“So, even though states can’t afford their current Medicaid obligations, ObamaCare forced an extension of existing eligibility standards until 2014. Arizona is especially affected because it has some of the most generous Medicaid eligibility standards in the country. Rather than allow states like Arizona to cut back to the level of other states, ObamaCare freezes in existing disparities. Beginning in June 2011, Arizona’s share of its Medicaid program will increase by $700 million. The annual cost of this mandate is almost $1 billion.”
“A generation ago, New York governor Mario Cuomo was an Italian-American facsimile of Barack Obama: an unapologetic, eloquent spokesman for modern liberalism. Many on the Left regret to this day that he didn’t run for President in 1992, leaving the field instead to a centrist named Bill Clinton.
Last month, Mario’s son, Andrew, was installed into the Governor’s Mansion in Albany. And Andrew is getting some pretty lavish praise from…National Review and the Wall Street Journal?”
“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.”
“What would you call a health-insurance program that has worse health outcomes for cancer and heart disease than Medicare or private insurance, that pays doctors and specialists so little that they often refuse to see patients, and that’s driving state budgets into bankruptcy? If you’re the Obama administration, apparently, you call it a success and make it the cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care-reform legislation passed in March 2010 that is better known as Obamacare.”
“The Senate Judiciary Committee held its first-ever hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare yesterday, and talk about a barn door closing. After federal Judge Roger Vinson struck down on Monday the entire statute in a suit brought by 26 states, some states are already suspending any efforts to comply with its regulations and mandates.”
“Health insurers in 34 states have stopped selling child-only insurance policies as a result of the health reform law, and the market continues to destablize.
According to a survey of state insurance departments by Republican Senate committee staff and obtained by POLITICO, states that have seen carriers exit the market include those that have been ardent supporters of the health reform law, like California and Oregon. Twenty states now have no insurers offering child-only policies.”
“In a Jan. 7 letter to President Obama, more than 30 current and former GOP governors urged the White House to remove ‘excessive constraints placed on us by healthcare-related federal mandates.’ The letter says that ObamaCare and spending mandates from the stimulus bill passed in 2009 ‘prevent states from managing their Medicaid programs for their unique Medicaid populations.'”
“The top-down federal approach to health care reform assaults the traditional state role in insurance regulation, squashes innovation, and undermines real choice and competition. PPACA is thus a bad deal for states, reducing them to mere agents of federal health and insurance policy. They could not make full use of their comparative advantages in coping with very different insurance markets, mending the safety net care for the poorest and most vulnerable of their citizens with new policies, or undertaking imaginative reforms without getting a permission slip from Washington.”
“Roughly half of the anticipated gains in insurance coverage from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are achieved through a massive expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal–state health insurance program for the poor. The Medicaid program, with its soaring price tag and dubious level of care for recipients, is in serious need of reform, not expansion. Increasing enrollment in this program by a third is a major flaw of the new health care law.”
“Once ObamaCare becomes fully effective in 2014, the cost of newly eligible Medicaid enrollees will be almost fully covered by the federal government through 2019, with federal financial support expected to be extended thereafter. But ObamaCare provides states with zero additional federal financial support for new enrollees among those eligible for Medicaid under the old laws. That makes increased state Medicaid costs from higher enrollments by ‘old-eligibles’ virtually certain as they enroll into Medicaid to comply with the mandate to purchase health insurance. This study estimates and compares potential increases in Medicaid costs from ObamaCare for the five most populous states: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas.”