“Obamacare continues to fall short of the lofty predictions about it — and here are two new charts to prove it. The charts, included as part of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) presentation over the weekend, summarize the CBO’s cost estimates of the law in the three years since its passage. The charts show that in every instance, the CBO’s estimate of the number of uninsured has risen, as has the number of workers who will lose coverage under their existing employer plans:”
“If all states implement the Affordable Care Act, 18 million more people will be enrolled in Medicaid by the end of 2016. Even if some states opt out, the program is poised for a huge expansion. But having insurance does not guarantee access to health care. Policymakers need to explore and reduce the barriers Medicaid patients face as millions join an already overburdened system.”
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans who currently lack health insurance don’t know yet if they will purchase that coverage by the Jan. 1 deadline set by the ACA, a new survey revealed Monday. And less than half of those in the survey released by InsuranceQuotes.com think they’ll get better health care after Obamacare takes full effect. Nearly 50 percent believe the ACA will make it more difficult for them to get tests and procedures done in a timely manner, according to the phone survey of 1,001 adult Americans conducted in early May.”
“The Obama administration said Monday that it was cutting payments to doctors and hospitals after finding that cost overruns are threatening to use up the money available in a health insurance program for people with cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses. The administration had predicted that up to 400,000 people would enroll in the program, created by the 2010 health care law. In fact, about 135,000 have enrolled, but the cost of their claims has far exceeded White House estimates, exhausting most of the $5 billion provided by Congress.”
“It’s the great moral imperative behind the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’): People should not be denied health care because they can’t afford insurance. Health status and insurance are assumed to be connected, and opponents have often been cast as moral midgets, willing to condemn the uninsured to unnecessary illness or death. The trouble is that health status and insurance are only loosely connected. This suggests that Obamacare may result in more spending and health services but few gains in the public’s health.”
“During the health care debate, liberals argued that government had a moral duty to enact legislation that expanded health insurance among lower-income individuals. This was rooted in the assumption that obtaining health insurance translates into improved health. But a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine dramatically undermines this assumption and shatters the rationale behind the law’s Medicaid expansion.”
“There is no way to spin these results as anything but a rebuke to those who are pushing states to expand Medicaid. The Obama administration has been trying to convince states to throw more than a trillion additional taxpayer dollars at Medicaid by participating in the expansion, when the best-designed research available cannot find any evidence that it improves the physical health of enrollees.”
“Hospitals that treat the most vulnerable patients may have the toughest time weathering spending cuts under President Obama’s health-care law… Under the Affordable Care Act, the safety-net hospitals will gain a new source of revenue when millions of the uninsured gain coverage. At the same time, the law’s spending cuts could prove challenging for hospitals that tend to operate with relatively small profit margins.”
“House GOP leaders asked President Obama Tuesday to make funds available in support of a temporary insurance plan for people with pre-existing conditions. The plan, known as PCIP, has struggled to get off the ground since it was enacted as part of the healthcare law. Last month, the Obama administration announced that it would close enrollment due to concerns that the program would be too costly.”
“Tens of thousands of Americans who cannot get health insurance because of preexisting medical problems will be blocked from a program designed to help them because funding is running low. Obama administration officials said Friday that the state-based ‘high-risk pools’ set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants as soon as Saturday and no later than March 2, depending on the state.”