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Doctors in the United States appear as bitterly divided over the Affordable Care Act as the general public.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also called Obamacare, has been a lightning rod since it was signed into law in 2010.

Five years after its enactment, the healthcare reform legislation still divides the American public.

House Committee on the Education and the Workforce
Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions
Hearing on
“Five Years of Broken Promises:
How the President’s Health Care Law is Affecting America’s Workplaces”
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Members of the Committee,
My name is Tevi Troy, and I am the President of the American Health Policy Institute, adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, and a former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a former senior White House Domestic Policy Aide. The American Health Policy Institute is a 501(c)3 think tank dedicated to studying the issue of employer sponsored health insurance and highlighting the challenges employers face in offering care to their employees and their dependents.

Repealing the ACA’s individual mandate would result in 7 million fewer insured Americans in 2025 but would reduce federal spending on financial assistance by $191 billion, American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who backs axing the mandate, told the House Ways and Means health subcommittee Tuesday.

Thumbs Down, way down, to everyone responsible for the fiasco known as Nevada Health Link, the state exchange for purchasing health insurance online.

As the deadline to file tax returns arrives tomorrow, we suspect plenty of taxpayers have discovered that Nevada Health Link and Xerox, hired to run the online system but since fired, created an accounting nightmare and cost some exchange customers a chunk of change. What’s worse, those responsible for this nightmare don’t appear to care one bit about the mess they created.

In accordance with the Affordable Care Act, those who purchased insurance through the exchange in 2014 have to report on their tax returns what they paid for premiums and how much they received in tax credits or subsidies for that coverage. The figures are reported in a federal tax form known as a 1095-A. The form is prepared and distributed by the exchange.

The special health insurance enrollment period set up for people surprised by their tax penalties hasn’t appeared to increase either awareness or enrollment by much, new research shows.

People who live in the 34 states that use HealthCare.gov and didn’t know about the requirement to have health insurance can sign up through April 30 for 2015 coverage.

But nearly half of people planning to file taxes said they had heard nothing or very little about the requirement to report whether they have insurance on their tax return, according to new research funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation..

“Very few people are reacting to the news by insuring,” said Kathy Hempstead, who directs insurance coverage issues at RWJF.

“So far it doesn’t seem we’re seeing this mass teachable moment.”

A new report shows that as the United States’ tax system grows more complicated because of Obamacare regulations, the economy is taking more of a hit.

According to data from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF), complying with the federal income tax cost the economy about $234 billion in productivity last year.

The group came to that figure by adding the out-of-pocket cost of tax preparation assistance ($31.7 billion) and the estimated cost of $202.1 billion due to lost labor hours Americans spent dealing with their 2013 tax returns that were filed in 2014.

Special: IRS Loophole That Could Protect You From Economic Instability

The economic hit was lower than the previous year by almost $10 billion, and the NTUF concludes that “was an anomaly.”

The increase to this year’s figure, according to the NTUF, stems from the Affordable Care Act and the mountain of paperwork it has created at the IRS.

“Looking deeper at NTUF’s research, there is one big reas

As millions of Americans scramble to file their tax returns, many are shocked by the full cost of ObamaCare’s individual mandate.

“Those who failed to obtain minimum essential health insurance coverage last year will have had to send the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a check for $1,130, on average,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified today before a congressional hearing.

An estimated 6.3 million people will be required to pay a penalty this year because they didn’t buy qualifying health insurance in 2014, Holtz-Eakin testified.

This year’s new analysis of tax complexity from National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF) found some startling lead figures: a $234 billion cost to the economy due to 6.1 billion lost hours of productivity and $32 billion spent out-of-pocket to comply with America’s insanely complicated tax system.

As always, there is much more to the story.

Since 2010, tax complexity costs have remained sky-high, at well over $200 billion each year. From fiscal year 2005 to 2013, the Treasury’s paperwork burden rose from 6.4 billion hours to 7 billion hours never making up less than 74 percent of the burden imposed by all government agencies combined.

While last year’s (covering 2013) totals actually trended downward compared to the previous year (2012), there was little reason to believe that was the beginning of a trend toward continued relief.

Early this summer the Supreme Court will render a decision on King v. Burwell, the case challenging the IRS workaround that allows ObamaCare subsidies to be paid through federal exchanges. Many on the right believe that if the justices rule against the administration, it would be the final stake in the heart of ObamaCare. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Millions of Americans would lose their federal subsidies and therefore be unable to pay for expensive ObamaCare coverage. In that case we can expect President Obama to declare immediately a crisis that can only be fixed by more government. As Rahm Emanuel, the president’s former chief of staff, once said, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

If the court rules against him, President Obama’s response will be diabolically simple and highly effective. He will ask Congress to pass a one-sentence bill allowing the subsidies to flow through federal exchanges.

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii officials are scrambling to provide information to the federal government to satisfy concerns about financial problems at the state’s health exchange.

All state-run insurance exchanges that are part of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act are supposed to be financially sustainable this year. But without an infusion of cash, the Hawaii Health Connector won’t have enough money for its operations. The Legislature hasn’t yet approved the organization’s request to issue $28 million in bonds or loans.

Without a solid path to sustainability in place, the federal government is telling the state it may have to eventually move some technology functions to a federal system, said Jeff Kissel, CEO of the Hawaii Health Connector.

“This is a contingency that is being imposed on any state-based exchange that doesn’t have a funded sustainability plan in play,” Kissel said.