Pamphlet Review: The obamaCare Disaster; Part 2

Part 2:  Increasing Health Costs

1.  Expanded Medicaid Eligibility.

• Will initially include those up to 138% of the 'poverty level.'
• Medicaid projected to cost almost $5TRILLION over next 10 years; 674BILLION in 2017.
• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimate: enrollment expanded by 24 MILLION new beneficiaries by 2015 (adding $410BILLION in further federal costs in next ten years, alone).
• Some of these added costs will be borne by state governments.

2.  Subsidies for Middle- and Upper-income Families.

• obamaCare vastly increases federal costs by adopting massive insurance entitlement program for families up to 4 times the poverty level.
• CBO estimate: Additional $457BILLION in first 6 years, alone.
• Program ultimately will cost far more than now projected.

3.  Supply and Demand Pressure.

• obamaCare increases demand for care in covering low-income uninsured through expanded Medicaid, subsidizing middle- and upper-income families.
• obamaCare requires employers and individuals buy insurance.
• obamaCare forces enrichment of benefits provided by the insurance available through the new 'insurance exchanges.'
• Citizens will demand and use health care services up to the apoint that it actually starts  to cause harm, rather than weighing possible benefit against cost.
• obamaCare increases demand for care, while simultaneously restricting supply, causing rising prices.  This will force costs for families and businesses to increase.

4.  New Coverage Mandates.

• Insurance obamaCare forces individuals to buy and employers to provide.... will contain mandated benefits that drive up costs and utilization; i.e., prevention of alcohol abuse, depression, obesity.  These and others will be "free" under new insurance plans.
• State mandates for expensive and infrequently used services like drug rehabilitation and mental health services equal nearly 25% of private health insurance costs.
• obama regime assures the public  these new benefits will be "free" for consumers (classic 'Clintonesque' "Smoke'n'Mirrors!!").  Insurance companies will be forced to raise premiums on the rest of us to finance these "free" services.

5.  Guaranteed Issue and Community Rating.

• obamaCare requires all insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions-for everyone who apples; no matter the level of cost or recovery time (aka-"guaranteed issue").
• obamaCare prohibits insurers' varying rates based on medical condition or illness of applicant (CURRENTLY: Insurers cannot discontinue a policy or harge highter rates because the insured becomes ill).
• "Guaranteed Issue" and "community rating" requirements have proven to raise insurance premiums sharply in every state they've been tried!!  The "Clown Prince" believes he's 'solved' this problem by requiring everyone to be insured at all times.
• A study by Wellpoint, Inc.--using their own cost and claims data--determined that insurance premiums for the young and healthy would triple in some states[Wellpoint, Inc., is the largest insurer in the BS/BC Association].
• A 2009 study by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance concluded that obamaCare would cause a near-doubling of premiums in the 'individual' market.

6.  Taxes on Health Insurance.

• obamaCare imposes dozens of new taxes that will raise the cost of the very thing they are supposed to be making more affordable.
• The "Cadillac Tax" is projected to raise $32BILLION over the first decade.
• obamaCare imposes an additonal tax on premiums paid to all insurers; increasing costs $60BILLION in the first decade.
• All the additional and increased taxes are assumed to be passed on to the consumer.

7.  Taxes on Drugs and Medical Devices.

• obamaCare imposes $27BILLION/year tax on manufacturers and imprters of pharmaceutical drugs.
• obamaCare imposes a new 2.3% tax on medical device manufacturers (+$26.3BILLION/year).  More than 80,000 medical devices manufactured in the U.S., including heart valves, pacemakers, incubators, thermometers.

8.  Increased Cost-Shifting.

• obamaCare eventually expands with an additional 24MILLION participants.  Requires additional cost-shifting to the privately insured and the uninsured.
• Medicare and Medicaid currently badly underpays doctors and hospitals; providers surely will increase prices to privatley insured and uninsured patients.
• obamaCare projects $2.9TRILLION in Medicare reimbursement savings; HIGHLY UNLIKELY to be achieved!
• A Milliman, Inc. (a top national acutary) study indicates cost-shifting will increase cost of private insurance by $88.5BILLION (an increase of $1,788/family of four).

9.  Conclusion (a verbatim transcript[Emphasis and Nicknames; MINE]).

    The combined impact of all these spending increases is uncertain, but the menbers we are reasonably sure of are enormous.  Expanding Medicaid enrollment will cost $41BILLION a year, subsidies to middle- and upper-income families will add $83BILLION more, and new taxes on drugs and medical devices, $53.3BILLION more.
    Big as they are, these spending increases are small compared to the price increases caused by mandating guaranteed issue and community rating, which reasearch we've cited indicates will double the cost of health insurance for many people with individual coverage.  The impact of mandating expensive and easily abused kinds of coverage, and cost-shifting by Medicaid and Medicare, could easily lead to rate increases of similar magnitudes.
    Just days after obamaCare was sighed by the "Clown Prince," major american employers began modifying their financial statements as required by law to document the losses they would already start incurring under just one provision of the Act, raising taxes on their retiree health benefits.  Among the business reporting expected losses were AT&T, $1BILLION; Verizon, $970MILLION; Deere & Co., $150MILLION; Boeing, $150MILLION; Caterpillar, $100MILLION; Lockheed Martin, $96MILLION; Illinois Tool Works, $22MILLION; Honeywell, $13MILLION; and Goodrich, $10MILLION.  The cost increases had already begun, exactly contrary to "Clown Prince" obama's promises.
    As CBO Budget Chif Douglas Elmendorf testified befrore Congress in the summer of 2009 reguarding the then-pending legislation: "In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.  On the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal respoinsibility for health care costs.

Next Friday, I shall continue this review of "The obamaCare Disaster" by Peter Ferrara.  EVERYONE should have his or her own copy, which can be obtained FREE from The Heartland Institute (http://www.heartland.org/).