Ike Brannon is offering a full-throated defense of the Cadillac tax over at The Weekly Standard. He fully concedes that Obamacare is “replete with bad policies.” But he would have us believe “the so-called Cadillac tax is not one of them.”
DetailsSection 9001 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), set to take effect in 2018, imposes what it calls an “Excise Tax on High Cost Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage”, which has come to be known as the “Cadillac Tax.” This is a 40 percent tax on employer-sponsored health benefits that are defined as “excess benefits.” That means anything in excess of $10,200 (employee only) or $27,500 (family) coverage for 2018, with adjustments for subsequent years. The “excess benefit” includes not only benefits provided by the employer, but also the portion of premium paid by the employee, as well as any money the employee chooses to set aside out of salary to pay for health expenses via a Flexible Spending Account (FSA).
DetailsIowa’s experience with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has been turbulent. In 2014, state officials agreed to expand Medicaid, despite the fact that the Obama administration denied virtually all of their requests for flexibility.
Iowa’s expansion was loosely modeled after Arkansas’ Obamacare expansion. Under Iowa’s “Marketplace Choice” waiver, able-bodied adults above the poverty line would receive Medicaid benefits through Obamacare exchange plans.
DetailsCongress has less than a month to make a small fix to Obamacare that could have a big impact on small businesses.
A bill that has been introduced would enable a state to decide whether to expand the definition of a small group health insurance market. It may not seem like a big deal, but lawmakers say the slight change could have a big impact on premiums for more than 3 million employees.
DetailsThe White House is calling for a “more aggressive strategy” to reduce improper payments made by Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a letter made public to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Center for Public Integrity obtained the February letter — written by Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan and addressed to HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell — after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
DetailsJoel C. White, president of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage, and Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, have written to members of Congress seeking oversight of the co-op program. All but one of the 22 co-op created under the ACA have produced negative net income, despite $2.4 billion in federal taxpayer funding. This is a misuse of taxpayer money and a disservice to patients who have lost health insurance coverage due to co-op failure.
DetailsWhen the House of Representatives filed a lawsuit last year contesting President Obama’s implementation of ObamaCare, critics variously labeled it as “ridiculous,” “frivolous” and certain to be dismissed. Federal District Judge Rosemary Collyer apparently doesn’t agree. On Wednesday she ruled against the Obama administration, concluding that the House has standing to assert an injury to its institutional power, and that its lawsuit doesn’t involve—as the administration had asserted—a “political question” incapable of judicial resolution.
DetailsThe federal court ruling Wednesday that Congress can sue the President may eventually be seen as the beginning of an historic constitutional watershed. Now that we’ve had the chance to digest the opinion, we’d say it has the chance to restore the separation of powers that President Obama has so often subverted.
DetailsThe White House isn’t likely to wait long to challenge Wednesday’s ruling allowing House Republicans to sue the Obama administration for spending federal funds on the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing assistance.
The administration is expected to seek what’s called an interlocutory appeal, which would allow a higher court to consider the issue of whether the House has standing to sue before the lower court addresses the merits of the case.
DetailsJust when you thought that any further Obamacare lawsuits involved things like contraceptive mandates rather than anything at the law’s core, today a federal judge ruled that Speaker of the House John Boehner’s case against the HHS and Treasury secretaries can proceed. In a highly technical 43-page opinion, Judge Rosemary Collyer found that the House of Representatives has standing to sue these officials and their agencies for spending money on ACA implementation that Congress didn’t authorize.
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