Fix Health Care Policy

The President’s Planned Changes to Medicare: Costly for Seniors

What is President Obama’s plan for Medicare—Obamacare’s changes and beyond?

Heritage has a new Issue Brief, “Obama’s Medicare Plan: Seniors Will Pay More,” that details the future increases in out-of-pocket costs for seniors under current law and President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal.

Over the next five years, under current law, seniors in traditional Medicare are projected to face higher Part B and D premiums, along with other out-of-pocket cost increases. Instead of structurally reforming Medicare, President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal would raise premiums even further for upper-income enrollees in Parts B and D, while also imposing additional deductibles and co-payments (in certain cases) on newly joining baby boomers beginning in 2017.

“Obama’s latest budgetary scheme for cost-shifting to seniors is just another indication that the Administration and its allies on Capitol Hill are running out of options,” the authors write.

Read the full report here.

Tags: Medicare, out-of-pocket costs, pay more, plan, premiums, President Obama, Seniors, traditional program

The Contraception Misconception

The contraception debate in a nutshell: There is no contraception debate.

No one—neither Republicans nor the more than 100 individuals and organizations suing over the HHS mandate—is calling for a ban on contraception.

Governor Romney has said that “with regards to contraceptives, of course, Republicans, and myself in particular, recognize that people should have a right to use contraceptives. There’s absolutely no validity whatsoever to the Obama effort to try and bring that up.”

As for religious employers and organizations, they simply don’t want to have their religious beliefs trampled on by being forced to pay for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs in violation of their faith. Heritage legal expert John Malcolm explains that this position “would not preclude any women, including those who work for religious institutions, from using or obtaining contraception or abortifacients. Employers who favor providing contraceptive and abortion drug coverage to their employees would retain their right to do so.”

So now let’s focus on the real issue: Under Obamacare, the government is mandating which benefits an insurer is obligated to cover, and it’s far more than just the infamous contraception and abortion drug mandate. This will have a deleterious effect on health coverage for both women and men.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: abortion drug coverage, contraception rule, Gov. Romney, HHS mandate, ObamaCare, President Obama, repeal the law

Chart of the Week: Poor, Middle Class Hit by Obamacare Mandate Tax

With campaign season in full tilt, Americans are being inundated with rhetoric regarding the various tax proposals touted by President Obama and Governor Romney.

Given that these discussions usually involve paeans to the middle class and promises to keep their tax rates low, one tax in partcular has received surprisingly little attention: the “penalty” levied on all Americans who do not buy health insurance.

As shown in the chart above, this new tax – defined as such by the Supreme Court, which ruled it constitutional under Congress’s taxing power – hammers not just the middle class, but roughly 600,000 Americans whose incomes fall below the federal poverty line, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office.

Heritage health care expert Alyene Senger explained the distribution of the tax in a recent Foundry post:

Despite claims made by Obamacare’s advocates that the law will help middle- and low-income Americans, CBO’s table reveals that the distribution of the tax falls heavily on those making less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL)—meaning the majority of this new tax falls on the very people the law was supposed to help. For instance, a family of four making about $24,600 per year, the projected FPL in 2016, could be subject to this egregious tax penalty.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: federal poverty line, Gov. Mitt Romney, Individual Mandate, lower-income, middle class, ObamaCare, penalty, President Obama, presidential race, tax proposals

Debate 2012: Obama’s Dubious Medicare “Voucher” Claim

President Obama made an oft-repeated claim on Medicare during Wednesday night’s presidential debate that distorts attempts to reform the program.

The president accused Governor Mitt Romney of favoring a “voucher” program for Medicare, by citing, ironically, a plan previously supported by Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul Ryan. The voucher label can be politically toxic, but bears little resemblance to Ryan’s actual Medicare proposal (in its most recent iteration).

Heritage’s Robert Moffit explained in a National Review column:

It’s all scary nonsense. The Ryan proposal, among others, is a defined-contribution system that in, say, 2023 would provide direct payment from a government account to a health plan of a person’s choice, including traditional Medicare; health plans, including employer-based retiree plans, would have to meet government standards, including benefit standards of the traditional Medicare program, plus new and much-needed protections against the costs of catastrophic illness; all such plans would be offered through a Medicare exchange; all such plans would be governed by existing Medicare insurance rules, meaning persons could not be legally denied coverage or dropped merely because they are sick; low-income persons would be specially protected from unforeseen out-of-pocket cost hikes; and all enrollees would benefit from an improved risk adjustment among plans in the competitive market to guarantee continuity of patient care and health-plan stability.

