Fix Health Care Policy

Breaking Health Care Research: After One Year, the Effects of Obamacare Are Grim

This week marks the first anniversary of Obamacare. In response, Heritage analyst Brian Blase has provided a one-year checkup on the provisions that are already in place and the effects Americans are experiencing as a result.

Obamacare’s more popular provisions were supposedly front-loaded, and liberals are taking full advantage of this in the ongoing attempt to build support for the unpopular law. This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before the Senate Finance Committee on how, in her opinion, Obamacare is already benefiting Americans.

But a closer look shows that her perception may be based more on wishful thinking than reality. Blase’s research highlights how many of the provisions of Obamacare are already impacting Americans in harmful ways.

According to Secretary Sebelius, new insurance regulations “give millions of Americans important new health insurance protections.” But though these new rules are advertised as “consumer protections,” they often do the opposite. Blase writes that “Obamacare has resulted in insurance companies exiting markets, thereby reducing consumer choice.” (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: consumer protections, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, impacting markets, ObamaCare, rules, Senate Finance Committee

Secretary Sebelius Questioned Before the Senate Finance Committee

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday about the President’s 2012 fiscal year budget and the status of health care reform. Despite the projected $1.6 trillion deficit in the President’s budget, Sebelius claimed that it represents “the blueprint for putting (President Obama’s) vision into action and making the investments that will grow our economy and create jobs.” Here are some of the noteworthy exchanges the Secretary had with Senators on the committee.

Senator Max Baucus (D–MT) lauded the Medicare “doc fix” in the budget, although he expressed a desire for a permanent fix. The doc fix in the budget is a two-year fix paid with spending offsets. However, as Bob Moffit and Kate Nix point out, the temporary fix is paid for with spending offsets far in the future, indicating that the President is once again punting difficult decisions. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: doc fix, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Medicare, ObamaCare, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee

Who Should Control Your Health Care, You Or The Government?

After President Barack Obama installed Dr. Donald Berwick as head administrator of Medicare and Medicaid by recess appointment, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked at the daily press briefing if “it would have been politically troublesome in an election year to have all these comments aired out about rationing, redistribution that Dr. Berwick had talked about in the past.”

Gibbs was ready for this question, though, and shot back: “Did he say things like, ‘rationing happens today; the question is who will do it’? Did he say that?” The bait laid, the reporter responded: “That was one comment.” The trap sprung, Gibbs pounced: “Actually that was Paul Ryan. That was Paul Ryan. He’s a Republican in Congress.” The White House press corps roared with laughter.

Gibbs may have won that round, but today Berwick is scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, and conservatives will have their first chance to question the bureaucrat in charge of implementing Obamacare’s many changes to the Medicare system. Hopefully Berwick’s past statements will not dominate the hearings but instead serve as a jumping-off point to shine light on the vast new powers Obamacare granted the federal government.

For starters, in June 2009, Berwick told Biotechnology Healthcare: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open. And right now, we are doing it blindly.” For comparison sake, here is the full version of the Gibbs-truncated Ryan quote from a 2009 interview with The Washington Post: “Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?” (more…)

Tags: CMS Administrator Dr. Donald Berwick, federal bureaucracy, Medicare, ObamaCare, Robert Gibbs, Senate Finance Committee

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)

“The fact is, this proposal will never come before the Senate. But what we do know is that the bill written behind closed doors here in the Capitol will be another 1,000-page, trillion-dollar Washington takeover. We know it will slash a half-trillion dollars from seniors’ Medicare, add new taxes and raise premiums. That’s not reform.” — response after the Senate Finance Committee’s vote to approve health reform legislation (October 13, 2009, press release)

Tags: health reform, Senate Finance Committee, Washington takeover

Congress Dismisses Public’s Transparency Demands

This past summer, hundreds of thousands of Americans attended townhall meetings and demanded their representatives be more upfront about the health reform legislation being crafted to overhaul one-sixth of the U.S. economy. But Congress continues to operate in a shroud of ambiguity. Members of the Senate Finance Committee even recently defeated an amendment that would have required Congress to post the actual committee bill (the committee currently is working on conceptual framework of a bill) online for at least 72 hours before voting on it.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) went as far to say the actual bills use arcane language that ordinary Americans wouldn’t understand. Regardless, the public has a right to have time (at least five days) to read the bills before they’re voted on. That’s what President Barack Obama campaigned on and he should hold Congress to keep that promise.

For more videos, visit our Dose of Reality: Fact Checking the White House page.

Tags: Barack Obama, health care, John Kerry, Senate Finance Committee

Senate’s Health Care Reform Has Unknown Costs

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) preliminary analysis of the conceptual framework (not a complete bill) for the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform has been pegged to only cost taxpayers $829 billion over the next 10 years. But as Heritage and other health policy experts point out, there are a lot of hidden costs that aren’t being reported.

In a newly released Web memo, Heritage health policy analyst Greg D’Angelo points out the latest CBO estimate of the Senate Finance Committee legislation, penned by Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), is subject to change. Even with the amendments added into the legislative framework, D’Angelo quotes the CBO report that the proposal “has not been embodied in legislative language.” Therefore, lawmakers can and likely will make changes that alter the final price tag, writes D’Angelo, who also examined CBO scores for other health reform bills in Congress.

Health care economist James Capretta, with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, highlights in a new blog the CBO projection assumes Congress will follow through with Medicare and Medicaid cuts. History shows that when lawmakers made “arbitrary, across-the-board cuts, it was only a matter of months before they were scrambling to restore the cuts.” Restoring cuts in Medicare physician fees would add more than $200 billion to the plan’s bottom line, Capretta notes.

Also, Capretta mentions a so-called “firewall” within the Baucus legislation. 

“CBO’s assessment of the Baucus bill is built on the dubious assumption that Congress can hand out a lucrative new entitlement to a limited number of low- and moderate-income voters while denying it to tens of millions of others.

…All but the smallest employers would be required to offer qualifying coverage to their full-time workers to avoid hefty taxes, and the employees would have no choice but to take what is offered to avoid paying a penalty tax themselves.  The“firewall” thus prevents workers from exiting employer-based plans for the exchanges.”

The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on the legislation.

Tags: CBO, health care reform, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)

“Some have claimed that cutting the ‘extra payments’ to Medicare Advantage plans reduces insurance company profits. The fact is 75 percent of those ‘extra payments’ go directly to better benefits for seniors under current law.

Unfortunately, the Finance Committee bill will take away those benefits from seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage. The Finance Committee proposal cuts nearly $130 billion from the Medicare Advantage program. Common sense says you cannot do that without affecting seniors’ benefits.” — (October 8, 2009 delivered remarks on the Senate floor)

See Cornyn’s full remarks in this video clip.

Tags: Medicare Advantage, Senate Finance Committee, Seniors