“Anyone wanting a preview of Obama-Care need just focus on Massachusetts, the state that provided the blueprint for Obama’s plan. It makes a great case for making haste in repealing ObamaCare.”
Among ObamaCare’s supposed selling-points are its insurance regulations which require companies to sell insurance to everyone at the same price, regardless of whether they’re healthy or sick. But if you can buy insurance after you get sick, there’s no reason to pay for it until you need it. Massachusetts instituted these reforms in 2006, and they’ve led to a significant increase in costs, which is exactly what will happen when ObamaCare forces these regulations on the whole country.
Despite the publicity it has received, the official estimate of the White House Office of Management and Budget is that not even one in every thousand Americans will be impacted by ObamaCare’s “patient’s bill of rights” — and this disclosure stands in stark contrast to the administration’s estimate that ObamaCare could cause more than half of all Americans with employer-based health plans to lose their current plan.
ObamaCare’s mandate that states reimburse primary-care doctors under Medicaid at the same rate as under Medicare, creates a funding cliff in 2015 — when the federal government’s promise to pick up the tab would expire, leaving states on the hook for an estimated $5.5 billion a year.
ObamaCare bears about as much resemblance to the Heritage Foundation’s ideas for empowering patients and lowering costs as a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese does to a salad.
Evidence of a significant free-rider problem in Massachusetts may be a harbinger of things to come under Obamacare.
Robert A. Levy argues that Obamacare’s mandate to purchase health insurance is not authorized under Congress’s power to “lay and collect taxes.”
Medicaid mandates under Obamacare leave states with an unpleasant choice.
Congress originally tried to defend the constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate (which would require all Americans to buy health insurance) based on its power to regulate interstate commerce, but it has since gotten cold feet and has switched to a defense based on its power to tax. But not buying health care isn’t an aspect of commerce, and a penalty for not buying health care isn’t a tax — and for the Supreme Court to uphold the mandate on either basis would require the Court to allow Congress to go where it has never gone before.