“The ACA presents New York policymakers with a unique opportunity to reform its individual and small-group insurance markets. However, creating an effective market-based exchange requires policymakers to recognize that simply imposing its current high-cost insurance arrangements on the exchange may lead to the collapse of the exchange over time. Instead, reforms should build on the lessons learned from state exchanges in Utah and Massachusetts, federal programs such as Medicare Part D, and private exchanges such as New York’s HealthPass.”
“It’s not often that states turn their back on money from Washington, but at least two states may say no thanks to federal grants to implement the new federal health-care law.
In February the federal Department of Health and Human Services selected seven states to get $240 million in demonstration grants this year to kick start the health-care plan. But Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin announced last week that the Sooner State will decline $54.6 million from the feds to establish new insurance exchanges.”
“Contrary to federal government promises, ObamaCare will move Louisiana residents off their private insurance and further inflate Medicaid costs, as a new study shows.”
“Governor Rick Perry has reportedly prevented State Representative John Zerwas and other legislators from making a potentially fatal blunder in the fight against Obamacare. According to local media, the governor’s office has discouraged Rep. Zerwas from championing legislation establishing a state-based Obamacare Health Benefits Exchange in Texas.”
“Historically, the more governments have become involved in health care decisions, two things happen. First, health care costs rise, and, second, access to health care services declines. I believe ObamaCare is clearly causing health care costs to rise and ultimately will reduce access to health care services.”
“Why would the president endorse an effort that would seemingly undermine his signature law? Because the provision would actually hasten the country’s progress toward the president’s ultimate goal: a single-payer health care system.”
“Already facing a challenging budget picture, Texas received more bad budgetary news with the release of the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s study Final Notice: Medicaid Crisis, A Forecast of Texas’ Medicaid Expenditures Growth.
The study by Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, warns President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will vastly increase the amount of money states have to spend on their Medicaid budgets.”
“States in the South and Mountain West, which traditionally have the lowest rates of primary care physicians, could struggle to provide medical services to the surge of new patients expected to enroll in Medicaid under the health overhaul and federal incentives may not provide much help, according to a report issued today by a Washington health research group.”
“There is no good way, or even a less-bad way, for states or the feds to implement Obamacare’s exchanges or other central elements. Permitted to stand, Obamacare will reduce Americans’ incomes, harm their health, and decrease their freedom. The only way to fix it is to demolish it.”
“ObamaCare goes the extra mile by only permitting approaches that are more coercive than itself. Its waiver provisions only apply to that law’s private-insurance provisions, and require states to preserve the law’s price controls prohibiting health rating, to cover the same number of people, and to provide coverage as comprehensive and subsidies as large as the new law does. These restrictions completely bar free-market reforms.”