Tag: "ObamaCare"

Here’s Something I Didn’t Know

This is courtesy of Chris Jacobs:

The Medicaid program is so bad that not a single Democrat voted to place themselves in the program when given an opportunity to do so back in 2010.

And there’s more:

ObamaCare will expand Medicaid – without reforming the program. According to the Administration’s own actuary, ObamaCare will add nearly 26 million more individuals to this broken program. At a time when states are struggling under the weight of budget deficits totaling a collective $175 billion, ObamaCare is imposing new unfunded mandates of at least $118 billion. And ObamaCare precludes states from taking many types of actions that would modernize the program – and crack down on fraud – because of the new federal requirements being imposed.

May 22, 2012 | 4 comments | by

Why Medicaid Patients Go to the ER, and Other News

Why Medicaid patients go to the hospital emergency room: they can’t get care anywhere else.

NEJM: For the roughly 11 million undocumented persons living in the United States, [ObamaCare] is likely to make it more difficult to gain access to basic primary care services.

Obama budget defeated 99-0 in Senate.

May 22, 2012 | 4 comments | by

Buying Health Insurance across State Lines

Last year, Georgia became the first state to allow insurers licensed in other states (and subject to other states’ mandates and regulations) to sell insurance in Georgia. But so far, no insurer has even applied. Why is that?

In an exchange between Richard Unger and Michael Cannon, Unger comes across as a general naysayer (offering no explanations of his own) but Cannon’s excuses seem weak: it’s administratively expensive for out-of-state insurance companies to enter the Georgia market, negotiate contracts, create new networks, etc. Here’s the problem: You don’t need out-of-state insurers to do this. In-state insurers (with contract and networks already in place) could in principle start selling insurance under some other state’s laws. Cannon also says that the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare and the general uncertainty about the implementation of ObamaCare are the culprits – an argument also endorsed by Avik Roy.

Okay, but how hard could it be to file and start selling a new type of insurance for companies already in the trade? After all, they’ve got to sell something.

I’m not convinced we have the right explanation here.

May 21, 2012 | 11 comments | by

Income Inequality vs. Upward Mobility, and Other News

NPR wants to share your pain.

There is almost no relationship between income inequality and upward mobility among the states.

Do ObamaCare grants reflect Chicago-style cronyism?

Washington State legalizes home cooking. Somewhat.

David Friedman describes TSA vandalism.

May 21, 2012 | 5 comments | by

HSAs Under Attack

Three separate provisions in the statute, and regulations implementing the law, will reduce access to HSA plans:

  1. ObamaCare’s essential health benefits package contains new restrictions on deductibles and cost-sharing, which will prevent at least some current HSA plans from being offered.
  2. ObamaCare’s medical loss ratio regulations also impose new restrictions that studies show will hit HSA plans particularly hard, and could force individuals to change their current form of coverage.
  3. The ObamaCare statute does not specify that cash contributions made to an HSA will be counted towards the new federal actuarial value standards.  And a February bulletin released by HHS in advance of upcoming rulemaking indicates that under the Administration’s approach, not all contributions into an HSA will count towards the new minimum federal standards – meaning some HSA policies will not be considered “government-approved.”

More from Chris Jacobs on ObamaCare’s negative effect on health coverage.

May 15, 2012 | 6 comments | by

ObamaCare Health Insurance Tax applies to Medicaid!

36 states contract with private managed-care companies to run their Medicaid programs. These Medicaid programs will be subject to the ObamaCare premium tax. A study from Milliman, the actuarial and consulting firm, estimates that the tax will increase Medicaid premiums by 1.5 to 1.6 percent nationwide, which in turn will cost state and federal governments between $36.5 and $41.9 billion over ten years. (The tax will raise an additional $100 billion or so from the private sector.)

See entire article by Avik Roy in the Forbes.

May 01, 2012 | 4 comments | by

If the Supreme Court Kills ObamaCare, Should We Thank Mitt Romney?

There is no doubt that the campaign to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare will have its weakest standard bearer if Mitt Romney becomes the Republican candidate for President. His embrace of an “individual mandate” to buy health insurance or pay a penalty, as legislated in his 2006 Massachusetts health reform, is anathema to those faithful to the ideal of limited government. When Mr. Romney declares that he will issue a universal waiver from ObamaCare’s regulations as his first executive order, the people who should be voting for him fear that such action would be a substitute for repeal, instead of a preparation for it. (Do these folks really think a clean repeal bill, like the one passed by the House of Representatives in January 2010, will be on the president’s desk on inauguration day?)

But maybe we should look at it another way: If Mitt Romney had never signed his 2006 law (which was motivated, as the president’s men are so fond of telling us, but an idea generated at The Heritage Foundation), those of us committed to defeating ObamaCare would never be in the fortunate position we are today – the whole, ungodly mess hanging by a thin thread after a brutal hazing in the Supreme Court last week.

Apr 06, 2012 | 5 comments | by

TVs In Waiting Rooms, and Other Links

Should TVs be in waiting rooms?

Health care acronyms explained.

Can the common cold be cured?

Apr 05, 2012 | 6 comments | by

Liberals Once Hated the Individual Mandate

Some still do:

There’s a lot of talk—much of it inaccurate—about the minority of conservatives who supported the individual mandate in the past, but oppose ObamaCare’s requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. But these critics have devoted less attention to the fact that many liberals—including President Obama—opposed the individual mandate in the past. “The liberals hated it,” notes Jonathan Gruber in a recent New York Times profile. “People forget that.”

Full Avik Roy post worth reading.

Apr 03, 2012 | 7 comments | by

An Extraordinary Statement

From a blogger who is ordinarily thoughtful. This is Matt Yglesias at Slate:

A lot of people, including former White House spokesman Reid Cherlin, seem to think it’s extremely difficult to explain and defend the core elements of the Affordable Care Act to people….

It’s true that the law covers a lot of ground and that if you want to explain each and every provision you’re in for a long afternoon. But as a journalist who writes a lot about public policy, I don’t think that the main element of it is nearly as complicated as the Obama administration has convinced itself it is.

The issue is that they wanted to ban insurance companies from discriminating against people on the basis of their health status…

So what’s wrong with that? Answer below the fold.

Mar 28, 2012 | 6 comments | by
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