Category Archives: ObamaCare

Finding the Faults and Repairing the Unaffordable Care Act

The Perfect Storm

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President Barack Obama signed the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” into law yesterday. They drank champagne at the White House and Kool-Aid around the blue states.

This combination of tax and mandate is the most significant regulatory remodeling of the U.S. healthcare system since Medicare and Medicaid passed Congress in 1965.

Conservatives should hate Obamacare because it will eventually raise taxes by Two Trillion-with-a-T dollars.
Libertarians should hate Obamacare because it immediately expands the size of government.
Liberals should hate Obamacare because it will double the size and scope of the insurance companies they blame entirely for the health care crisis.

My advice? Buy stock in Unitedhealth Group (UNH, trading at $21.08/sh) and Wellpoint (WLP, trading at $36.42/sh).

Mr. Obama has made an interesting progression. In 2009, he stole what was once the largest corporation in the world and gave it to his political cronies. In 2010, he stole what is the largest health care system in the world and gave it to the insurance companies. In 2011, it appears he will steal the largest democracy in the world and give it to our (“former”) enemies.

And you thought The Perfect Storm was just a movie.

 

The Obamacare Observations

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This directory lists many No Puffin Perspective™ articles about the euphemistically named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010.

The New England Journal of Medicine reported in 2009 that “Health care spending represents a growing share of our national income and is projected to increase from 16% of the gross domestic product today to 20% by 2018.”

The first two articles in the directory are a challenge to fix the existing health care system starting from the simple premise, Health care in America is fundamentally broken. The remainder are but a sample of what the Obama Administration called “glitches” in the rollout and continuation of nationalized health care.

How to Fix It, Part I
How to Fix It, Part II

Worser
Here’s What Obamacare Actually Does For You
Not a Single Dime
We’re Number One!
Why Your Premium Just Went Up
One Piece At A Time
Disinformation?
Sleight of Something
They Got the Gold Mine (We Got the Shaft)
Change We Can Believe In!
First Among Equals
Obamacare
The Countdown to Nationalization, Part III
Exchange?
I Told You So.
We’re Number One!
The Perfect Storm
Throw Cash at It
How Much Will the Government Give You?
Diminishing Expectations
Know the Code, Part I
Know the Code, Part II
Paying for It
Hit the Road, a roundup of recent “successes”
The Unaffordable Care Act, Part 739
Democrats are Insurance Pawns

All Obamacare Topics, starting with the most recent.

 

The Countdown to Nationalization, Part III

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ObamaCare, due to be snuck back to the Senate hidden amongst 17 votes taken in the House today, will fix everything that’s wrong with health care in America.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will not, as the President said yesterday, “solve every single problem in our health care system right away.” Of course, Demorats would also have you believe that solving 2 out 15,387 problems in our health care system is everything we need.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will save you money! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe the $930 billion extra coming out of your paycheck is actually a bonus.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will cure what ails you! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe an Emergency Room wait until 2014 is just fine.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will save you money! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe twice as many people covered costs half as much. After all, Medicare provided health care coverage for 45 million Americans in 2008. Without any eligibility rules changes, enrollment is expected nearly to double to 78 million by 2030 although the number of workers paying in to Medicare each year from now until then will remain nearly the same. I guess it is the economy of scale.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will cure what ails you right now! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe that their rush to passage has nothing to do with 65% of their constituents who want real reform rather than ObamaCare.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will save you money! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe 12,000 new IRS employees will work for free. Medicare will spend $452 billion or 12.5% of the federal budget on care this year. Medicare is expected to cost $6.4 trillion from now until 2019 or 14.8% of the federal budget for the period.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare will be free of all special interest deals like the Cornhusker Kickback to states and insurance companies. Of course, Demorats would also have you believe Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) is the Good Fairy.

Demorats would have you believe ObamaCare can take $522 billion out of Medicare by cutting waste and fraud to save you money! Of course, Demorats would also have you believe we need fewer jail cells because criminals will behave if we ask them nicely.

Demorats would have you believe the Social Security Trust Fund can underwrite ObamaCare to the tune of $71 billion. Of course, Demorats would also have you believe the increase in cost of living last year didn’t affect seniors because they have a fixed income.

Demorats would have you believe the new $50 billion long-term ObamaCare insurance premium isn’t a cost increase. Of course, Demorats would also have you believe they’ll never have to pay out $50 billion for long-term care because those costs will not come before 2020.

Demorats would have you believe doctors who already receive less than a quarter of what they bill will accept $371 billion less for their services under ObamaCare. Of course, Demorats would also have you believe a quarter of doctors or more won’t just drop taking Medicare patients when this cut occurs.

