Recent Articles

“House Republicans will take aim at President Obama’s divisive Medicare cost-cutting board during the new Congress, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote Wednesday. The alert came in a letter from the House majority leader to his GOP colleagues lamenting Mitt Romney’s presidential loss and outlining ways for Republicans to pursue tailored interests legislatively.”

“President Obama’s health care reform law – Obamacare – continues to be very controversial, exit polls indicated Tuesday. In Florida, the exit polls showed 49% of voters say the 2010 law should be repealed completely or in part. Forty-three percent said it should be expanded or kept as is… Exit polls in Ohio, show 52% said they think the president’s health care reform law should be repealed completely or in part while 42% said it should be expanded or left as is. There’s a similar split in other swing states.”

“Voters in Missouri approved a measure Tuesday that will hamper its governor’s ability to implement President Obama’s healthcare law. The law will prohibit the governor from creating an insurance exchange unless the move is authorized by the state legislature or by a ballot initiative. Given the makeup of the statehouse, the measure’s approval Tuesday all but ensures that Missouri will have a federally run exchange.”

“Obamacare has been the dog that didn’t bark in this campaign. Given some of the damaging ideas in the law, that’s a surprise. Among the worst is medical device tax, which kicks in next year. The reticence to fight about the tax is odd: It already is destroying job opportunities, and it soon will start blocking medical developments that could improve or even save many lives.”

“President Obama’s narrow victory has left proponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) breathing a collective sigh of relief, believing that the legislation is safe. It’s true, of course, that the election’s outcome has ended the prospect of a new administration using Republican majorities in both chambers and the budget reconciliation process to force outright repeal. But the reality of the economic and political situation means the core elements of the ACA remain very much in play.”

“Measures in four states—Alabama, Florida, Montana and Wyoming—were on the ballot last night relating to ALEC’s model Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Preliminary results show the measures passed as constitutional amendments in Alabama (Amendment 6) and Wyoming (Amendment A), and as a referendum in Montana (LR 122). The Florida measure failed.”

“November 16th is the deadline for states to submit a blueprint to the federal government for Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — a key component of the new healthcare law. Already, the exchange system is proving to be an unmitigated disaster. No one should be surprised by this. Like so much of the president’s gargantuan healthcare entitlement, the exchanges are burdened by a spider’s web of confusing regulations, poor design, and a top-down, command-and-control structure.”

“When Congress wrote 2,700 pages of legislation to create ObamaCare, that was only the starting point in the government’s re-engineering of our health sector. Tens of thousands of pages of regulation – or more – are needed to provide detailed guidance dictating exactly how its maze of new programs must operate.”

“Early this morning, the Hill reported that the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is relying on a private company — a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group — to play a central role in establishing and running Obamacare’s insurance ‘exchanges.'”

“The Obama administration is relying heavily on outside contractors to implement a core component of healthcare reform as it races to set up a federal health insurance marketplace before 2014. The fast-approaching deadline gives the administration little time to scrutinize private-sector partners for conflicts of interest. The purchase of one of these contractors, Quality Software Services, Inc. (QSSI), by UnitedHealth Group, a major healthcare conglomerate, has sparked concerns about a potentially uneven playing field.”