” coverage for their employees. The result is government intrusion into voluntary arrangements made between employer and employee. The cost of the tax penalty will ultimately be borne by workers (lower wages and fewer jobs), shareholders (lower profits), and consumers (higher prices).”
“Tomorrow night the House of Representatives will debate the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), what many call ‘ObamaCare.’ Some critics complain that this is a futile exercise because there is little chance of short-term success. But that’s the wrong way to look at it.”
Supporters of the new health care law are quick to tout it as a patients bill of rights. But the real “rights” given through ObamaCare and things like the “right to lose your job” and the “right to lose your insurance plan.”
“Hayek’s most famous insight, about the indispensible informational function of the price mechanism, in his most famous paper, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, comes in the course of an argument to the effect that central economic planning boards are bound to fail. On it’s face, it’s hard to agree that the Affordable Care Act does much to incorporate the fundamental Hayekian lesson when one of its key provisions is the establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a sort of central price-setting committee thought by its advocates necessary to contain the runaway cost of the American health-care system.”
ObamaCare gives the government sweeping new powers to micromanage insurance policies. Their one-size-fits-all decisions are almost guaranteed to fail. “Draw up a package that is too bare-bones, and millions of Americans could be deprived of meaningful health-care coverage when they need it most – undercutting a central goal of the new law. Add in too many expensive benefits, and premiums could spike to unaffordable levels.”