Pending Health Care Reform

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July 29, 2010

Opposition to Health Care Law Declining

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/07/29/opposition_to_health_care_law_declining.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Political+Wire%29

The latest Kaiser tracking poll finds opposition to the landmark health care law signed into law by President Obama in March has declined over the past month, from 41% to 35%.

Meanwhile, 50% held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48% a month ago, and the highest level since the legislation was enacted.

”

“Probably because of how well it's been working so far.”

“Makin' mo' Bucks. http://www.fiercehealthfinance.com/story/unitedhealth-group-unh-q2-results-q2-top-health-insurance-company-earnings-report/2010-07-26”

“Then: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Now: "We can fix it"”

“http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9a4NhJMu0YU4habnaMIAS1JbuLAD9HQC04G0


WASHINGTON — A plan by Medicare to try to make it simpler for consumers to pick drug coverage could force 3 million seniors to switch plans next year whether they like it or not, says an independent analysis.

That risks undercutting President Barack Obama's promise that people can keep their health plans if they like them.

And it could be an unwelcome surprise for many seniors who hadn't intended to make a change during Medicare's open enrollment season this fall.

The analysis by Avalere Health, a leading private research firm, estimated that more than 3 million beneficiaries will see their prescription plan eliminated as part of a new effort by Medicare to winnow down duplicative coverage and offer consumers more meaningful choices.

Seniors would not lose coverage, but they could see changes in their premiums and copayments.

Medicare officials dismissed the Avalere estimate without offering their own number. "Anybody who is producing that kind of analysis is simply guessing," said Jonathan Blum, deputy administrator for Medicare.




So when Grampy gets his news that he will lose his FREE MONEY health care...Will he be ticked or blame the "big Business"?”

“I've paid for healthcare for over 40 years or so, and yawl get it tax free though the WWII tax exemption laws so women would build bombs instead of being moms.

Why didn't they strike that exemption after the war was over? They knew with that and a congress that needs financial help all the time, they could turn this country into working slaves who would build the tyrant we now know as the Industrial Military Complex, that's why.”

“Remember the PrezBO and Moochelle and Joe Biden all saying "If you like your health care plan keep it."

http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/26/if-you-like-your-health-care-p

If you like your health care plan, better luck next time—if you’re a college student:

Along comes word that the bill "could make it impossible for colleges and universities to continue to offer student health plans." That's how the American Council on Education and a dozen other higher-ed lobbies put it in a recent letter to the Obama Administration, warning that the insurance coverage they offer may get junked by ObamaCare's decrees.

Between 4.5 million to 5.5 million students annually are insured by short-term plans sponsored by their schools, which are tailored to upperclassman who have aged out of their parents' coverage or to international and graduate students. These plans are very low cost because the benefits are designed for generally healthy young people and often organized around campus health services and academic medical centers.

All of which means these plans aren't likely to qualify under ObamaCare's "minimal essential coverage" rules that mandate rich benefit packages, even if colleges have the flexibility to make exceptions for special needs. And given that insurance must now be sold anytime to everyone, colleges may be required to continue to cover students after they've graduated-leaving this type of coverage unaffordable.

If you like your health care plan, cross your fingers and hope you’ll like your new one better—if your employer sponsored plan doesn’t meet the law’s strict grandfathering requirements:

While many U.S. companies initially hoped they could preserve much of their existing group health plans under the new grandfather provision, a new survey by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company, shows that almost all now believe they will not. Ninety percent of companies said they anticipate losing grandfathered status by 2014, with the majority expecting to do so in the next two years.

Under the “grandfather” provision of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, companies can maintain many of their current health care coverage provisions and are required to make fewer changes to plan documents and administrative procedures in order to comply with the new law. Companies can lose their grandfather status if they take certain steps such as reducing benefits, significantly raising co-payment charges, significantly raising deductibles or changing insurance carriers.

According to Hewitt’s survey of 466 companies–representing 6.9 million employees–most companies expect to lose grandfather status because of health plan design changes (72 percent) and/or changes to company subsidy levels (39 percent).

None of this is exactly surprising—at least if you’ve been paying attention. Any health system overhaul as sweeping as the PPACA was bound to upset existing coverage arrangements, especially given the dominance of insurance in American health care. But given how disastrous the possibility of forced plan changes proved to HillaryCare in the 90s, the law’s supporters couldn’t admit that. So President Obama and congressional leadership and the progressive activist class had to promise, repeatedly, that no one would have to change plans if they didn’t want to.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I can only imagine what the "seniors" will be doing by 2014”

“
Republicans want poor people to crawl away and die ---- preferably out of sight somewhere.

