Category Archives: Health Care

09.05.13
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The Christian Science Monitor: What will your Obamacare premium be? Numbers are in for 17 states

If you live in California, Ohio, or Connecticut, you can now look up what health insurance will cost on the new Obamacare exchanges.

If you live in Florida, Illinois, or Texas, you don’t know yet, even though President Obama’s Affordable Care Act calls for the exchanges to be up and running in less than a month.

That’s one reason the debate over Obamacare’s impact on health insurance costs is still unsettled. Not all the data are in.

But the Kaiser Family Foundation weighed in Thursday with a report on some 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have unveiled their pricing.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0905/What-will-your-Obamacare-premium-be-Numbers-are-in-for-17-states.-video

07.19.13
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Wall St. Cheat Sheat: Unions: Obamacare Will Shatter Backbone of Middle Class

Senate

The Affordable Care Act now has a formidable opponent in U.S. labor unions. The unions were a key ally in the law’s passage: They spent a large sum of money on the congressional campaigns of Democrats in 2006 and 2008, and union leaders lobbied in favor of health care reform in 2009 and 2010. But with growing worries that the legislation will disrupt the health benefits of its members, America’s largest unions are asking Congress to step in.

Representatives of three of the nation’s largest unions sent a letter to Democratic Sens. Harry Reid of Nevada and Nancy Pelosi of California on Thursday.

“When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat,” letter said. “Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour workweek that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

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Click below for the full article.

http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/unions-obamacare-will-shatter-backbone-of-middle-class.html/?ref=YF

 

07.04.13
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CNN Money: Delay in Obamacare – what you need to know

The Obamacare employer mandate has been delayed by a year to 2015, meaning that many businesses can push back providing worker health insurance a bit longer.

When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, it required that companies with 50-plus full-timers start providing them coverage in 2014 — or face penalties.

That changed on Tuesday. In a blog post, the U.S. Treasury Department explained that the government needs time to simplify reporting requirements, and businesses need breathing room to adapt to the changes.

“This provides vital breathing room. I think businesses are relieved there’s more time to get this right,” said James A. Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, an employer benefits advocacy group.

Here’s what businesses and workers need to know.

Who‘s affected?

A relatively small share of the country’s businesses fall under Obamacare’s employer rules, and most of those that do already provide insurance. That might sound surprising, because the biggest Obamacare myth spouted by opponents is that it will crush small business.

The vast majority of the nation’s businesses, 97% of them, are too small to be affected.

What’s more, most larger employers already provide insurance anyway. Of the nation’s 6.5 million workplaces, only about 70,000 — a little more than 1% — must actually start providing insurance.

Then why does this matter?

The mandate affects most of the nation’s workers. According to the latest Census data, close to 80 million people work at firms that must provide insurance. Though most of them are offered insurance, that still leaves millions who will have to wait another year.

Has the mandate already affected businesses?

It has impacted those businesses that intend to dodge Obamacare by cutting worker hours. The employer mandate kicks in at 50 full-timers, and the law counts anyone who works at least 30 hours a week as full-time.

That’s given rise to the “29ers” phenomenon, in which business owners reduce workers’ hours from full-time to 29 hours per week. This has been especially prevalent in the franchising and restaurant industries, where shift hours are frequently swapped.

There’s no telling whether the mandate has already impacted hiring, though.

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Click below for the full article.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/03/smallbusiness/obamacare-employer-mandate/index.html?iid=HP_LN

 

07.03.13
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Bloomberg Business Week: Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion Shortfall Shuts Millions Out of Health Care

Rose Ruiz earns $8 an hour taking care of a 67-year-old diabetic on Medicaid in Austin, Tex. At an annualized rate of $16,640, she can’t afford to buy her own medical insurance. Her best shot at getting coverage was through the expansion of Medicaid mandated under the Affordable Care Act. But because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the law’s Democratic authors in Congress never anticipated, millions of low-wage workers who were supposed to be helped by Obamacare will probably end up without coverage.

