ObamaCare Roundup

A very nice and comprehensive article by Jeffrey Anderson in The Examiner.

"Obamacare taking on water

As they followed one another off the political cliff in voting for the health-care overhaul, Democratic senators and representatives comforted themselves with their own self-created myth that, although ObamaCare was horribly unpopular as a bill, it would prove to be quite fetching as a law. Furthermore, this transformation, this change they could believe in, would take place sooner rather than later — as voters would reward rather than punish them for passing ObamaCare in clear and open defiance of popular will....

Unfortunately (from the perspective of ObamaCare supporters), a steady stream of revelations of previously undiscovered horrors buried in the bowels of ObamaCare appears to have more than negated any gains that the administration might otherwise have made."

Each claim Mr. Anderson makes below (with the exception of item 10) has a link to the relevant source in his original article.

1) "Since passage, reports have revealed that ObamaCare would cost over $1 trillion by any standard, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), not “merely” $940 billion as previously reported (while its total costs in its real first decade, 2014 to 2023, would continue to be well over $2 trillion);

2) that ObamaCare has prompted major corporations to discuss dropping their employer-provided health-care plans;

3) that businesses would have to file 1099s not only for every person to whom they pay $600 in wages but for every vendor with whom they do $600 in business, thereby imposing a paperwork nightmare and incentivizing companies to avoid doing business with a myriad of small firms rather than a handful of big ones;

4) that ObamaCare would create 159 new federal agencies, offices, or programs;

5) that the Obama administration’s Medicare Chief Actuary says ObamaCare would raise U.S. health costs by $311 billion in relation to current law and would shift about 14 million people off of employer-provided insurance — and some of them onto Medicaid;

6) that ObamaCare’s would discourage employment, as — for example — hiring a 25th worker would cost a business $5,600 in addition to wages and benefits;

7 [I had not heard of this before]) that ObamaCare would impose a severe marriage penalty, offering additional subsidies as high as $10,425 a year if couples merely avoid marriage;

8) that a lone provision in ObamaCare, which would penalize employers if their employees spend more than 9.5 percent of their household income on insurance premiums, would cut the net income of businesses like White Castle by more than half;

9) that even though ObamaCare was supposed to get people out of emergency rooms and into doctors’ offices, those who build emergency rooms say the effect will be just the opposite and that they are gearing up for increased business;

10) that doctors shortages are looming and would be accentuated by ObamaCare, both because more people would seek care (otherwise, what would the $2 trillion be buying?) and because fewer people would likely enter a demanding profession that would now promise greater restrictions and lower pay;

11) and that President Obama’s nominee to head Medicare and Medicaid under ObamaCare is an open advocate of the British National Health Services’ NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) and its methods of rationing care."

Mr. Anderson continues:

"These revelations appear to have taken a toll. Together, they seem to have made a notoriously unpopular law significantly less popular.

In its May poll (conducted from May 11-16), Kaiser Health detected a noticeable decline in ObamaCare’s popularity. Almost alone among the polls, the monthly Kaiser poll had never showed ObamaCare facing a public-opinion deficit at any time this year. This is partly because Kaiser polls all Americans — not merely registered or likely voters — and ObamaCare polls better among the politically disengaged.

In April, Kaiser showed that the gap between ObamaCare’s supporters and its opponents was 3 percentage points — in ObamaCare’s favor. Now, in May, it shows that gap to be 6 percentage points in the other direction — a 9-point swing in just one month. (In a poll of likely voters, released in May but not in April, Kaiser shows ObamaCare to be facing a 10-point deficit.) Movement from last month has been even greater among those with strong sentiments, as the gap between those who strongly support the overhaul and those who strongly oppose it has widened from 7 points (30 to 23 percent) to 18 points (32 to 14 percent). Furthermore, only 44 percent now say they are “confused” by the law, compared to 55 percent last month. To know ObamaCare is apparently not to love ObamaCare."

He also links to a long column by Mr. Peter J. Hansen, suggesting a number of common-sense approaches to reforming health care.