Recent Articles

“When government requires firms to offer benefits, employers will generally prefer to hire part-time workers, who will not be subject to the penalty. Even though the Affordable Care Act counts part-time workers by aggregating their hours to determine the size of a firm, part-time workers are not subject to the $2,000 penalty. Hence, there will be fewer opportunities open for full-time work. Many workers who prefer to work full-time will have an even harder time finding jobs.
In January 2012 over 8 million people were working part-time because they could not find full-time jobs. The new health care law would exacerbate this problem.”

“The Obama administration’s controversial birth-control mandate saw its first legal challenge Thursday from an employer not affiliated with any religious institution. The latest challenge comes from the owner of a Missouri-based holding company, who says it violates his religious freedom. Although several other suits have been filed, they have all come from religious-affiliated employers such as Catholic universities.”

“As many as 20 million Americans could lose their employer-provided coverage because of President Obama’s healthcare reform law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new report Thursday.
The figure represents the worst-case scenario, CBO says, and the law could just as well increase the number of people with employer-based coverage by 3 million in 2019.”

“Top U.S. Catholic bishops on Wednesday formally made their fight against a White House mandate for reproductive services the church’s top priority, saying ‘this struggle for religious freedom’ demands their immediate attention… The statement represents an expanded public relations effort to oppose the mandate that most religious employers provide health-care coverage for employees, including contraception and sterilization, services forbidden by Catholic teaching.”

“The American public doesn’t support Obamacare, and a new survey shows that doctors have an even worse opinion. No one has a better grasp on the state of the health care system than physicians, and according to the Doctors Company survey, 60 percent of them believe that Obamacare will have a negative impact on overall patient care. This survey is consistent with the findings of another doctor survey taken in October 2010, which also showed doctors’ lack of confidence in Obamacare.”

“For much of the last year, the White House had adopted a ‘strategy of silence’ on ObamaCare. That’s clearly over… But ObamaCare is back to center stage this month, and the more people learn about the law, the more unpopular it becomes. Here are just some of the recent revelations:”

“The IPAB was created by an act of the last Congress and is supposed to meet an arbitrary spending target that is not feasible without structural changes in Medicare and the health care delivery system. The IPAB has one tool—price controls—to hit the same kind of fiscal target that the SGR has. If the board requires politically unacceptable payment cuts, a future Congress will neutralize IPAB just as it has neutralized the SGR.”

“If you were surprised that PhRMA, the pharmaceutical trade group, backed Obamacare, now you can see why: the HHS contraception mandate alone will be a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle for the pharma industry. If your health insurance plan allowed you to buy a television, of any price, without any cost-sharing on your part, would you buy a 13-inch CRT or a 60-inch flat screen?”

“Landrieu, critics believe, pledged her vote in exchange for gaining $200 million additional federal funds for Louisiana’s Medicaid program. Except that, due to a drafting error, the law ended up giving Louisiana $4.3 billion in extra Medicaid funds: more than twenty times the assigned amount. How this happened, and how Congress failed to fully fix it, is a microcosm of our new health law’s many flaws.”

“The Obama administration’s top spokesperson on health care was unable to defend the president’s health overhaul law during a Senate hearing yesterday when she was confronted with the facts about a string of promises that already have been broken about law. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was clearly flummoxed by a series of fact-based questions asked by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on March 7.”