Patience will be more than a virtue, under Obamacare. It’ll be a necessity. A recent article from ABC News outlines why Americans can expect longer and longer waits before they see a doctor. One reason is that there just won’t be enough doctors to get the job done. ABC reports that 10 years from now, the United States will short 85,000 primary care and high-demand specialty physicians. Says Dr. Kevin Pho, an internal medicine physician in New Hampshire, “I don’t think we have the primary care capacity to meet the …
College seniors are eagerly ordering caps and gowns for May graduation ceremonies. But graduation day often brings loss as well as gain. Many graduates will lose coverage under their parents’ health plans as soon as they get their diplomas. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Obamacare promised to let “children” remain on their parents’ health plan until the age of 26. It was one of the few provisions in the law to attract bipartisan support. Yet the hastily drafted legislation managed to botch even this seemingly simple reform. Young …
No one can criticize the Obamacare legislation for being too short. But even at 2K+ pages, the new law fails to address some major problems with the health system. One of these is the flawed formula Congress created years ago to determine how much the Medicare payment physicians receive for services rendered. Year after year, the Congressional reimbursement formula calls for sharp reductions in Medicare payment rates. And year after year, Congress votes to suspend its own formula. That keeps doctors from bailing out of the Medicare program, but it …
In recent years, the United States has faced a growing shortage of physicians. Under Obamacare, it will only get worse. Industry experts predict a 40,000 shortfall in doctors over the next decade There are two factors at play here. First, the existing supply of primary care physicians will not be able to keep up with the increased demand posed by millions of newly-covered patients. Second, and even more alarming, many physicians feel compelled to voluntarily leave the profession when the bill starts to affect their practices. Call it a double-edged …
The national health reform rammed through Congress is giving state officials headaches. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels outlines several problems states will have to deal with as a result of Obamacare. For example, Daniels now faces the prospect of terminating a popular insurance program for low-income Indiana residents. The “Healthy Indiana Plan” includes health savings accounts that have been widely popular with the program’s participants. Due to new health care law, however, Indiana will most likely have to dump the “Healthy Indiana” enrollees into Medicaid. …
In the days and weeks following the signing of Obamacare into law, Administration officials have attempted to promote all of the legislation’s immediate impacts. Owners of tanning salons across the country are already seeing one of those immediate impacts—a whopping 10% tax. One salon owner in Western Oregon laments in an interview with a local TV station, “10% of everything you make to the federal government. That is tough on top of all of the taxes we are paying today.” Another salon employee at a Michigan-based business echoed those concerns in a separate …
Obamacare was sold as a way to improve benefits and expand coverage. But it doesn’t seem to be panning out that way. Almost immediately, major companies offering excellent health coverage to both active workers and retirees said the new law would cost them a bundle. AT&T alone said they’d have to set aside an extra $1 billion in the first quarter due to an Obamacare tax on their retiree drug coverage. Now, both retirees and current employees of AT&T and other affected companies are “wondering whether the new law could …
Despite all the talk about how Obamacare would lower health care costs, it’s already becoming clear that it just won’t be the case. The Indianapolis Star reports that companies can expect employee health insurance costs to rise even faster. “Driven by worries about the economy and possibly the effects of health-care reform, [health insurers] are raising rates this year for family coverage through employer-sponsored plans… from 8 percent to 21 percent, which is considerably higher than the 5 percent increase the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in 2009.”
Major flaws in the gargantuan Obamacare bill started to emerge almost immediately after it was signed into law. One of the most embarrassing: failure to ensure immediate coverage for kids with pre-existing conditions—something Obamacare supporters had constantly promised was part of the bill. Looking to provide cover for those who wrote the bill, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius fired off a warning letter to insurers. “Health insurance is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition,” she scolded. …
President Obama promised Americans that “If you like the plan you have now, you can keep it.” It was a fundamental promise of Obamacare. But if the coverage you like comes via a Health Savings Account (HSA) or a Flexible Spending Account (FSA), that promise may not hold. A recent analysis from HSA Consulting Services concludes the new law will probably lead to major changes in how consumers can use such plans. And many of those changes may make the accounts far less appealing. It all depends of how the …
