An interview with ObamaCare Watch’s Project Director Jim Capretta in which he discusses the ruling by a federal judge finding ObamaCare’s individual mandate unconstitutional.
“In a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal judge Monday invalidated a key provision of the recently passed health care law, saying that it ‘exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.'”
“First, ObamaCare’s state-side implementation is going to be very difficult and very complex. Even big, liberal states like California are going to have trouble keeping up with the law’s requirements. Second, that complexity is going to set up a system that’s 1) going to create a lot more interdependence between the government and the private sector and 2) begging to be gamed. That’s presumably why private firms, especially in the consulting sector, are already investing heavily in staff who can explain what the government’s doing and, presumably, how to take advantage of it. “
Despite its 2000+ pages, ObamaCare still will require over ten thousand pages of new regulations to govern its implementation.
“The recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aims to transform regulation of private health insurance. It would put in place a new federal regulatory regime that prescribes various mandates for covered benefits, imposes tighter restrictions on insurance premiums, sets limits on how premium dollars are spent, and exerts much greater political and bureaucratic control over health insurance.”
The Obama Administration has now granted over 200 waivers to corporations for different ObamaCare mandates so they can keep their current plans. ObamaCare is so restrictive with its new mandates that corporations will be unable to keep their current plans and will have to switch to more expensive ones. Businesses are concerned that only the larger and more politically connected firms will be exempted from the rules.
“Striking down the Obamacare individual mandate would be a historic vindication of the rule of law. But if the courts find that the mandate is not severable from the remainder of the statute, then it could wipe clean the slate of health care reform. That would return this issue to a new Congress — and possibly a new president — to devise reform legislation that will actually improve health care costs, instead of an unprecedented invasion into the lives and liberties of American citizens.”
“If ACOs become the only possibility for organizing, financing and delivering care, physicians and patients alike will find themselves in a treatment straightjacket. Thus, government should not give ACOs a competitive edge. If the ACO is such a good idea, let it develop in an open pluralistic market with no subsidy or other government advantage.”
ObamaCare mandates that plans allow children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26. This raises premium costs, driving many plans to drop coverage for dependents altogether. “One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said.”
“ObamaCare’s fatal conceit is that government bureaucrats can determine and deliver what is good for patients. Consumers will continue to feel the pain – costs will continue to rise and more insurers will flee the marketplace – until Congress gives up that conceit and repeals this law.”