It seems, once again, that Obama and congress have decided that one more part of ObamaCare can’t really work right now. I know…shocker!
Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.
So what does this mean?
Small businesses will still have the ability to purchase a health plan for their employees through a health insurance exchange set up under the law. But the employees won’t have a choice of plan. Originally, the law called for the small business exchanges to let small employers pick a benefit tier to offer their employees; workers would then be able to select from a variety of plans within that tier. Because of the delay, the 33 exchanges run by the federal government will only allow employers to pick a single plan to offer all employees. States running their own exchanges will have the option to offer choice, but won’t be required to do so.
What that means is that exchanges in the majority of states won’t be offering health plan choice to small business owners. For all practical purposes, then, the law’s exchanges will offer nothing to small business owners and employees. As health policy professor (and ObamaCare supporter) Timothy Jost noted in Health Affairs when the delay was first proposed, the choice option was the “primary benefit” offered by the law’s small business exchange system. Without that option, he wrote, it’s “unclear what advantage” those exchanges would actually offer to small employers over currently available insurance options. The Chamber of Commerce seems to agree. As USA Today notes, it issued a statement saying that because of the delay, small business insurance purchased in the health exchange, “will be of little or no value to employers, or by extension, their employees.”
Yuyal Levin has a few questions:
Leaving aside the question of where exactly the administration is getting the authority for the delay (given the fact that the requirement to implement this provision, in section 1311(b)(1) of the law, begins with the words “Each State shall, not later than January 1, 2014, establish”), and leaving aside the fact that this provision was the price of at least one senator’s vote for Obamacare (Mary Landrieu’s) and perhaps others’, the fact of the delay should get members of Congress from both parties thinking. We have already seen other deadlines pushed back, and we will see more. Why not formalize this process and just push back the implementation of the entire law by at least a year?
Sure, why not. Lets delay it a year, and then next year delay it again. We all know this scheme isn’t going to work, the question is at what point will leaders of both parties get their heads out of their asses and come to grips with this?
Krauthammer laid it out last night…
Bret Bier – The bottom line there Charles is the thing that ObamaCare is supposed to do, which is change the cost curve, it does not appear that it is set up to do that at this point, in fact the cost curve is going the other way.
Charles Krauthammer – Of course, we already know from the CBO numbers that is will increase the cost of healthcare by 1.3 trillion dollars, the reason that it is deficit neutral is because ObamaCare at the same time increases taxes by the same amount plus a dollar so it looks as though its not costing anything. This is what happens when you have an administration that has the idea that it can reform, remake, and completely re-regulate 1/6th of the biggest economy on planet earth. I mean I’m not surprised that the regulations are late and are unclear, and they are also incredibly arbitrary. The waivers people get, thousands of them, who gets them? Who gets it, who doesn’t, somebody that the government or the democrats and liberals likes. Somebody who is not liked are you going to get a waiver? Look, when you take away the essence of insurance. You set a premium by actuarial risk, so if your 60 your health care costs are six times what it is for a twenty year old. Your premiums are six times as much but the congress in its wisdom has decided it should be three times instead of six so once you do that you no longer have an insurance company, this is not insurance anymore, this is regulation, this is government dictated rates like the electrical company and people are surprised that all of a sudden you got all these things that aren’t working harmoniously as you would in a market. So all of this stuff, the delays, the regulations, the arbitrariness, the unfairness, is a direct result of taking over a sixth of the American economy on a flier in a system that nobody else has devised in the history of man.
ObamaCare requires insurers to take on more risk with less premiums.
THIS WILL NOT WORK.
Instead we will have another entitlement ponsi scheme like Social Security, Medicare and all the rest, that we, our children, our grandchildren will be paying out the nose for with increased taxes.
Under the Affordable Care Act, medical claim costs, the largest driver of health insurance premiums, are expected to increase by 32 percent for individuals, a new study by the Society of Actuaries finds.
Though some states might see declines in cost-per-person medical claims, the report found “the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers,” the Associated Press reports.
California’s claim costs are estimated to increase by 62 percent by 2017. In Ohio, it’s expected to be 80 percent. Florida costs are expected to grow 20 percent and in Maryland, 67 percent. The higher claim costs are related to the increase in sick people expected to join the pool, according to the report.
And what will we get once it gets implemented?
Look how Britain currently (and America in the future under ObamaCare) has suffered with health care that simply reflects the truth of that old adage:
You want low-cost and high-quality health care? Fine, you’ll have to wait for several months to see a doctor, but that’s OK — you got two out of three.
Don’t want to wait? OK, we can do that, too. It will be fast and cheap, but we can’t guarantee top quality. Now are you happy?
Oh, you want top quality and you want it immediately? Fine, we can do that, too, but you can forget cheap.
And these trade-offs apply not just to health care, but to everything else that government (or private industry, for that matter) provides.
Buckle up kids…it’s going to get mighty bumpy.
See author page
Liberal/Progressive/Socialist “Feel Good Plans” always well thought out…well planned….ready to roll…
…and, these feel good plans??
