“Instead of betting on entrepreneurs, Obamacare assumes that improvements in the delivery of medical care will arise as a result of shifts in market power. This turns on a shortsighted view that once providers are grouped into larger networks, they’ll make wider use of things like information technology to better coordinate the care of patients, in turn lowering costs.”
“The Affordable Care Act will expand the reach of government into our personal health-care choices, while exacerbating the problems with our current health-care system. Market forces, if allowed to work properly, are the best means for reducing the growth in health costs, encouraging continued innovation, and ensuring that consumers have access to quality health care.”
“On Friday House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails proves anything, it’s that the Tea Party isn’t angry enough.”
“The House passed legislation Thursday that would repeal the healthcare reform law’s tax on medical device manufacturers. The measure won the support of 37 Democrats despite a veto threat from the Obama administration. The bill was approved 270-146 after a debate in which Republicans said members of both parties support repeal of the 2.3 percent tax, which was created by the 2010 healthcare law.”
“Perhaps you thought that the Affordable Care Act is all about making insurance more affordable. Too bad no one told Americans that the law also turned the Health and Human Services Department into a giant venture capital investor for health care. This won’t turn out well. Awash in ObamaCare dollars, HHS has a growing investment portfolio that includes everything from new insurance companies to health-care start-ups to information technology.”
“Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation’s top drug companies to win support for President Obama’s health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans. In some of the key deals, Mr. Obama agreed to drop his long-standing support for letting Americans buy cheaper foreign prescription drugs — something the pharmaceutical industry vehemently opposed — and the drugmakers promised to mount a public campaign to sell the public on the health care legislation.”
“Makers of medical devices are gaining some momentum in a vigorous campaign to persuade Congress to scrap a tax imposed on their industry by the 2010 health-care law. A bill to void the tax sponsored by Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) will be marked up in the House Ways and Means Committee Thursday. Republican House leaders say a floor vote could be scheduled as soon as next week.”
“As part of writing ObamaCare, they decided that all “stakeholders” should contribute something, but changes to the ordinary corporate tax code wouldn’t raise enough money and would have hit many other innocent bystanders in manufacturing. So they chose an excise tax. About the only exemptions are for things that retail consumers buy directly, such as contact lenses or hearing aids.”
“This case thus illustrates a serious danger latent in the “comparative effectiveness research” approach taken by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: mass studies of how different treatments affect large swaths of people are not likely to pick up the subtleties and nuances in treatment effectiveness that can vary from person to person based on a whole range factors that determine each individual’s unique biochemistry.”
“In 2010, however, Congress, ravenous for revenue to fund Obamacare, included in the legislation a 2.3 percent tax on gross revenue — which generally amounts to about a 15 percent tax on most manufacturers’ profits — from U.S. sales of medical devices beginning in 2013. This will be piled on top of the 35 percent federal corporate tax, and state and local taxes. The 2.3 percent tax will be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs more than 400,000, and $20 billion is almost double the industry’s annual investment in research and development.”