Fix Health Care Policy

Obamacare’s Soaring Price Tag

On January 21, 2009, Barack Obama stood on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and, in his inaugural address, pledged to America that he would “wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” What he did wield, of course, was a 2,000-page bill known as Obamacare. More than a year on, we now know that health care costs are soaring, and the President’s signature legislation is to blame.

Most Americans know that medicine is getting more expensive, but a new survey puts a shocking sticker price on the rapid increase. The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust report that between 2010 and 2011, family premiums increased by 9 percent and for individual premiums by 8 percent. According to the survey, “The average premium for single coverage in 2011 is $452 per month or $5,429 per year … The average premium for family coverage is $1,256 per month or $15,073 per year.”

What’s driving those costs? In large part, Obamacare. According to Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman, the President’s health care legislation was responsible for approximately 20 percent of the increase in premiums. Heritage’s Kathryn Nix explains what parts of Obamacare are to blame:

(Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: family coverage, health care costs, individual coverage, ObamaCare, premiums, sticker shock

Health Insurance Continues Unaffordable Trend After Obamacare

This week, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust released a major survey on employer-sponsored health benefits in the United States. Among the many important findings in the report, one fact stood out: Americans are paying more and more for their health insurance every year, a concerning trend that is only getting worse under Obamacare. The report explains that:

• The cost of insurance is increasingly unaffordable to American families. The cost of health insurance in the United States has grown significantly over the last decade. The Kaiser survey shows that the average annual premium for a family in 2011 is 31 percent higher than it was in 2006, and 113 percent higher than in 2001. This year marks the first year that the cost of family coverage will exceed $15,000, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Anna Wilde Matthews.

Small businesses especially struggle to offer health benefits to their employees because of cost. According to Kaiser, 55 percent of small firms surveyed that did not offer coverage cited the high cost of insurance as the primary reason.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: employer-sponsored insurance, health care costs, Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums, unaffordable

Lunch with Heritage Online Chat on Obamacare

Click here to read the online chat on Obamacare. We were joined by Health Policy Analyst Kate Nix. She talked about the future of Obamacare and other policy alternatives that can be implemented to drive costs down.

Tags: health care costs, ObamaCare, policy alternatives, transcript

Senate Stands Still on Budget Crisis

Solving our nation’s fiscal crisis is not up for debate, and politicians should be past the point of using it as fodder for political gain. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at the latest from liberals in Congress who are digging in their heels and refusing to recognize the reality of America’s budgetary mess.

Yesterday, the Senate at long last voted on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) FY 2012 “Path to Prosperity” budget, which had previously passed the House. It was defeated 57-40, with no Democrats voting for it. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) also had their budget alternatives defeated, with Toomey’s bill receiving 42 votes. Senate Democrats have yet to even offer an alternative, and, notably, President Barack Obama’s budget failed yesterday by 97-0, a unanimous rebuke of the President’s proposal. Ryan reflected on where Congress now stands:

[Republicans are] the ones who actually put the specifics on the table—$6.2 trillion in savings over the next ten years. We put a budget up — we passed a budget, brought it to the table. Where are we now? It’s been 754 days since the Senate Democrats proposed, let alone, passed a budget. They’re not offering any solutions, putting nothing on the table. (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: budget vote, health care costs, Medicare, Obama budget, Senate

Medicare’s Worsening Finances: The Other Shoe Drops

A week ago, the Medicare Trustees issued their annual report, which showed that the program is on the fact track to insolvency. The 2011 analysis projected that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund (which funds Medicare Part A) will be insolvent in 2024, and the program’s long-term unfunded obligations—promised benefits that are not paid for—amount to $24.6 trillion. Heritage noted the highlights. Page 266 of the official report included a note from Richard Foster, the Medicare Actuary, who said the Trustees’ financial projections “do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations.”

Late Friday afternoon, the Office of the Actuary (OACT) released a separate analysis detailing why the Trustees’ report is unrealistic. While the timing was curious, the reasoning is straightforward. Because the Trustees use assumptions based on current law, OACT warned, “the projections…should not be interpreted as our best expectation of actual Medicare financial operations in the future but rather as illustrations of the very favorable impact of permanently slower growth in health care costs, if such slower growth can be achieved.” (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: health care costs, Medicare, Medicare Trustees report, ObamaCare, Office of the Actuary

Another Good Swing At Defunding Obamacare—But Not A Hit

Once again the U.S. House plans to take another whack Tuesday at defunding Obamacare—although the Senate and White House are poised to protect the funding.