Obamacare set aside billions of dollars for states to expand their Medicaid programs. Twenty-four of them, most led by Republican governors, have opted out since the Supreme Court ruled a year ago that states could choose not to participate in the expansion. That’s left their low-wage workers in a bind: They make too much to qualify for Medicaid in its present form, but too little to afford a plan their employer might offer. And they don’t earn enough to qualify for subsidies available to help the uninsured buy plans on the state-run Obamacare marketplaces opening in October. These subsidies are available to people with modest incomes—$24,000 to $94,000 for a family of four. Democrats in Congress who wrote the law figured anyone making less would get coverage through the Medicaid expansion.

States dictate the rates they pay companies for providing Medicaid services. The companies then decide the hourly wages they pay home-health aides like Ruiz, which average less than $10 an hour nationally, says William Dombi, vice president for law at the National Association for Home Care & Hospice. Many health aides in states that aren’t expanding Medicaid could need pay raises equal to triple their current wages or more to qualify for the Obamacare subsidies. “It’s one of those things that I’m sure nobody thought about when they were putting this together,” Dombi says.

The problem leaves employers with their own predicament. Those who don’t offer coverage face fines of as much as $3,000 per employee. Yet if an employer offers a new health plan for workers who can’t afford the existing one, and the new plan is deemed “affordable” under the law—meaning it would cost an employee no more than 9.5 percent of his income—then the employee becomes ineligible for Obamacare subsidies to buy a potentially cheaper plan offered through a state-run marketplace. “Lots of employers are really agonizing with the decision,” says Steve Wojcik, vice president for public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a lobbying group. They’ll now have more time to figure it out. On July 2, the Obama administration pushed back the penalties, set to take effect next year, to 2015.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-03/obamacares-medicaid-expansion-shortfall-shuts-millions-out-of-health-care?campaign_id=yhoo

07.03.13
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The National Journal: Why the Obama Administration Can’t Win on Health Care

The Obama administration had been absorbing constant political attacks about the so-called job-killing nature of Obamacare, with its complex employer reporting requirements and fines for large companies that don’t offer their workers insurance. But when it announced Tuesday that it would delay implementation of the employer mandate to give businesses more time to prepare, the attack lines simply shifted from arguments about policy merit to those about the administration’s competence.

Republicans used the decision to amp up their calls for repealing the law, sounding as bullish as ever that the Affordable Care Act was inevitably flawed.

It shows that when it comes to the health care law—the president’s signature legislative accomplishment—the administration can’t win.

The White House appeased an angry business community with its decision to postpone a requirement that large employers offer their workers health insurance or pay a fine. The rule had angered even businesses that already insure their workers. It gave Republican opponents ammunition to attack the law, claiming it slowed economic growth. Its delay is likely to quiet some of those particular critiques, at least until after the 2014 election.

But the decision will still be politically useful to the health care law’s political foes, who are now painting the administration as incompetent. A flood of press releases Tuesday night described the law as “unworkable,” its implementation a “train wreck,” and the delay as evidence that all of Obamacare should be taken off the books. “This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable, and it underscores the need to repeal the law and replace it,” said House Speaker John Boehner in a statement.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-the-obama-administration-can-t-win-on-health-care-20130703

06.04.13
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Forbes: Democrats’ New Argument: It’s A Good Thing That Obamacare Doubles Individual Health Insurance Premiums

Well, it’s been an interesting week in health care land. For a while now, independent analysts—and conservative critics—have raised concerns that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of individually-purchased health insurance for healthier people. This would, of course, contradict President Obama’s promises that “if you like your plan, you can keep it” and that the cost of insurance would go down “by $2,500 per family per year.” What’s new is that liberal columnists, facing reality, are conceding that premiums will go up for most people in the individual market. But they’re justifying it by saying that “rate shock” will help a tiny minority of people who can’t get insurance today. If they had said that in 2009, would Obamacare have passed?

Last month, progressive pundits were trumpeting news out of California that the cost of health insurance under Obamacare in that state was surprisingly low. “Well, the California bids are in,” wrote Paul Krugman on May 27. “And the prices, it turns out, are surprisingly low…So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming,” the shock that Obamacare will work just fine.