”

“geezus...[eyeroll]”

“Moonbats want to fry children.”

“'Republicans want poor people to crawl away and die ---- preferably out of sight somewhere.'

After the Insurance Companies get their tax breaks and get paid for killing them.”

“
I think they pray for another Katrina.

”

“Moonbats do.”

“Stovie this time the Libbie moonbats will request assistance ahead of time. And Imamobama will send it...but will ignore the "NON compliant" states...since we know Muslims can lie to Infidels”

“Sebelius admits the citizenry needs a lot of "reeducation" on Obamacare, perhaps in a camp, with information helpfully provided in a little red book. It'll be a great leap forward, she says

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/08/sebelius-time-for-reeducation-on-obama-health-care-law.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter”

“OKAY...lets get this clear...Joe Wilson was right...The PrezBO LIED...he is a liar.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/09/30/no-you-cant-keep-your-health-c

There's a reason President Obama tries so hard to convince Americans not to watch Fox News. He keeps shamelessly lying about easily verifiable facts. Evidently he figures that left-leaning media outlets won't call him on it, so if he can only convince people not to watch FOX, he'll be OK. Unfortunately for the president, the American people simply have to look around them to see that he isn't being honest with them.

Campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, yesterday, the President repeated his biggest health care reform whopper: You can keep your current health insurance. Here is what he said:

"There's nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance you've got right now. If you were already getting health insurance on your job, then that doesn't change."

Yet hours before he uttered that line, the Boston Globe reported that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was canceling its Medicare Advantage coverage specifically because of new regulations imposed by Obama's health care law.

The decision "was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim -- a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan -- form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current rules, patients can seek care from any doctor," the Globe reported.

Note: even if Harvard Pilgrim had kept its Medicare Advantage plan, the law would have required it to offer the service through doctors who agree "to participate for a negotiated amount of money." That means that, contrary to Obama's claim that you can keep your current doctor as well as your current insurance, the law requires Medicare Advantage providers to create HMO-style physician networks, in which your doctor might or might not agree to participate.

For New Englanders, Harvard Pilgrim's decision is pretty big news. That company's Medicare Advantage plan covered 22,000 people. Every one of them will have to switch insurers, and possibly doctors, because of Obamacare. For everyone else, it is a warning of things to come.

Obama's claim began to unravel last year, and when reporters (including some in the mainstream media) began to expose it as untrue, he revised it. In a June 23, 2009 press conference, he offered this clarification in response to a question from Jake Tapper of ABC News:

"When I say if you have your plan and you like it, or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform."

That is deliberately misleading. As Politifact.com noted in an August, 2009 post that rated Obama's claim half-true, "It's not realistic for Obama to make blanket statements that 'you' will be able to 'keep your health care plan.' It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe people that health care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one of the points of reform is to change the way health care works right now."

Exactly. An honest claim would be that the changes imposed by this new law will result in many Americans losing either their coverage as it exists now or their doctor -- or both.

Politifact and others have rated as technically true Obama's claim that "the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform." But that is not true, either. The law mandates that health insurers change the coverage they offer. Insurers have to offer coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and to policyholders' children up to age 26. So technically, the law did change your health care plan.

As a direct result of those and other mandates, insurers will then implement further changes. For example, on Monday before last (more than a week before Obama again claimed that the law won't make you change your coverage), reports broke that several major insurers planned to stop offering new child-only coverage because of the health care law

"Some of the country's most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23," the Washington Post reported on September 20.

The law is only just beginning to take effect, and already insurers are dropping coverage for tens of thousands of Americans because of its burdensome mandates. There will be a lot more of this as additional Obamacare regulations become active. And yet the president still claims that the law won't make you change your coverage or your doctor. Is it any wonder he doesn't want Americans to get their information from news outlets that will check his claims?”

“LOL...Imamobama Health Care will help...NO one will lose their health care...and other liberal lies.”

“Check out the Obama Lies thread for much more moonbat failure.”

“ROtFLMAO

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69D5CO20101014?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

(Reuters) - U.S. states can proceed with a lawsuit seeking to overturn President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law, a Florida judge ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson had said at a hearing last month that he would block efforts by the Justice Department to dismiss the lawsuit, led by Florida and 19 other states.

"In this order, I have not attempted to determine whether the line between constitutional and extraconstitutional government has been crossed," Vinson, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, wrote in his ruling.