Demorats would have you believe the $210 billion new ObamaCare tax on investment income will help the economy. Of course, Demorats would also have you believe the Moon is made of blue cheese.

Drop your drawers and bend over the examining table, America. Demorats would have you believe this won’t hurt a bit.

“Obamacare”

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Even the NYTimes calls it that in “Health Reform Myths,” an op-ed by Paul Krugman this morning. The teaser starts out, “Well-informed people are buying into three big myths about Obamacare.”

Mr. Krugman gets it wrong, though. “This is a reasonable, responsible plan,” he writes. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

I’m here to tell you otherwise and I hope you listen.

“The second myth is that the proposed reform does nothing to control costs. To support this claim, critics point to reports by the Medicare actuary, who predicts that total national health spending would be slightly higher in 2019 with reform than without it.

“Even if this prediction were correct, it points to a pretty good bargain. The actuary’s assessment of the Senate bill, for example, finds that it would raise total health care spending by less than 1 percent…

Health care costs more than $6,300 a piece for every man woman and child in this country today. That’s already verging on criminal. Raising that cost, even a measly $63, ain’t a bargain. In the real world we need to cut health care costs in half. ObamaCare doesn’t even pretend to try.

50 percent off? Now that’s a bargain.

First Among Equals

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A bill in the Vermont House shows that “Vermont First” is not always a distinction.

Vermont is the pilot project for the nation. The U.S. Post Office printed its first stamp in Brattleboro in 1846. The Social Security Administration issued the first check, $22.54, to a Vermont widow in 1940. The first program to force universal health care came with a Vermont law that banned cherry picking in 1992. Now the Vermont Assembly would legislate our non-profit hospitals out of business.

An Act Relating to Health Care Cost Containment is now in the hands of the House Committee on Health Care.

Buried among the Medicaid information technology funds, task forces, hospital budget review programs, and certificate of need rules, this bill will require that insurers participate in the Blueprint for Health and will prohibit hospitals from paying for “marketing and advertising.” It also sets up the State to take over any hospital in financial jeopardy. Shades of General Motors. The experience we have had with the State Hospital at Waterbury shows how well Vermont runs health care in the real world.

That experience matters not. The Vermont House has 94 Democrats, 5 Progressives, 3 Independents, and 48 Republicans. The Vermont Senate has 22 Democrats, 1 Progressive, and 7 Republicans. Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin (D-Windham) is running for governor. House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Lamoille-Washington) has not announced.

The “Blueprint for Health” in the bill will become a new statewide infrastructure/prevention/care management bureaucracy. It includes “an integrated approach to patient self-management, community development, health care system and professional practice change, and information technology initiatives.” The Blueprint Bureaucracy has the carrot of withholding Medicare payments from “under performers” and the stick of taking over the hospitals. Vermont docs and other providers receive about 40 percent of their revenue from Medicare and Medicaid.

  • “Marketing and advertising” means promotion, or any activity that is intended to be used or is used to influence individuals seeking health care services to use a specific hospital to attain those services.
  • Individual hospital budgets established under this section shall: … include a finding that the analysis provided in subdivision (b)(9) of this section is a reasonable methodology for reflecting a reduction in net revenues for non-Medicaid payers; and not include spending on marketing and advertising.
  • The term hospital shall also include all corporate or other entities affiliated with the licensed hospital…

I’m glad the Legislature has finally noticed that the skyrocketing cost of health care is a wee bit of a problem. That’s why House Health Care Committee Chair Steve Maier (D-Middlebury) says he included a provision to prohibit hospital from spending money for advertising and marketing. “It’s not producing health care,” he told the Burlington Free Press.

When I read about the bill, I thought this was a First Amendment issue. After all, even Vermont Law School constitutional law scholar Cheryl Hanna told the Burlington Free Press the legislation raised significant constitutional questions.

That’s a red herring.

The bill is another land grab, perpetrated by a legislature determined to gobble up all segments of health care from patient’s the first tiny down payment to the last visit to the morgue.

Here’s how that works. Hospitals get squeezed by shrinking Medicare payments, swelling Medicare patient loads, new budget caps mandated by the Blueprint for Health bureaucracy, and fleeing traditional payments. Hospital owners leave the state when confronted by a power grab at their books. Hospitals fail. Hospitals get taken over by the Blueprint for Health bureaucracy.

I would be werry werry afwaid if I were a hospital owner or administrator in any state in the union. After all, as Vermont goes, so goes the nation.

Did We the OverTaxed People sit out the last couple of election cycles? If we can’t learn from the Vermont experience, we could learn from the Sunni Arabs who sat out Iraqi elections in 2005. The need to protect their own interests brought Sunni Arabs out in droves on Sunday.