It turns out, however, that Krugman was uncritically regurgitating California’s misleading press release. In fact, the average 25 and 40-year-old will pay double under Obamacare what they would need to pay today, based on rates posted at eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH). More specifically, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoker, the average Obamacare “bronze” exchange plan in California will cost between 64 and 117 percent more than the cheapest five plans on eHealth. For 40-year-old male non-smokers, it’s between 73 and 146 percent more.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/06/03/democrats-new-argument-its-a-good-thing-that-obamacare-doubles-individual-health-insurance-premiums/

06.02.13
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The Foundry: The IRS is Is Coming for Your Health Insurance Records

Thanks to Obamacare, all Americans will now have to submit their health insurance information to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Sadly, this new requirement comes at the same time that serious questions have been raised about the IRS’s ability to manage personal health records competently.

As American Enterprise Institute scholar Scott Gottlieb noted:

An unnamed health care provider in California is suing the IRS and 15 unnamed agents, alleging that they improperly seized some 60 million medical records of 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges, on March 11, 2011.

The complaint alleges that IRS agents exceeded the scope of their search warrant, seizing not just financial records, but “information on psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual and drug treatment, and other sensitive medical treatment data.”

The alleged data seizure occurred at roughly the same time in which employees in another division of the IRS targeted tea party and other conservative groups due to their political beliefs. If true, these new allegations regarding seized medical records would further undermine trust in the IRS’s ability to conduct its affairs properly and to manage the sensitive and confidential information all Americans submit to the agency every year.

As this week’s entire series has shown, the IRS’s reach within Obamacare seemingly knows no bounds. Armed with new bureaucrats and funded by a massive spending blitz, the IRS will implement trillions of dollars in tax increases; issue new regulations, edicts, and orders; impose new paperwork burdens on all Americans; and increase the scope of government intrusion into the lives of ordinary, law-abiding citizens.

Prior to the recent scandals, many Americans thought the IRS could not be trusted to implement Obamacare in a competent and impartial manner. Now they know it. It’s one more reason why Congress should repeal Obamacare once and for all.

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Click below to read the article on The Foundry’s website:

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/05/31/the-irs-obamacare-and-you-the-government-is-coming-for-your-health-insurance-records/

05.29.13
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CNN: Most individual health insurance isn’t good enough for Obamacare

If you buy your own health insurance now, you’ll be in for a big change when you sign up for coverage in 2014.

Just over half of the individual plans currently on the market do not meet the standards to be sold next year, when many key provisions of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act kick in, according to a University of Chicago study. That’s because the law sets new minimums for the basic coverage every individual health care plan must provide.

“They will offer a lot more financial protection,” Jon Gabel, the report’s lead author, said of the individual plans that will be available next year. His team drew its conclusions from 2010 data supplied by health insurers.

Some 15 million Americans, or about 6% of non-elderly adults, currently buy coverage on the individual market. Starting this fall, they’ll be able to shop for and enroll in health insurance through state-based exchanges, with coverage taking effect in January. By 2016, some 24 million people will get insurance through the exchanges, while another 12 million will continue to get individual coverage outside of them, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

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Click below for he full article and video on CNN’s website.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/03/news/economy/health-insurance-exchanges/index.html

05.10.13
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AP: Obama declared health care law ‘is here to stay’

Caught between nervous Democrats and emboldened Republicans, President Barack Obama on Friday stepped up the sales pitch on his health care overhaul as the final elements of his top domestic achievement go into effect. With his legacy and the law’s success at stake, Obama said: “The law is here to stay.”

Behind the scenes, the White House readied a campaign-style effort to get healthy young people to sign up for the insurance “exchanges” in order to keep premium costs from skyrocketing. On Capitol Hill, House Republicans are planning yet another vote to try to try to repeal the law.

The insurance exchanges are the centerpiece of the landmark overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system and the White House mobilization is crucial to the success of the health care law and, by extension, to Obama’s place in history as the first president in decades to expand health care coverage.

“There’s a lot that this law is already doing for Americans with insurance,” Obama said during a Mother’s Day-themed event at the White House. “There’s a lot more that’s going to happen for folks who don’t have insurance.”

