Tag Archives: Obamacare

News

CBO: 20 million Americans could lose employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare

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From The Hill:

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.

The best estimate, subject to a “tremendous amount of uncertainty,” is that about 3 million to 5 million fewer people will obtain coverage through their employer each year from 2019 through 2022.

The new report adds more detail to this week’s update of the law’s coverage provisions, which CBO released Tuesday. Compared to a year ago, the law is now anticipated to cover 2 million fewer people but cost $50 billion less over 10 years, after factoring penalties paid by individuals and businesses that don’t get or provide healthcare coverage.

Republicans immediately pounced after the new numbers came out because they appear to violate Obama’s pledge that people who like their health plans will be able to keep them. Last year, CBO’s best estimate was that only 1 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

“President Obama’s string of empty promises is quickly becoming a disappointing trail of broken promises,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. “He promised Americans that his overhaul of the health care sector would not jeopardize the health coverage of those who liked what they had. As nonpartisan analysts made clear today, millions of Americans will soon learn the hard way that Washington’s overreach into their health care decisions will result in sharp disruptions to their coverage and their care.”

I think this is important because conservatives are constantly being portrayed as “mean” in the media because we don’t embrace big government health care solutions. Everyone agrees on the problems, and everyone wants to help. The difference is that we conservatives think that health care is better when it is run profitably and is responsive to consumers and offers choice, low prices and high quality – like Amazon. We want privatized, market-driven health care with vouchers given to each citizen to purchase what they need, and to encourage them to save the rest for their old age while making healthier choices now.

The alternative is Department of Motor Vehicles health care – long lines, huge budget overruns, one-size-fits-all, lousy service and nowhere else to go for better better service. Why think that government is better at anything than the private sector? The private sector does everything better and cheaper and with better quality. So what if people get rich providing goods and services? As long as the customers are happy, and the children of the customers don’t get stuck paying for huge trillion dollar cost overruns.

Here are a few articles that I have been using lately to inform people about the problems with Obamacare:

News

Keith Hennessey explains one strategy for undoing Obamacare

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In the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled ObamaCare’s individual mandate constitutional, the direction of American health policy is in the hands of voters. So how do we get from here to “repeal and replace”?

Step one is electing Mitt Romney as president, along with Republican House and Senate majorities. Without a Republican sweep, the law will remain in place.

But a President Romney does not need 60 Republican senators to repeal core elements of ObamaCare. Democrats lost their 60th senate vote in early 2010 after Scott Brown took Edward Kennedy’s seat. To bypass a Senate GOP filibuster and enact portions of ObamaCare, they used a special legislative procedure called reconciliation.

Reconciliation allows a bill to pass the Senate in a limited time period, with limited amendments, and with only 51 votes; filibusters are not permitted. In 2010, Democrats split their health-policy changes into two bills, one of which they enacted through this fast-track process. In 2013, a Republican majority could use the same reconciliation process to repeal those changes.

The reconciliation process, however, applies only to legislative changes to taxes, spending and debt, or the change must be a “necessary term or condition” of another provision that affects taxes or spending.

Crucial parts of ObamaCare meet this test. Thus, if a President Romney has cohesive and coordinated majorities in the House and Senate, a reconciliation bill could repeal the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, insurance premium and drug subsidies, tax increases (all 21 or them), Medicare and Medicaid spending cuts, its long-term care insurance program known as the Class Act, and its Independent Payment Advisory Board, a 15-member central committee with vast powers to control health-care and health markets.

Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the financial penalty enforcing the individual mandate is within Congress’s constitutional power to “lay and collect Taxes,” and that the mandate and penalty are inextricably linked. This should suffice to enable repeal, through reconciliation, of both the individual and employer mandates, and their respective penalty taxes.

The state exchanges and insurance rules—”guaranteed issue,” which forces an insurer to sell a policy to someone who is already sick, and “community rating,” which severely limits the insurer’s right to charge that person a higher premium—are procedurally more difficult. Yet both are linked to the individual mandate, which increases taxes. Whether they can be repealed in a reconciliation bill will ultimately be decided by the Senate Parliamentarian.

