Yet another provision of Obamacare is expected to cost taxpayers more than they expected. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) asking for details regarding the probable loss of $3.1 billion out of the $3.4 billion in Obamacare loans to its Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (“CO-OP”). The estimate comes from the President’s Budget Appendix, and the committee is considering rescinding funds that haven’t already been obligated. The Obamacare initiative gives CMS the authority to award $3.4 billion …
Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, recently announced that it would no longer offer a student health insurance plan because it cannot do so under Obamacare without violating its religious beliefs. At issue is the Obamacare “preventive services” mandate promulgated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mandate requires almost all health care plans to include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization services, and contraception. Many individuals and institutions object on religious or moral grounds to participating in health care plans that include these products and services. Franciscan University, for example, …
On Monday, the Obama Administration signaled that another part of its signature health care law may not be working out as planned. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) put an end to a program that offered a $100 incentive to insurance brokers and agents for recommending eligible people to Obamacare’s Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan (PCIP). Obamacare created the PCIP, commonly called a high-risk pool, as a temporary way to cover those with pre-existing or chronic conditions before 2014, when insurance companies will be prohibited from excluding people based …
The contraception mandate has met yet another foe. On Monday, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed a complaint against Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius on behalf of Hercules Industries, Inc., a family-owned HVAC manufacturer based in Denver, Colorado. Hercules Industries is owned by five family members, all practicing Catholics, who seek to operate the business in accordance with their beliefs. As such, the self-insured company’s health plan does not include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, or sterilization procedures—and had no intention of doing so. Until Obamacare, …
The House Ways and Means Committee just released a report that shows that the most successful companies would save billions of dollars if they stopped offering coverage to their employees and dumped them into the taxpayer-funded Obamacare exchanges. On a confidential basis, 71 Fortune 100 companies supplied information to the committee regarding the cost and coverage of their health insurance plans. The committee used the data to calculate the potential savings of dumping employees into the exchanges and paying the employer mandate penalty. The report’s findings will likely scare the …
The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health held a hearing last Friday to discuss the bipartisan effort behind competing premium support plans. These plans would restructure traditional Medicare and guarantee its fiscal stability in the future. As Chairman Wally Herger (R–CA) said: Unless Congress acts, the Medicare program that seniors and people with disabilities rely on will go bankrupt in just a few short years.… The premium support model holds promise to place Medicare on sound financial footing while transforming and modernizing the program to provide greater choice for …
A new study by the Urban Institute reconfirms a vital fact: Medicare’s massive increase in enrollment, largely attributable to retiring baby boomers, is driving its fiscal instability. This is an important finding, because during the health care debate of 2009, advocates of Obamacare insisted that excess health care cost inflation was the more urgent problem contributing to Medicare’s fiscal nightmare. A recent report by Charles Blahous, a public trustee for Medicare, explains: This viewpoint increased in prominence when Peter Orszag, one of [Obamacare’s] leading advocates, was named to head the …
President Obama has called Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget “an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country,” but as this week’s chart illustrates, if something radical doesn’t happen, entitlement spending will nearly double by 2050. The amount of spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Obamacare subsidies will soar over the next 38 years, leaving future generations with an alarming debt burden. Congressional Budget Office predictions show that in 2010 entitlement spending attributes 10.3 percent of GDP, then jumps to 19 percent of GDP by 2050. David John, Heritage’s …
One of the biggest fears Americans have about Obamacare is who will ultimately control health care decisions: the government or patients and their doctors. New research by Heritage health policy analyst Kathryn Nix explains that while the law does not explicitly put those decisions in the hands of the government, it does allow government bureaucrats to unduly influence medical care. Enter comparative effectiveness research (CER), which compares different methods for preventing, diagnosing, or treating a specific disease or condition. In her paper, Nix explores the many ways CER might be …
A new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows that a demonstration program created by the Obama Administration in Medicare Advantage (MA) is primarily designed to “demonstrate” how to hide politically unpopular parts of Obamacare. The Quality Bonus Payment demonstration program will take place from 2012 to 2014 and differs substantially from the bonus program described in Obamacare. In the original statute, high-performing plans (those rated 4 and above on a five-star scale) would receive bonus payments as an incentive to improve quality. In the current demonstration program, bonus …