But he cautioned: “We still have a lot of work to do in the coming months to make sure more Americans can buy affordable health coverage.”

And he urged the public not to be swayed by what he said were scare tactics from critics of the law who might blame it for rising premiums.

“Don’t be bamboozled,” he said.

Underscoring the policy and political consequences, the White House plans to employ both the resources of government as well as those of his reconfigured political operation as it aimed to enroll 7 million people in health insurance exchanges between Oct. 1 and the end of March. The goal is to get 30 million people to sign up within five years.

Moreover, the composition of those signing up for the new exchanges matters just as much as the overall totals. In order to keep premium costs down, officials say they must register 2.7 million healthy people between the ages of 18 and 35 in order to counteract the costs of ensuring seniors and people with health problems.

The White House’s hopes that Obama’s East Room event would draw broad attention crumpled, however, when the president’s event had to compete for attention with revelations about administration deliberations over the September attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, and an acknowledgement by the Internal Revenue Service that its workers had singled out conservative groups for additional review.

The effort comes as the public remains divided over the health care law. As a result, the White House is planning an election-like campaign to target those uninsured or individually insured young people, an effort reminiscent of the sophisticated voter outreach that helped Obama twice win the White House. The administration has identified where many of the healthy and uninsured young live and will be working with health clinics, hospitals, churches and other groups to sign them up for the exchanges.

Organizing for Action, an outside political group supporting Obama, will also be involved in the effort to promote the exchanges.

Administration officials say one-third of the young people they need to sign up for the exchanges live in California, Texas and Florida. Just over 50 percent are minorities and 57 percent are men.

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Click here for the full story:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-10-15-39-49

05.05.13
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John Stossel: Why Obamacare Will Be No More Successful Than Soviet Central Planning

Most Americans — even those who are legislators — know very little about the details of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare. Next year, when it goes into effect, we will learn the hard way.

Many people lazily assume that the law will do roughly what it promises: give insurance to the uninsured and lower the cost of health care by limiting spending on dubious procedures.

Don’t count on it.

Consider just the complexity: The act itself is more than 906 pages long, and again and again in those 906 pages are the words, “the Secretary shall promulgate regulations …”

“Secretary” refers to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Her minions have been busy. They’ve already added 20,000 pages of rules. They form a stack 7 feet high, and more are to come.

Our old health care system was already a bureaucratic and regulatory nightmare. It had 16,000 different codes for different ailments. Under our new, “improved” system, there will be more than a 100,000.

Government likes to think regulations can account for every possibility. Injured at a chicken coop? The code for that will be Y9272. Fall at an art gallery? That means you are a Y92250. There are three different codes for walking into a lamppost — depending on how often you’ve walked into lampposts. This is supposed to give government a more precise way to reimburse doctors for treating people and alert us to surges in injuries that might inspire further regulation.

On Government-Planned World, this makes sense. But it will be no more successful than Soviet central planning.

Compare all that to a tiny part of American medicine that is still free-market: Lasik eye surgery.

Its quality has improved, while costs dropped 25 percent. Lasik (and cosmetic surgery) are specialties that provide a better consumer experience because they are a market. Patients pay directly, so doctors innovate constantly to please them. Lasik doctors even give patients their cellphone numbers.

President Obama didn’t kill American free-market health care. It began dying during World War II, when government imposed wage and price controls. At first, companies said, “Great, stability!” But then they realized that they could not attract better workers without raises. So companies got around the rules, as companies do. They gave “benefits,” like health insurance.

Government then distorted the market further by giving employer-based health insurance better tax treatment than coverage you buy yourself.

But employer-based insurance is nuts. Many workers feel locked into their jobs. Company insurance largely destroyed the health care free market, since employees rarely shop for the best service at the lowest price.

Now Obamacare may kill what’s left of that market.

Maybe we will soon be like Canada, where some people wait years for treatment. A producer from my TV show went to a Canadian town where the town clerk pulls names out of a box and then phones people to say: “Congratulations! You get to see a doctor this month!”

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Click below for the full article.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/05/01/why-obamacare-will-be-no-more-successful