Once the individual mandate is repealed, these popular insurance changes cannot stand by themselves. Without the mandate, people have every incentive to save on premiums and not buy insurance until they fall ill. This will send premiums through the roof for healthy people and, if the government clamps down on increased premiums, destroy private insurance companies. Those Republicans who say they favor legislated guaranteed-issue and community-rating requirements but oppose the mandate will be forced to acknowledge that all three must go.

So, for those who are concerned about repealing Obamacare, this is the way forward. We have a tough battle to get it it done, but it is possible.

Commentary

A simple introduction to Obamacare

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Here’s a helpful article from the UK Daily Mail that Dina sent me that explains the basics for people who are wondering what all the fuss is about. The author Diana Furchtgott-Roth has a B.A. and M.A. in economics, the latter from Oxford University.

Excerpt:

Although the Court has upheld PPACA, the law as currently structured is unworkable. This is because the penalty for not signing up for insurance, which is now termed a tax, $750 a year, is too small relative to the cost of health care coverage, about $5,500 a year.

Since insurance companies are required to take all applicants, healthy people, especially the young, will pay the tax rather than buy the insurance. This makes the pool of insured individuals sicker and more costly, on average, and their premiums will be higher. With higher premiums, more people will choose to pay the tax, and a downward spiral will unfold.

Unless Congress raises the tax to the level of premiums, the system will have to be replaced with a public option.

[…] It is clear that PPACA has severe economic costs, and is at least partially responsible for the slow economic recovery, and needs to be replaced.

PPACA raises employment costs by requiring employers to offer qualifying insurance coverage or pay a penalty—now a tax.  Because this requirement will apply, starting in 2014, to firms with more than 49 full time employees, it will discourage the hiring of full-time workers, especially low-wage hands whose work can more easily be divided among part-timers. Firms with over 49 workers will have to pay $2,000 a year for each employee without qualifying coverage.  Expanding to 50 workers would, in 2014, cost a firm $40,000 a year (the first 30 workers are exempt).

PPACA encourages employers to substitute part-time for full-time workers to avoid the tax. A firm with 60 employees would pay a tax of $60,000 a year if it did not have qualifying health coverage. But if it put 11 workers on part-time, and hired another 11 part-timers, it would not owe a tax, because it would have 49 full-timers. The full-timers who become part-timers and lose salary and benefits would be worse off.

PPACA raises health insurance costs by requiring an overly-generous plan. In order to be counted as a ‘qualified benefit plan’ and be able to sell health insurance in the exchange, an underwriter must cover routine health care—such as check-ups, and contraceptives—without copayment. It must also cover maternity care, mental health and substance abuse.

Unfortunately, plans that encourage shopping around, such as catastrophic plans with large deductibles combined with health savings accounts, where people can save tax-free for medical care, are prohibited by PPACA for Americans ages 30 and above.

A health insurance system needs to be accessible, portable, and inexpensive, just like other forms of insurance.

[…]The same should be true of health insurance. Those who can’t afford it should be offered refundable tax credits, or vouchers, to purchase it themselves, so they can have the same choice of doctors and services as other Americans.

Just as in other forms of insurance, America can lower costs by reducing unnecessary regulation, increasing competition and patient choice. Patients should decide what type of coverage meets their needs, not be told what they must purchase by the federal government.

For example, if some people want their children to be on their insurance plan until age 26, or age 28, or age 30, they should be able to purchase plans that cover their children, at a price. Others who do not have children, or who do not want their children on their plans, should not have to pay the costs.

How would such a system operate?

Congress could give all Americans tax credits for buying health insurance; allow plans to compete over state lines; and set up state risk pools to insure those with uninsurable conditions.

What an excellent article. Her suggestions are also good, and the Republicans have offered a plan to achieve those goals: Paul Ryan’s health care plan.