We Passed It. We’re About To Find Out What’s In It.

[Liberty Belle]

We Passed It. We're About To Find Out What's In It.

I mean "we." It doesn't matter how you voted in the last election, or how your Congressman voted on the healthcare reform legislation. Whatever Congress and the President did, we did. Welcome to the Republic. Michael Tanner at CATO explains what we passed.

We were told that we had to pass healthcare reform because Americans can't afford insurance. Okay. Doesn't that mean that premiums should go down now?
[T]he RAND Corporation released a report concluding that not only would the hard-won health care package fail to curb premium increases, but the bill would drive premiums up as much as 17 percent for young people.

We were also told by the President, over and over again, that "if you like your health care plan, you get to keep it." No.
[T]he Congressional Budget Office now says that as many as 10 million workers will lose their current insurance under the bill. Some of those will have to buy new insurance through the government-run exchanges. Millions more will be thrown onto Medicaid.

That's "as many as ten million" people the President lied to. Well, at least we can rest assured that the healthcare bill we passed will reduce spending and help us balance the budget. Not.
[T]he government's chief actuary released his report on the bill recently, showing that the bill will actually increase health care spending by $311 billion over the next 10 years.

Tanner's piece has a lot more of this, and I urge you to read it. Diana Furchtgott-Roth at the Manhattan Institute considers the effects of the new bill on unskilled workers.

Under the new law, every employer with more than 50 workers will either have to offer health insurance or pay an annual penalty. The penalty for full-time employees is $2,000 per worker. For part-timers, employers will pay $2,000 for each "full-time equivalent worker," a block of 30 weekly hours of part-time work by the same or different employees.

Small enterprises with 50 employees or fewer will be the big winners. If they don't hire too many workers - another government-induced disincentive for hiring in this weak labor market - and stay within the 50-person limit, these firms won't have to provide health insurance and will have a cost advantage over the others.

In other words, the Healthcare Bill will penalize small firms that hire too many (more than 50) workers. These are the kind of businesses that hire a lot of first time, low-skilled workers. It creates a powerful incentive not to hire too many people, and to invest instead in labor-saving alternatives.

That's okay. All the job seekers who are disappointed because of this will get free healthcare. Free to them, at least. The rest of us will have to pony up for their care. This is what we did.

We did it at a time when the Federal Government was already on the path to insolvency. I say, if you are headed for the precipice at high speed, might as well put your foot on the accelerator. At least you'll get a better view. For a bit.

May 8, 2010

http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/

 

[Steve]

so far it is playing out badly.... I know of several small businesses who lost health insurance in the last few weeks....

one was told his net profits for the last two years was to low so they dropped him.. (he was paid up and ahead on his premiums)..

the other had missed/was late on a payment last fall,, so now six months later they gave him a choice,.. a plan that would almost double his cost or be dropped.

 

[hypocritexposer]

so far it is playing out badly.... I know of several small businesses who lost health insurance in the last few weeks....

one was told his net profits for the last two years was to low so they dropped him.. (he was paid up and ahead on his premiums)..

the other had missed/was late on a payment last fall,, so now six months later they gave him a choice,.. a plan that would almost double his cost or be dropped.

It's not only the small businesses. Large corporations are penciling it out and finding that it will be cheaper to pay the fines than it is to provide the health care coverage. Some of them will save billions by letting employees just get their subsidized coverage from through the government.

New evidence reveals that four big companies — Verizon (V), AT&T (A), John Deere (DE), and Caterpillar (CAT) — recently considered dumping health benefits and giving employees a "raise" to buy coverage on the state insurance exchanges to be created by the reform law. All bets are off if that happens.

The evidence comes from internal company documents that Fortune magazine obtained from a congressional committee, which requested them while investigating big-corporation complaints that the Affordable Care Act would collectively cost them $1.35 billion. (Short summary: The law closes a tax loophole that let companies double-count tax benefits established by Medicare drug program.) The committee was going to hold hearings on the companies' write-downs of this money, writes Fortune's Shawn Tully, until it saw the documents.

What they revealed is that all four companies believed that the savings for dropping employee health coverage would far outweigh the penalties they'd owe under the reform law for doing so — about $2,000 per employee. Even if the companies gave their workers raises with a post-tax value exceeding the cost of insurance premiums, after government subsidies, that amount plus the penalty would cost far less than the corporate health benefits did.

A slide from an internal AT&T presentation tells the story. Titled "Medical Cost vs. No Coverage Penalty," it shows that in 2009, AT&T spent $2.4 billion on health benefits for its nearly 300,000 active employees. The penalty for not covering those employees, by contrast, would be only $600 million, or 25 percent of its current spend.

http://industry.bnet.com/healthcare/10002665/unintended-consequences-maybe-corporations-will-dump-health-benefits-in-the-wake-of-reform/

 

[Anonymous]

One question to Liberty Belle-- Why when George W. Bush ran on and campaigned on (and I can show you news articles where he lists it as the number one problem as a campaign issue) the need for Health Care/Health Care Insurance reform--- and many Repub (conservative) Senators/Congressmen (Senator Orrin Hatch was a leader) came out with the same need - and said that we could not economically compete in the free world trade against all the countries providing total/major health care coverage--- and that all the voter polls named it as a major problem for years-- did the Republican leadership-- when in control of both the Congress and White House from 2001- 2007 not do anything? :???:

Especially when in the polls for all of that time period it was one of the top 3-4 problems the US people mentioned (followed/proceeded at different times by the Iraq War, crooked politicians and later the Bush Bust economy)...

