This past Wednesday marked the first anniversary of Obamacare. While advocates spent the week highlighting the new law’s effects on different groups of Americans, we’ve done the same. A review of the facts on the ground and the conclusions of Heritage research over the past year reveal the far-reaching negative consequences of the new law. Today, liberals are arguing that Obamacare helps young Americans. Although there are benefits from some provisions of the new law—for example, young adults can now stay on their parents’ health plan until age 26—young Americans …
Health Insurers Plan Hikes. That was the headline of a Wall Street Journal story last Tuesday which reported: “Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats’ efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections. Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.” And The Wall …
President Barack Obama and congressional leaders claim that the Senate health bill, which will likely face a vote in the House by the end of the week, will decrease the deficit and bend the cost curve related to health care spending. However, recent analysis by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA) shows that this is far from true. Instead, the bill’s mandates and numerous new taxes will have tumultuous effects. Passing Obamacare will come at the expense of the American people as it would grow the federal debt, …
It is a well known economic policy rule that if you want less of something you tax it, and if you want more of something you subsidize it. Policymakers frequently follow this rule to influence behavior. This is why there are “sin taxes” on things like alcohol and cigarettes, and also why “cap and trade” taxes carbon. This is why there are subsidies for education and for “green” technologies. If taxes and subsidies make any sense at all, they make sense when used to tax “bad” things and subsidize “good” …
On Friday, the last day before a long weekend due to Columbus Day and on the eve of the Finance Committee vote, the Congressional Budget Office revealed some new information about the affect of the Baucus plan on premiums for health insurance. Surprise! After the Senate Finance Committee worked on the bill, health insurance will now cost individuals and families even more than the Congressional Budget Office originally estimated. On September 22, 2009, the CBO estimated that the average premium for a single plan was $4,700 to purchase the Silver …
In response to yesterday’s PriceWaterhouseCooper’s study showing that the Senate Finance bill would raise, not lower, health insurance premiums for Americans, M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber told the New York Times that the opposite was true. But think about it for a minute. Imagine if the federal government announced that car insurers had to provide car insurance for any American that applied. Now imagine that the federal government also forced car insurers to charge everyone the same price for car insurance regardless of their driving history. So a texting teen with …