"I am only saying that ... the plaintiffs have at least stated a plausible claim that the line has been crossed," Vinson said.

Opponents of Obama's overhaul of the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system have said it violates the Constitution by imposing what they consider unlawful taxes and requiring citizens to obtain healthcare coverage, among other issues.

The suit was originally filed in March by mostly Republican state attorneys general.

The ruling allowing the case to proceed was a setback for Obama, who has made healthcare reform a cornerstone of his agenda and who is struggling to fight off a strong Republican challenge in November 2 mid-term Congressional elections.

Vinson dismissed four of six claims the states brought against the healthcare law but said he saw grounds to proceed on two counts, including one relating to the way critics say it would force huge new spending by state governments.

On the issue of the so-called "individual mandate," the law's provision that all Americans obtain healthcare insurance, Vinson said the plaintiffs had "most definitely stated a plausible claim" for their objections.

"The power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent," he said.

The White House said the government expects to prevail.

"We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act -- constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation, and all of those challenges failed," presidential adviser Stephanie Cutter wrote in a blog post.

"VICTORY FOR STATES"

Vinson said the case would continue as scheduled. He had previously set a hearing for December 16.

"This ruling is a victory for the states, small businesses and the American people," Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said.

"This decision is a recognition that Congress has never gone this far and that the constitutional arguments have real merit," Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said.

The challenge being heard by Vinson is one of many against the healthcare law. There is a hearing in Virginia Monday on the merits of a separate suit against the healthcare overhaul.

On October 7, a Michigan District Court judge upheld the portion of the healthcare law requiring Americans to obtain coverage. The Michigan judge, in a ruling noted by Vinson, said Congress had the authority to enact the law under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution and therefore could also impose a penalty for those who failed to obtain health insurance.

Apart from Florida, states joining in the lawsuit include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington


And....http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43626.html


In his ruling, Vinson criticized Democrats for seeking to have it both ways when it comes to defending the mandate to buy insurance. During the legislative debate, Republicans chastised the proposal as a new tax on the middle class. Obama defended the payment as a penalty and not a tax, but the Justice Department has argued that legally, it’s a tax.

“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check,” he wrote.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43626.html#ixzz12RBgvUiR”

“that takes care of 2 parts of this crap bill...but what about the parts that went into effect last month?...it still blows my mind that they agreed to unconditional bans on life time limits, pre-ex, and allowing a kid up to 26 to be on their parents plan with out showing any justification...it just doesn't make since...apparently no one in congress has heard of adverse selection”

“Corporations that use your money to buy lobbyist and the laws they buy are charging you that form of taxation, but you can't vote any of the execs out of office. Yes corporations are a branch of government that you can't vote for or against, impeach the SCOTUS.”

“except, the insurance companies lobbied against this and it got cramed through anyway...the dems wanted to get something, no matter what it was, as fast as they could while they still had their super majority”

“: October 15. 2010 1:00AM
Froma Harrop
Vote, or lose your health care


http://detnews.com/article/20101015/OPINION03/10150340/1008/OPINION01/Vote--or-lose-your-health-care”

“http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/15/obama-murdered-medicare/

The health care reform law enacted in spring will have a devastating impact on elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees if its provisions are not substantially changed.

The law creates a new mechanism to reduce the rate of increase in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. As a result, Medicare payments will fall below Medicaid rates before the end of this decade, and they will fall increasingly behind the rates paid by all other payers in succeeding decades.

To appreciate what that means, consider that Medicare currently pays about 20 percent below what private insurance pays. At those rates, hospitals lose money on Medicare patients. Under the spending cuts called for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), payments will get worse in the future.

According to estimates from the Office of the Medicare Actuary, Medicare will be paying just two-thirds of what private payers spend by the end of the decade and just one-half as much by midcentury. Moreover, as Medicare rates fall increasingly below Medicaid rates, the elderly and the disabled will be the last patients doctors will want to see - if they have time for them at all.

Compounding these problems is the fact that the ACA will create a huge rationing problem systemwide. Although the law is expected to create as many as 34 million newly insured people, all funds to create new health care providers were zeroed out of the bill. Subsequently, the administration has promised new funds to increase supply, but they will be nowhere near the increase in demand.

Additionally, Medicare spending cuts will create enormous financial stress for the nation's hospitals. According to the actuary's office, more than one in seven health care facilities will be unprofitable before the end of the decade. That number will climb to one in four by 2030 and to 40 percent by midcentury.

