The Foundry

Posts Tagged ‘side effects’

• Side Effects: Future of Private Insurance Rests in Secretary Sebelius’ Hands

  Posted September 1st, 2010 at 11:00am in Health Care with 3 comments

  Obamacare requires insurers to meet a federally-specified medical loss ratio.  That is, they must spend a certain percentage of premiums on medical expenses.  The remainder can be used to cover administrative costs and, if there’s anything left, profits.  But if insurers don’t shell out enough in medical losses to meet the requirement, they’ll have to [...] More

• Side Effects: College Students May Lose Health Care Option Under Obamacare

  Posted August 25th, 2010 at 2:00pm in Health Care with 6 comments

  Health care isn’t something most students worry about. Government stats show about 80 percent of college students are covered under a parents’ plan. For them, Obamacare may mean they can keep the insurance they already have for a few years beyond college, but it won’t affect the coverage they carry during school. But what about kids [...] More

• Side Effects: What Obamacare and the Death Star have in Common

  Posted August 20th, 2010 at 11:00am in Health Care with 12 comments

  So far, 21 states have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.  As they move forward, it’s worth pondering what would happen to the health care overhaul if they succeed. Could one lawsuit be the proton torpedo that blows up the Obamacare Death Star? Typically, courts can deem a legislative provision unconstitutional without it spelling doom [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Puts States Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  Posted August 17th, 2010 at 3:00pm in Health Care with 2 comments

  Obamacare creates a host of new federal requirements billed as consumer protections.  But enacting these policies falls not on the feds, but on the states. Some of these provisions were among the more popular components of Obamacare: guaranteed issue for children; letting individuals remain on their parents’ health plan up to age 26; requiring insurers to [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Spreads the Wealth by Cutting Medicare

  Posted August 6th, 2010 at 11:30am in Health Care with 1 comments

  Is Granny “disposable”? Some seniors may get that impression once Obamacare kicks in. As noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, the new law cuts $200 billion from Medicare Advantage, a public-private “hybrid” of Medicare.  As a result, more than 11 million seniors will likely see their Medicare Advantage premiums rise significantly or their benefits [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Causes Some Insurers to Stop Offering Coverage for Kids

  Posted August 4th, 2010 at 11:00am in Health Care with 6 comments

  The effects of Obamacare are getting weirder with each passing month. Now, new requirements created by the law are causing some insurers to consider no longer offering “child-only” policies to avoid having to raise rates. Most children are covered by parents’ employer-provided insurance or by government programs. But some parents buy individual health insurance coverage just [...] More

• Side Effects: Small Businesses Won’t Find a Friend in Obamacare

  Posted July 30th, 2010 at 10:00am in Health Care with 8 comments

  One of the promises of Obamacare was that it would give folks working in small businesses access to affordable care. Unfortunately, like so much else in the law, it doesn’t look like that’s going to work very well. To solve the problems small firms have with finding affordable health coverage, Obamacare created a small-business tax credit.  But [...] More

• Side Effects: Premium Hikes for Arizona State Employees, Courtesy of Obamacare

  Posted July 29th, 2010 at 8:00pm in Health Care with 9 comments

  Arizona v. President Obama. This time it’s not about immigration but health care. A recent letter from the Arizona Department of Administration to 135,000 state employees informed them that, depending on their type of coverage, they can expect their monthly health insurance costs to jump by as much as 37 percent. The letter cites the [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Encouraging Insurers to Cut Corners

  Posted July 22nd, 2010 at 5:00pm in Health Care with 15 comments

  With or without Obamacare, health insurance costs are on the rise.  And that has businesses searching for more affordable options. One increasingly popular option: health plans covering services provided by a relatively small number of participating doctors and hospitals.  These plans are most attractive to small employers, but The New York Times reports, “Large employers, [...] More

• Side Effects: House Fix Is Just the Beginning to Plugging the Holes in Obamacare

  Posted July 21st, 2010 at 3:30pm in Health Care with 2 comments

  Though Democrats’ health care bill has already been signed into law, work on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is anything but complete. Last Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would make several technical corrections to the health bill hastily passed last March. The authors of the PPACA never expected the version that [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Could Punish Docs for Better Quality Care

