A Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that while 26 percent of voters say their health care situation will be better under the new law, twice as many — 53 percent — say it will be worse. Another 13 percent say it won’t make a difference…
That helps explains why a 56-percent majority wants to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009. Some 34 percent would stick with the new law.
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How ObamaCare Will Tax Young Men
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WSJ: ObamaCare Could Reduce Employee Health Benefits
ObamaCare supporters promised the law’s employer mandate would require employers to provide workers with comprehensive insurance. But they apparently didn’t read the bill very closely. It’s a recurring theme.
According to the Wall Street Journal, employers and employee-benefits consultants have found, and federal regulators now confirm, that the law actually requires most employers to offer no more than very flimsy coverage. Many employers are now exploring the option of offering limited-benefit health plans that cover preventive services and maybe “$100 a day for a hospital visit” but “wouldn’t cover surgery, X‑rays or prenatal care.” Indeed, the law could push many employers to reduce the amount of coverage workers receive on the job.
The Obama administration’s reaction demonstrates they had no idea what they were doing. The Wall Street Journal:
Administration officials confirmed in interviews that the skinny plans, in concept, would be sufficient to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty. Several expressed surprise that employers would consider the approach.
“We wouldn’t have anticipated that there’d be demand for these types of band-aid plans in 2014,” said Robert Kocher, a former White House health adviser who helped shepherd the law. “Our expectation was that employers would offer high quality insurance.”
The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
This and other employer responses to the law could make the roll-out of ObamaCare’s health insurance “exchanges” even more of a train wreck.
- To the extent ObamaCare’s employer mandate pushes firms to offer bare-bones plans, premiums for plans offered through Exchanges will rise. The healthiest workers will enroll in their employers’ bare-bones plans, but workers who have expensive illnesses (or with dependents who have expensive illnesses) will seek more-comprehensive coverage through the Exchanges. The influx of sick consumers will increase the premiums for Exchange-based plans. Many of these sick workers won’t receive any premium-assistance tax credits or cost-sharing subsidies because their employer’s bare-bones plan will likely satisfy ObamaCare’s definition of adequate — and because the statute forbids those entitlements in the 33 states that have declined to establish an Exchange.
- Employers are also renenwing their health-benefits contracts early (i.e., before January 1, 2014), which allows them to avoid many of ObamaCare’s regulatory costs for several months. That move could also increase premiums for Exchange-based plans by encouraging workers with high-cost illnesses to seek coverage through Exchanges while healthy workers stick with their employer’s plans.
- Many employers are also considering self-insuring their health benefits, an arrangement in which the employer bears the risk that is usually borne by the insurance carrier and just hires someone (often an insurer) to administer the coverage. This strategy allows also employers to avoid many of ObamaCare’s regulatory costs and could also increase premiums in the Exchanges and small-group market.
Again, the Journal:
Regulators worry that some of these strategies, if widely employed, could pose challenges to the new online health-insurance exchanges that are a centerpiece of the health law. Among employees offered low-benefit plans, sicker workers who need more coverage may be most likely to opt out of employer coverage and join the exchanges. That could drive up costs in the marketplaces.
These are the sort of unintended consequences that ObamaCare’s opponents warned would plague any attempt by Congress to centrally plan one-sixth of the U.S. economy.
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Poll: Already Scant Support for Obamacare Erodes
According to the latest Reason-Rupe poll:
The president’s health care law is losing public support… Only 32 percent of Americans say they liked the health care law when it was passed and still like it today. Seven percent liked the law when it was passed, but like it less now. Meanwhile, 45 percent disliked the health care law when it was passed and still dislike it. Four percent of Americans say they disliked the law when it passed, but like it more now.
These results are consistent with the Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, which has always reported a higher level of support for the law than other polls, yet whose latest results show support for Obamacare slipping to just 35 percent of adults.
Never Mind the IRS, You’d Better Be Nice to Kathleen Sebelius
![Media Name: Kathleen_Sebelius_in_HHS_meeting_4-28-09.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/download-remote-images/upload.wikimedia.org/156887183488/Kathleen_Sebelius_in_HHS_meeting_4-28-09.jpg?itok=1AlhGIan)
ObamaCare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board is everything its critics say and worse. It is a democracy-skirting, Congress-blocking, powers-unseparating, law-entrenching, tax-hiking, fund-appropriating, price-controlling, health-care-rationing, death-paneling, technocrat-thrilling, authoritarian, anti-constitutional super-legislature. Its very existence is testament to government incompetence. It stands as a milestone on the road to serfdom.