One way to think about these changes is to consider the reduction in spending on Medicare beneficiaries relative to the expected path prior to the legislation. Under the new health care law, the average senior on Medicare will receive $2,300 less in annual benefits within 10 years and $3,844 less after 20 years. (All numbers are measured at current prices.) By midcentury, average spending per beneficiary will be $9,413 less than it would have been.

How does the new law bring about these spending cuts when previous attempts to limit Medicare fees for doctors have been blocked by Congress for seven straight years? Answer: The new law gives an independent commission the power to make cuts, without congressional approval. Congress can override the commission, but only if it substitutes its own proposal, cutting spending by just as much. Even then, the president is free to side with the commission and veto Congress' proposal.”

“LOL..I TOLD YOU SO~

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703794104575546052343243306.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Well, well. In the clearest evidence so far that ObamaCare is harmful in practice and an election-year liability, the Obama Administration has decided not to enforce some of the law's "consumer protections." At least when the results are politically embarrassing.

Over the last several weeks the Health and Human Services Department has granted dozens of temporary waivers to certain ObamaCare mandates so that insurers and businesses won't drop or cancel coverage. The most conspicuous went to McDonald's to protect the "mini-med" plans for some 30,000 hourly workers from a rule that prohibits annual restrictions on benefits. Mini-med policies offer modest coverage at low premiums and other low-wage fast-food chains like Jack in the Box and Denny's have been granted waivers as well.

Cigna, Aetna and a few other insurers have been given hall passes to continue selling mini-meds. Another went to the United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund. The New York union offers city teachers supplemental drug coverage that would have been banned under the new rules.

At least this sudden regulatory flexibility is protecting the coverage that people have today, as President Obama promised. But it isn't much of an improvement if HHS retreats only after a national political blow-up. After all, the essential point of the regulations was to destroy mini-med plans and other types of coverage that Democrats claim are insufficiently generous. Democrats from Mr. Obama on down call these rules "the patients' bill of rights," but people don't regularly need exemptions from a bill of rights.

And is it really better that HHS will impose destructive regulations and then decide on ad hoc basis who they'll hit? This is an invitation to play favorites, exact political retribution and pursue whatever arbitrary goals HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her successors happen to hold. ObamaCare amnesty shouldn't go merely to the CEOs who can get White House aide Valerie Jarrett on the horn.

Recall, too, that the original McDonald's memo the Journal exposed was actually warning about the future damage that will be caused by the forthcoming definition of the "medical loss ratio," that is, what insurers are allowed to count as spending on health-care services. HHS said in a statement that Ms. Sebelius has the power to waive those rules too when they come out and "we fully intend to exercise her discretion under the new law to address the special circumstances of mini-med plans in the medical loss ratio calculations."

In other words, HHS is pre-emptively declaring that it will grant a special dispensation to rules that haven't even been finalized. Wouldn't it be better to write less destructive rules in the first place? Or why not give everyone a waiver from everything?

The reality is that ObamaCare assigns HHS vast, undefined new powers that will mean whatever Ms. Sebelius and her team decides they will mean. The bill uses the phrase "the Secretary shall" or one of its variants more than a thousand times. Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service found that ObamaCare created a "currently unknowable" number of new boards, commissions and offices, adding that "it is currently impossible to know how much influence they will ultimately have."

HHS is also not building this bureaucratic apparatus in a transparent way. Ten of the 12 new regulations that HHS has issued in the last six months have been "interim final rules" that are not open to the ordinary process of public comment.

The White House had to play favorites with Senators and special interests to pass ObamaCare, and its implementation is no less ugly. But the waiver wave is most telling for what it says about the architects of this plan. By bending their own rules, they're conceding their destructiveness.”

“CINCINNATI (AP) — In the first ruling by a federal appeals court on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, a panel in Cincinnati handed the administration a victory Wednesday by agreeing that the government can require a minimum amount of insurance for Americans.

A Republican-appointed judge joined with a Democratic appointee for the 2-1 majority in another milestone for Obama's hotly debated signature domestic initiative — the first time a Republican federal court appointee has affirmed the merits of the law.”

“...the government can require a minimum amount of insurance for Americans.

Based on what, I wonder? Is there any link to the decision/opinions?”

“http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/11a0168p-06.pdf

"Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the
minimum coverage requirement is essential to its broader reforms to the national markets
in health care delivery and health insurance. Therefore, the minimum coverage
provision is a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause power."”