Recent Articles

“Even if the Affordable Care Act survives its first Supreme Court test— a ruling is due as early as today — the lawsuits won’t end. Citizens have already filed challenges to what critics call the law’s ‘death panel’ and its impact on privacy rights, religious liberty and physician-owned hospitals. Still another potential lawsuit poses as great a threat to the law as the case now before the high court.”

“While it is too early to make a definitive connection, it appears that the regulation encourages young adults to switch from obtaining coverage on their own, where they will pay additional costs, to obtaining coverage as dependents, where parents and parents’ employers will foot the bill. The regulation hence simply shifts costs from one group of people (young adults) to another (their parents and parents’ employers). This sort of distortion contributes to increases in premiums that the Administration expects in response to the regulation.”

“The following are just four of the worst features of Obamacare; there are many other aspects of the law that would be damaging. And all of these features could remain threats to the strength of the economy and quality of American health care if the Court upholds the law or severs the unconstitutional provisions from the rest of the legislation. That is why Congress must stand ready to repeal the rest of Obamacare in the event that the Court does not invalidate the entire thing.”

“Logistically a company with only 30 full-time employees managing thousands of part-time employees sounds far-fetched. However, with this sort of perverse financial incentive, companies in many industries–-particularly those with low-skilled, low wage employees – will ‘do the math’ and hire part-time workers over full-time workers. While this may keep human resource departments busy, it will cause many businesses to miss out on some economies of scale, as they devote more time and effort to hiring and training part-time workers.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision on the 2010 healthcare law may result in what appears to be a fiscal windfall for the federal government. But it would be a grave mistake for lawmakers to react to illusory savings with real new spending. To illustrate this point, let’s look at a few of the possible Supreme Court rulings—and their projected fiscal consequences.”

“A new insider survey of 58 legal experts conducted after the oral arguments concluded found that most predict that the court will strike down the so-called individual mandate, a central provision within the law requiring that every American purchase a government-approved form of health insurance. The same expert survey was conducted before the hearings began, which found the opposite: Most thought the law would be upheld.”

“As the Los Angeles Times reports, for every $1 that President Obama’s campaign has spent in support of Obamacare, his administration has spent another $65 in taxpayers’ money. The Times writes that the Obama administration has spent $46 million of taxpayers’ money in support of Obama’s centerpiece legislation, while the Obama campaign has spent only $703,000. That’s a 65-to-1 ratio of matching funds, with taxpayers doing the matching.”

“The ACA is a classic illustration of placing a persuasive title on a controversial statute to conceal its deep internal weaknesses. There is no way that one can “protect patients” by restricting, either through private employers or public exchanges, the choices they have in the type of plans they can join. It would be impossible for the statute to make health care more affordable when it piles major mandates on private plans, which could make them too costly to operate at all.”

“Before ObamaCare was enacted, the health sector was coiled for a 21st century transformation. But entrepreneurs moved to the sidelines, frightened by the huge hurdles from hundreds of new boards and commissions, thousands of regulators, and tens of thousands of pages of regulation spawned by ObamaCare. With the new financial incentives conservatives are proposing, the health sector would build on the core strength of our market economy, with consumers demanding better choices of more affordable health care and health coverage.”

“Holtz-Eakin points out that this unconventional tax structure will dramatically skew the health care market in favor of non-profit providers. Insurers subject to the free will have to make up for the expense it imposes on their business somehow, either by cutting their costs or by raising their premiums. Those not subject to the fee will obviously not face this dilemma, and hence they won’t face any financial pressure to raise their premiums. However, the for-profit insurers subject to the fee will suffer the most, as their losses will be compounded by the fee’s non-deductibility. Holtz-Eakin calculates that for-profit insurers subject to the tax will have to raise their premiums by $1.54 for every $1 imposed on them by the fee just to break even.”