The Congressional Research Service has now confirmed what HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pretends not to know but what Diane Cohen and I explained here:
[I]f President Obama fails to appoint any IPAB members, all these powers fall to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
That’s an awful lot of power to give any one person, particularly someone who has shown as much willingness to abuse her power as Sebelius has.
I would also like the Congressional Research Service to address a feature of IPAB that Cohen and I first exposed. According to the statute, we write:
Congress may only stop IPAB from issuing self-executing legislative proposals if three-fifths of all sworn members of Congress pass a joint resolution to dissolve IPAB during a short window in 2017. Even then, IPAB’s enabling statute dictates the terms of its own repeal, and it continues to grant IPAB the power to legislate for six months after Congress repeals it. If Congress fails to repeal IPAB through this process, then Congress can never again alter or reject IPAB’s proposals.
You read that right. For more, read our paper, especially Box 3 on page 9.
CRS, I’m interested to know what you think. Take a close look at the law and get back to me.
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Is Kathleen Sebelius Barack Obama’s Oliver North?
![Media Name: 1101861222_400.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/wp-content/uploads/1101861222_400.jpg?itok=0dsrQP48)
I blogged earlier about how HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is unethically, and possibly illegally,
shaking down industries she regulates to get them to fund ObamaCare’s implementation.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R‑TN), the ranking member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, says this is “arguably an even bigger issue [than] Iran-Contra,” and ably defends his position against the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff.
Excerpts from Alexander’s comments:
[I]n Iran-Contra, you had $30 million that was spent by Oliver North through private organizations for a purpose congress refused to authorize, in support of the rebels. Here, you’re wanting to spend millions more in support of private organizations to do something that Congress has refused…
The cause in the first case was the cause of rebels in Nicaragua. And the cause here is to implement Obamacare. Congress has refused to appropriate more for that cause. The administration seems to be making a decision that’s called augmenting an appropriation. Its a constitutional offense that’s the issue…
If you read the report of the Iran-Contra select committee, it said that the executive cannot make an end run around Congress by raising money privately and spending it. That seems to be happening here. That was essentially the problem. There the money came from a different place, but if you look at my statement [the Iran-Contra report said] “a president whose appropriation requests were rejected by Congress could raise money from private sources or third countries for armies, military actions, arms systems, and even domestic programs.” [Emphasis added.] It’s the same kind of offense to the Constitution. It’s the same kind of thumbing your nose at Article 1…
If that’s what they’re saying…that Congress has refused to appropriate the money, then you can’t do it. That’s a curb on the executive.
Alexander has sent a letter to Sebelius requesting information about her extracurricular fundraising activities.
Jon Stewart on the IRS Targeting the Tea Party
Last night, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart said of reports the IRS singled out tea-party groups for extra scrutiny, “This seems like a genuine scandal.” Then he turned on the funny: “In their defense, there is a good reason why people using the IRS to crack down on political enemies would not want Americans educated about the Constitution.” Best line: “Wait a minute. I didn’t realize apologies were sufficient in IRS-related issues.” Video below. (Beware: some racy language.)
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon — Thurs 11p / 10c | ||
Barack Trek: Into Darkness | |||
www.thedailyshow.com | |||
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In the very next segment, Stewart portrays HHS’s release of (wildly divergent) hospital chargemaster prices as an example of government doing things right, gives kudos to HHS, and laments that government doesn’t do more of that sort of thing. There’s only one problem. Outrageously high and divergent hospital prices are due to government policies that encourage patients to pay for more items through health insurance and that thereby destroy the cash market and any hope of competitive and transparent prices. So that episode is also an example of government failure.
The show’s Moment of Zen was this priceless clip of former IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman denying that his agency was on a tea-party witch hunt:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon — Thurs 11p / 10c | ||
Moment of Zen — The Nonpartisan IRS | |||
www.thedailyshow.com | |||
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