"Supporters of ObamaCare acknowledge it will have some unintended consequences. Yet surprisingly little attention has been focused on the law's most problematic provision: government subsidies to help individuals and families purchase health insurance."
"Well, after just six months of implementation, it’s clear that even ObamaCare’s fiercest critics underestimated just how badly and how quickly the new law would distort decision-making in American health care."
"Mr. Obama also said repeatedly that if you like your current coverage, you can keep it. According to an analysis by John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, that won't be true for between 87 million and 117 million Americans. Either their employer will stop providing insurance, or they'll see benefits go down and co-pays rise as insurers and employers wrestle with the law's mandates."
ObamaCare’s mandates will cost many low-income workers their employer-based insurance coverage. The Administration promises to waive the regulations, but that merely further politicizes health care decisions and centralizes more power in Washington. “Any such criticism now triggers an autonomic reflex among administration spokesmen where they regurgitate the lines, ‘Americans have seen what happens when insurance companies have free rein. The Affordable Care Act ends insurance companies’ worst abuses.’ As if giving bureaucrats free rein to engage in abusive government practices is an improvement.”
"The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, is to the law of unintended consequences what Newton’s apple was to the law of gravity: the illustration that bonks us on the head with its obviousness. Practically every week since its passage has added a new dimension of mirth to Nancy Pelosi’s punchline for the ages, that we had to pass the bill to find out what is in it. Out of the mouths of babes and clueless politicians . . ."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius threatened insurance companies to stop telling customers that higher prices can be blamed on ObamaCare. "But there is every reason to think this alleged libel is true. The health care law requires health insurers to do all sorts of things, such as eliminate lifetime limits on total costs, include various preventive care with no co-payment, and let unmarried dependent children stay on their parents' policies until the age of 26. Additional requirements will take effect in 2014."
"To counter this election-year ruse, my colleagues and I at Docs4PatientCare are enlisting thousands of doctors in an unorthodox and unprecedented action. Our patients have always expected a certain standard of care from their doctors, which includes providing them with pertinent information that may affect their quality of life. Because the issue this election is so stark—literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead—we are this week posting a 'Dear Patient' letter in our waiting rooms."
"They now understand that the public has not, and will not, buy the argument that a government takeover of American health care will somehow lower costs. Americans have long understood that Obamacare is a massive new spending commitment, piled on top of the unaffordable ones already on the federal books. That’s a recipe for financial disaster, not deficit cutting. The solution is repeal coupled with a reform that puts consumers, not the government, in charge of controlling costs. That’s the way to fix health care — and the budget too. And, yes, it can be done."
ObamaCare supporters are abandoning their campaign to tout the law, instead advising lawmakers running for reelection to promise to "improve it." Their polling shows that Americans have not been persuaded by advocates' claims that the law will lower costs or reduce deficits.
"From 1990 to 1995, we served as public trustees for Social Security and Medicare. As a Democrat and a Republican (now an independent), we worked together on a professional and nonpartisan basis with the other trustees - the secretaries of health and human services, labor and Treasury - to ensure the integrity and credibility of the annual reports on these critically important social insurance programs. [T]he conclusions expressed in this year's Medicare report were, to our minds, based on unreasonable assumptions that produced unrealistic and misleading results. The unwarrantedly optimistic report could produce a serious misunderstanding of the true financial condition of Medicare and result in significant public confusion."