A voucher is, of course, a defined contribution; but not all defined contribution programs are “vouchers.” A voucher is just one form of defined contribution. TheMerriam Webster definition of a voucher is a “form or check indicating a credit against future purchases or expenditures.” Many ordinary Americans have had some experience with vouchers when their flights were cancelled or delayed, and airlines issued them compensatory certificates redeemable in cash value for the purchase of food and lodging.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: Gov. Mitt Romney, Medicare, myth, ObamaCare, premium support, President Obama, presidential debate, voucher

FACT CHECK: Obama Misleads on Medicare, Taxes, and Regulations

During a Sunday evening interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” President Obama made numerous factually inaccurate or misleading claims.

Specifically, Obama claimed that he has not raised Americans’ taxes, that he has not raised costs for Medicare beneficiaries, and that he has imposed fewer regulations than his predecessor. The first two claims are false, and the third is highly misleading.

Obama: “You can’t ask me to…ask seniors to pay more for their Medicare.”

Fact: Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare will raise Medicare costs for many seniors.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: "60 Minutes", beneficiaries, CBS, facts, Medicare, myths, ObamaCare, President Obama, Seniors, taxes

Side Effects: Obama Administration Admits You Can’t Keep Your Health Plan

On several occasions during the health care reform debate, President Obama promised the American people, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” Now, even the Administration admits that this isn’t the case, stating that “as a practical matter, a majority of group health plans will lose their grandfather status by 2013.”

Case in point: Under Obamacare, grandfathered plans are not subject to the preventative services mandate, a subset of which is the anti-conscience mandate that requires almost all non-exempted employers to provide and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.

In one of the 23 lawsuits over the mandate’s trampling on religious liberty, Newland v. Sebelius, the plaintiffs argue that the mandated coverage of these products violates the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment because it forces employers, including those who object to use of such products on moral or religious grounds (for example, religious hospitals, schools, and charities) to pay for coverage of the objectionable drugs and services. There is only a narrow religious exemption that effectively applies only to places of worship.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: HHS mandate, if you like your health plan, lawsuits, President Obama, promises, religious liberty

Obamacare’s Top 5 Broken Promises

Talking about his health care law, President Obama has said, “If you misrepresent what’s in this plan, we will call you out.” In keeping with that spirit, below is a list of Obamacare’s top five biggest broken promises:

1.) “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Reality: Research continues to show that as many as 30 percent of employers will dump their employees out of their existing health care coverage. And, as Heritage analysts have noted, new coverage mandates are forcing plans to change, even for those who have moral objections.  (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: broken promises, dropped coverage, employers, health care plan, President Obama

The President Learned Nothing From August

“There remain some significant details to iron out.” Thus spoke the President of the United States last night, in an address in which, with a straight face, he told an awaiting nation that he was finally delivering not lofty rhetoric, but his grand plan on health care.

On that score President Obama was right. It may have been, however, a bit of an understatement. Absent, of course, was how exactly all the savings he confidently predicted would materialize, how exactly the government would prevent employers from dumping all their employees into a government plan and how czars and boards would operate without bureaucrats coming between Americans and their doctors. Ah, details, details.

In fact, while he kept referring to “our plan” he never explained whose plan he meant. One of the two House plans? The one Senate plan that exists or the Finance one that’s under construction? What’s he actually for? What’s the President against? (more…)

Tags: congress, President Obama, townhall meetings

The Great Myth of Prevention “Savings”

Washington Post op-ed columnist Charles Krauthammer in a piece today takes on the myth that prevention measures will magically reduce overall health care spending and lower costs in the long run. It’s a talking point Democractic Congressional leadership and President Barack Obama have been using as the main way to pay for their proposed $1 trillion-plus health care overhaul.

But as Krauthammer explains, “like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.”

“This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: ‘Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness.’”

See the full article here.

Tags: Doug Elmendorf, President Obama, prevention, savings