They NEVER EVER…back fire…and NEVER hurt a multitude of the population in a negative way…(sarc)
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
As I have said multiple times on this blog (I am a physician) everyone should ask every politician who voted for this Marxist power grab how hiring 16,000 new IRS agents but not one single new doctor will provide health care for the 30-45 million they claimed were uninsured, unless the plan is to have “health care” redefined as having the IRS agents give you their special tax oriented rectal exam.
Obamacare delenda est.
And frankly, you should ask any physician who tells you he or she supports Obamacare the same exact question. If they can’t give you anything other than vapid platitudes with no basis in reality, then might I suggest that you are taking your life in your hands trusting your healthcare to someone with such poor judgement that they cannot see what a sticking pile of parasite infested offal Obamacare is?
@Pete: #2
The #1 priority of obamacare is to make sure as many people sign up and start paying as they can get. The prime objective is to bring in as much money as they can, not to take care of as many patients as they can. That costs money.
I’m glad I am on Medicare, but I don’t see that lasting my lifetime. Is there one federal government agency that was set up for the people that is actually working like it should? I can’t think of any.
A bit off topic. I went to the doctor’s office a couple of weeks ago and had to fill out some forms. One of the questions was, do you own a gun, what type, etc. etc. I crossed it off with my pen and wrote, none of your damn business. The additional question was if I am not mistaken because of obamacare as I have never been asked this question before.
The truth of the matter is that we spent the last 100 years fighting communism around the rest of the world, and ignored the fact that McCarthy was right the problem was amongst us. It started back in 1910 and Obamacare is it’s crowning achievement.
They could never gain through the vote the power to completely control the American public. With Obamacare they achieve the goal of complete control of our society. It is 1/6th of economy, it is the very freedom of our existence, it is in fact the tool over whether we live or die.
The arrogance of the left is they believe that the only reason communism didn’t work anywhere else is that they weren’t the ones running it.
Enchanted no that question originated years ago, it was made illegal for Doctors to ask it, Obamacare not only made it legal again, but has the CDC gathering the data for “Study”
The “Party of Choice” strikes again…
Delays in a government program ?? why that is unheard of in MY lifetime.
Reminds me of the old project management joke: Cost, Quality and Schedule – Pick two.
The picture at top of article should be of Auschwitz inmates lined up for the gas chambers! With the same signage.
@CPOMustang: You nailed it! In Alberta,its supposedly free. The quality is pretty good if the doctors don’t become bureaucrats. The schedule is- you could die first.
Alberta has a 40 billion $ budget for 3 and a half million people. 40 to 45% of it is medical care. The dollars involved are obscene and rife with waste and corruption. The Federalis are supposed to pay half which they didn’t. Alberta got downloaded to 88% of the cost. The Liberal Party took the accolades and avoided their fiscal responsibility. Watch your feds dump this monstrosity onto the states who are already broke. Your feds have grabbed more power and have grown government immensely. You hire more employees who vote Democrap- they stay in power forever. Its the same with the something for nothing crowd. The end result is the Welfare States of America.
@oil guy from Alberta:
Something that will continue to require more and more money(wealth) to keep afloat. And where do they think all of this money is going to come from? They are breaking the backs of the hard working people who actually pay for things. Do they care? No, because in their mind, it is simply a matter of demanding even more from those people. They do not have the mental acumen to figure out that people have a breaking point, and when that is reached, they will no longer stand by allowing themselves to be looted out of house and home. And they will do one of a handful of things. Move to a nicer business/living environment. Or join the rolls of the freeloaders themselves. Or become criminals by engaging in underground economies to keep their standard of living acceptable.
Yeah, keep listening to the liars at Fox News, lol! Yeah, lets end Obamacare and go back to allowing insurance companies to let you die.
I reccommend that any employee of firms in states that refused to set up exchanges be allowed to buy in to medicare until the exchanges are up and running. That way these employees will have two choices at least.
@john: #10
You must not be out of your diapers yet.
@Enchanted:
That question has been asked of children for a few years now. Supposedly for ‘safety’ reasons. Are there guns in the house. Are they properly locked up. Etc.
@John … ah another useful idiot, yes Foxnews Lies and The Politicians tell the truth.
Hey how much money you got, there is this bridge that I have, it has a great view you interested in purchasing it?
@john #15
My wife has terminal cancer, for which she is receiving chemotherapy. We got a letter yesterday from my insurance company that now not only will we have to pay the office co-pay for each treatment, but also the co-insurance amount due at the time of treatment, instead of it rolling into our max out of pocket, which we are on a payment plan for. This will amount to somewhere between 5-50% of the cost of treatment. Oh, and BTW, my monthly premium has increased by 70% since the ACA was passed.
The good news is that there is no co-pay or co-insurance charge for birth control.
@trixie: A locked up gun is the same as not having one, useless. When seconds count the polices are 15 minutes away. While this little addage seems trite, we’ve got a rash of daytime burglaries in my area.. the police are keeping it very very very quiet, people pretending to be from a solar company or some such. The police have zero interest in this kind of stuff. What I will say is that if these creeps don’t run, they’d best consider the consequences of their chosen occupation. As for telling anyone that I do or don’t have weapons, they’ll have to come and find out.
@Dan: Dan, sorry about your wife, it’s tough, very tough. I’ve read that due to the low payment of some insurances as mandated by the unAHCA certain effective/expensive drugs aren’t being administered. Any truth to this?