  Posted July 16th, 2010 at 11:00am in Health Care with 4 comments

  “Pay-for-performance” medicine has gained popularity in recent years, and Obamacare makes it a reality for Medicare enrollees.  But that’s not necessarily a good thing. Pay-for-performance allows third parties to pay physicians based on treatment outcomes.  In theory, this sounds like a great way to encourage doctors to improve outcomes.  But in practice, it’s a bit more [...] More

• Side Effects: Medicaid Reimbursement Crisis Hits Texas

  Posted July 14th, 2010 at 4:00pm in Health Care with 5 comments

  Obamacare promises that, some years down the road, every American will have health insurance. But the whole point of having health insurance is to get medical care when you need it, and that’s not part of the Obamacare promise. The new law aims to use Medicaid to cover 16 million otherwise uninsured Americans in 2019.  But [...] More

• Side Effects: IRS and Businesses Unite Against Obamacare?

  Posted July 13th, 2010 at 4:00pm in Health Care with 5 comments

  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently unearthed yet another undesirable side effect of Obamacare—one that will hit the taxman as well as business owners. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, “an independent organization within the IRS whose employees assist taxpayers,” reports that both the IRS and taxpayers will have trouble complying with the health care law’s extensive new [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare’s Exploding Medicaid Costs

  Posted July 7th, 2010 at 4:00pm in Health Care with 1 comments

  The states are in Big Trouble. While Americans are fearful of record federal deficits, the states also are facing increased costs. Most of the exponential growth comes from increased Medicaid costs, and the taxpayers in the states are going to pay for it. A new Deloitte study gives predictions that by 2030 Medicaid costs could rise [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Shifts Costs to the Privately Insured

  Posted July 6th, 2010 at 5:15pm in Health Care with 8 comments

  President Obama promised to address the growing costs in health care with passage of his “reform” bill.  But instead of reducing costs, Obamacare will succeed only at shifting the burden to taxpayers and the privately insured.  Americans with private health insurance will indirectly subsidize care received by those reliant on Medicare and Medicaid. It is [...] More

• Side Effects: White House Misses Deadline for Creating High Risk Pools

  Posted June 24th, 2010 at 6:30pm in Health Care with 5 comments

  We’ve all heard it before — the age-old saying “Better late than never.” Well, get ready to hear it  again, this time from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, regarding the creation of high-risk pools under Obamacare. The pools were supposed to provide coverage for individuals who cannot get health insurance due to chronic illness. [...] More

• Side Effects: Bureaucracy in a Bind

  Posted June 22nd, 2010 at 12:00pm in Health Care with 2 comments

  Health care is a life-and-death matter.  It’s also a huge part of our economy (one-sixth, to be exact). With so much at stake, it makes sense to “go slow,” when it comes to reforming the system.  But rather than take the time to get it right, the liberal leaders of Congress rammed through a wholesale restructuring [...] More

• Side Effects: Obamacare Discourages Docs

  Posted June 18th, 2010 at 3:00pm in Health Care with 2 comments

  The United States faces a major physician shortage, and it will only get worse.  Aging baby boomers will create a growing demand for medical services at the same time Obamacare comes on line with its new demands. Complicating matters is the fact that many physicians are also baby boomers—meaning part of the solution will increasingly become [...] More

• Side Effects: Regulatory Pillow to Smother Grandfathered Plans

  Posted June 16th, 2010 at 1:00pm in Health Care with 6 comments

  The Department of Health and Human Services has rolled out regulations governing health plans in effect prior to the passage of Obamacare.  You know, the plans that “if you like it, you can keep it?” The new regs will mostly affect the 170 million-plus Americans who carry employer-sponsored coverage.  The vast majority of them (82 percent) [...] More

• Side Effects: Donut Hole Hold-Up

  Posted June 14th, 2010 at 1:00pm in Health Care with 7 comments

  Last Thursday, the White House trumpeted Obamacare’s first step in closing the Medicare “donut hole.” Checks in the amount of $250 were sent to 80,000 seniors in the “hole”—a gap in Medicare’s coverage of prescription drug benefits for seniors. Ultimately, Washington will cut 4 million of these checks, totaling $1 billion, to help [...] More