The bill scheduled for a vote, HR 1213, would repeal the automatic funding that Obamacare provides for federally-dictated insurance exchanges, the mechanisms to sell the re-fashioned and federally-approved insurance policies. And while the bill does not repeal the requirement that each state either establish such an exchange or have the feds do it for them, billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved if the House bill had a chance to become law.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates savings of $14.6-billion over ten years, but the amount is inexact because Obamacare placed no limit on how much would be spent. The Secretary of Health and Human Services was given a blank check for that purpose. It’s just one part of the overall $105-billion slush fund in automatic spending under Obamacare. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, health care costs, ObamaCare, taxpayer dollars repeal the law

Pay-for-Performance in Medicare Could Do More Harm Than Good

Liberals’ solution to rising health care costs has consistently been to take control of health care decisions away from patients and their doctors and to place it in the hands of government. Obamacare does this by allowing unelected bureaucrats to define and reward value in the Medicare program, and the President’s proposal for deficit reduction would further empower government to interfere in the practice of medicine. This is the wrong way to reduce costs, and will have severe consequences for patients, physicians, and the quality of health care in the United States.

In 2012, Obamacare will create the “Value-Based Purchasing Program” in Medicare. Using a pay-for-performance scheme, the program will reimburse hospitals and other health care providers at different rates based on how they score on performance measures chosen by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Proponents of pay-for-performance see it as a way to use financial incentives to streamline and improve the quality of health care while attempting to reduce costs. But the fact is that standardization of the practice of medicine costs patients and physicians tremendously, and evidence shows it does very little to improve health outcomes. (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: "deficit reduction", harming seniors, health care costs, Medicare, ObamaCare, pay-for-performance

Congress Must Now Address Civil Justice Reform to Impact Health Care

Democrats profess great concern about the health care issue. Yet they avoided including any form of medical malpractice reform when passing their major health care legislation in 2010. This despite the fact that abusive tort litigation is one of the driving forces in the high cost of health care.

Such litigation greatly increases malpractice-insurance costs, to the point where yearly premiums can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some medical specialties. This not only raises the cost of health care, it actually drives providers out of business and decreases access to quality health care. Liability risks are also a major factor in the costs of developing and manufacturing new drugs and medical devices.

The direct costs of medical tort claims and medical malpractice insurance does not take into account the even larger cost of “defensive medicine.” An overwhelming majority of doctors admit practicing defensive medicine – ordering tests and treatments that are medically unnecessary but that protect them from litigation. Those costs are upwards of $200 billion a year, according to the Pacific Research Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers. A CBO report requested by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) admitted that medical malpractice reform could save $54 billion for the U.S. government alone. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: defensive medicine, health care costs, liability insurance, medical malpractice, ObamaCare

Governor Bredesen Got the Calculations Right

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Tennessee Governor Philip Bredesen explained how Obamacare has created a situation where the state government and many of its employees will find it mutually advantageous to the get rid of the employer-sponsored insurance program the state currently offers. As we have noted, Bredesen correctly acknowledges that it will be better for all parties if the state of Tennessee pays the fines involved with not offering an insurance program and subsequently dumps many of its employees onto the federally subsidized insurance exchange.

Here’s how the Governor’s insightful logic works: Beginning in 2014, state exchanges will offer large subsidies to individuals and their families who don’t receive health insurance through their workplace. Former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith have brought attention to generosity of these subsidies, noting that “a family earning about $59,000 a year would receive a premium subsidy of about $7,200” beginning in 2014,” whereas “even a family earning about $95,000 would receive a subsidy of almost $3,000.” As Heritage analysts have suggested, employers and employees alike benefit from an employer dropping employer-sponsored health insurance and simply assisting employees in attaining health insurance (with the help of the subsidies) in the exchanges. (more…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, health care costs, premium increase, state health insurance exchange, Tennessee Gov. Philip Bredesen