Fix Health Care Policy

How Obamacare is Hastening the Day of Reckoning

“It’s not like you can avoid it forever, ’cause it’s here now. And we all know it’s here. And the federal government doesn’t have the money to paper over it anymore, either, for the states. The day of reckoning has arrived. That’s it. And it’s gonna arrive everywhere. Timing will vary a little bit, depending upon which state you’re in, but it’s comin’.”

That’s what New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CBS News’ Steve Kroft during his Day of Reckoning story last night on 60 Minutes.

Kroft goes on to report:

“Not all of the problems that Illinois and other states are facing right now can be traced to the recession. But the precipitous drop in tax revenues did expose decades of financial irresponsibility, reckless spending, unrealistic benefit packages for public employees, and the use of political gimmicks to cover up hidden deficits. It’s forcing state governors and the public to confront some harsh realities. (Read more at The Foundry…)

Tags: health benefits, Medicaid, ObamaCare, state insolvency

Obamacare: The Price Controls Begin

The Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday that, starting next year, health insurance companies must receive permission from the Obama administration before they can raise rates higher than 10%. As we warned before Obamacare even became law, this is a form of price control, a government intervention that has a long and well established history of failure.

Way back in 1993, Heritage Foundation scholar Heritage’s Ed Haislmaier was detailing the shortcomings of price controls in health care:

“Price controls would not work in health care because they attack the symptoms of runaway costs, not the cause. Medical costs today are soaring because consumers are largely insulated from them…and because the tax system discourages consumers from seeking good value for money in health care.” (Read more at The Foundry…)

Tags: health insurance, medical costs, ObamaCare, price controls, tax treatment

Another Victory on the Road to Repeal

“The unchecked expansion of congressional power to the limits suggested by the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers. At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.” So wrote Judge Henry Hudson of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia yesterday in striking down Obamacare’s individual mandate. Specifically, Judge Hudson found that Section 1501 of the act, which forces all Americans to buy government approved health insurance policies, “exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article 1.”

The White House and their leftist allies were quick to try and minimize this body blow to Obamacare, arguing that 14 previous court challenges have been dismissed by the courts. This desperate spin doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The 42-page decision is the first by a federal court this far along the litigation process and the first brought by a state (the case was filed by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli). And soon Judge Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida is expected to rule on an even larger challenge to Obamacare brought by 16 state attorneys general, four governors, two private citizens, and the National Federation of Independent Business.

In an early stage of that litigation, Judge Vinson wrote: “The individual mandate applies across the board. People have no choice and there is no way to avoid it. Those who fall under the individual mandate either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive.”

Judge Hudson used very similar reasoning in rejecting the Obama Administration’s claim that since “every individual in the United States will require health care at some point in their lifetime” the federal government has the power to force Americans to buy health insurance now. Hudson writes: “Of course, the same reasoning could apply to transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence.” (Read more at The Foundry…)

Tags: Commerce Clause, Individual Mandate, Judge Henry Hudson, ObamaCare

Judge Rules Obamacare Mandate Goes Beyond Letter and Spirit of the Constitution

In the most significant decision to date involving the numerous challenges to Obamacare, a district court today ruled in favor of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s challenge, and declared the individual mandate portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. The fact that the decision is based upon cross motions for summary judgment means among other things, in simple English, that the parties have had two major hearings and two sets of merit briefs before the Court, which has now issued its second major opinion (and this is leaving aside a slew of motions decided by the court). The decision, accordingly, is the most well-developed of any court yet to address the matter, and therefore should cause quite a bit of indigestion for defenders of Obamacare.

Judge Hudson first addressed the Obama administration’s claims that the law is constitutional under the Commerce Clause. After weighing the arguments and the case law, he found that the mandate’s scheme was without precedent in our country’s history: “Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.”  (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, Supreme Court, unconstitutional, Virginia

Side Effects: Number of Waivers Grows As a Result of Obamacare Authors’ Sloppy Handiwork

Jamie Dupree recently reported for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the number of waivers granted by the Obama Administration for a certain provision in the new health care law has now reached 222. That’s double the amount of just three weeks ago.

The waivers apply to a provision of Obamacare prohibiting annual limits on health plans. For employers that currently provide their low-wage employees with so called “mini-med” health plans—which offer a limited benefit capped at a certain dollar amount—that provision presents a clear problem.

Since the new law doesn’t specify whether those plans count as major medical insurance or supplemental coverage, businesses have applied for waivers to ensure that the benefit limits on their mini-med plans aren’t increased or eliminated. Otherwise, employers would no longer be allowed to offer those plans, resulting in more than a million low-wage workers losing their current coverage. Without the option of a mini-med plan, most of those workers would likely go uninsured until 2014, when they would then be able to obtain a health plan paid for by new federal subsidies through the new state health exchanges. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: low-wage workers, mini-med health plan, ObamaCare, waiver

Doctors Avoid Medicare Pay Cut for Another Year—but Then What?

Senate leaders reached an agreement Monday to delay cuts to physician reimbursement rates under Medicare for one year. The details of the negotiations have yet to be ironed out, but if the deal makes it through Congress, doctors will avert a 23 percent pay cut scheduled for January 1.

Heritage health policy expert Bob Moffit explains in a recent post that the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula, enacted in 1997, arbitrarily ties Medicare physician reimbursement to the overall performance of the economy, meaning that when payments grow faster than the economy, automatic reductions go into effect.

In theory, that is. Congress has continually delayed the reductions to avoid reducing seniors’ access to health care. (This delay is known as the “doc fix.”) As reimbursement rates drop, more physicians become inclined to limit the number of Medicare patients they see. Some are even forced to stop accepting Medicare altogether. As Congress continues to stop the cuts from going into effect, they accumulate, so failure to act now would serve doctors a crippling 23 percent pay cut in 2011. (Read the rest at The Foundry)

Tags: doc fix, Medicare, ObamaCare, Ryan Roadmap, Senate deal, Sustainable Growth Rate

Side Effects: What Doctors Have to Say About Obamacare

No one is more familiar with the health care system than doctors. So what do they have to say about Obamacare? Nothing good, according to a recent survey.

The Physicians Foundation found that “rather than a sign of progress, the survey suggests that most physicians view health reform as a further erosion of the unfavorable conditions with which they must contend.” Furthermore, Obamacare “has further disengaged doctors from their profession, with potentially negative consequences for both the medical profession and for the quality and accessibility of medical care in the United States.”

Sixty-seven percent of respondents initially held a “very negative” or “somewhat negative” impression of Obamacare. When asked how their feelings had changed months after passage of the law, 51 percent said they felt the same, while 39 percent felt more negative. Furthermore, 86 percent of respondents said physicians’ perspectives were not adequately taken into account during the reform process. (more…)

Tags: Medicaid, Medicare, ObamaCare, The Physicians Foundation