Hatch and other Repubs even said last year that "Doing nothing is no longer an option"...

I'm not sure I like ( or even totally understand the long term effect of) the new health insurance plan (mainly because of all the false info put out by both sides )-- but the Repubs can't bitch because they sat on their butts sucking their thumbs for years and did nothing when they had the chance to....

It would be nice to just get an answer back from LB-- but I expect the normal amount of personal attacks from the playground folks.....

 

[Liberty Belle]

No Oldtimer, Republicans didn't fix health care and neither did the Democrats. But what Obama and the Democrats did do was socialize the whole health care system and turn it into just another government program like the broken Social Security and Medicare programs we have now. This year Social Security had to pay out more than it took in and Medicare is billions in the red.

State governments that are already having trouble paying for all the unfunded mandates sent to us from Washington are going to be drowning in red ink when we get hit with all the additional costs to our already ballooning Medicare and Medicaid programs thrown at us from Uncle Sam.

There is no way the American taxpayers can pay for this boondoggle and we are already losing doctors at an alarming rate. Our health care was the best in the world and we've had that taken away from us to be replaced by a system that will limit our options and mortgage our children's future. Sure doesn't seem like much of an improvement to me.

Tort reform and increasing competition by allowing insurance companies to cross state lines were things that would have actually helped make more affordable insurance rates for all of us, but Obama refused to even consider either option. Why? Maybe because the labor unions and the trial lawyers objected?

Looks to me like the American people were sold a bill of goods. This sure wasn't the change the voters hoped for. Am I bitching? You better believe I am!

 

[Frisco]

I think if Obama had first dug in and cleaned up the lobbying and hand greasing, too, that would have gone a long ways toward improving the health care system and all the other stuff, too. It sure would have set the ground work for all our politicians to come to the table and work something out.

I also believe McCain would not have followed through with his cleaning up the lobbying system and would not have done a thing to improve the health system.

 

[Clarencen]

Obama and the Democrates are telling us that the new health care bill is working, I can not see that, nor can I see where it will. It surely has nor done anything for me. My hospital insurance ( medicare supplement) cost has risem $250 a year just this year. all I can see is that it will continue to rise.

I don't know what needed to be done nor how. Our system was not entirely broken, We should have found the way to repair the faults one at a time and see how they worked. Instead we got a whole boondoggle of untried ideas that no one understands or has any idea of how they will work.

I have had about the same kind of experience here on the ranch. I am at the age I need to make changes. I have had several people who would want to come in and make big changes without a bit of experience or knowledge of how they would work out. They try to sell what they call their expertise. Their only expertise is what one or two college professors told them. I do still have a few assets, but I can not afford to expend them to farther someone's untried experments.

 

[HOSS SR.]

so far it is playing out badly.... I know of several small businesses who lost health insurance in the last few weeks....

one was told his net profits for the last two years was to low so they dropped him.. (he was paid up and ahead on his premiums)..

the other had missed/was late on a payment last fall,, so now six months later they gave him a choice,.. a plan that would almost double his cost or be dropped.

It's not only the small businesses. Large corporations are penciling it out and finding that it will be cheaper to pay the fines than it is to provide the health care coverage. Some of them will save billions by letting employees just get their subsidized coverage from through the government.

New evidence reveals that four big companies — Verizon (V), AT&T (A), John Deere (DE), and Caterpillar (CAT) — recently considered dumping health benefits and giving employees a "raise" to buy coverage on the state insurance exchanges to be created by the reform law. All bets are off if that happens.

The evidence comes from internal company documents that Fortune magazine obtained from a congressional committee, which requested them while investigating big-corporation complaints that the Affordable Care Act would collectively cost them $1.35 billion. (Short summary: The law closes a tax loophole that let companies double-count tax benefits established by Medicare drug program.) The committee was going to hold hearings on the companies' write-downs of this money, writes Fortune's Shawn Tully, until it saw the documents.

What they revealed is that all four companies believed that the savings for dropping employee health coverage would far outweigh the penalties they'd owe under the reform law for doing so — about $2,000 per employee. Even if the companies gave their workers raises with a post-tax value exceeding the cost of insurance premiums, after government subsidies, that amount plus the penalty would cost far less than the corporate health benefits did.

A slide from an internal AT&T presentation tells the story. Titled "Medical Cost vs. No Coverage Penalty," it shows that in 2009, AT&T spent $2.4 billion on health benefits for its nearly 300,000 active employees. The penalty for not covering those employees, by contrast, would be only $600 million, or 25 percent of its current spend.

http://industry.bnet.com/healthcare/10002665/unintended-consequences-maybe-corporations-will-dump-health-benefits-in-the-wake-of-reform/

I think that the whole point is to make it more expensive on companies so tha they would drop the employee insurance and pay the fines. The more people that can be put on a government program the better for the government. Healtcare will then become an entitlement and with the vast majority of the people on it who do you think will continue to get the votes? Thats right.....the party that keeps shoveling money into the government healthcare system. Take a look at Greece.....we will be there shortly at this rate.

 

[Liberty Belle]

We need to repeal ObamaCare and start over. A majority of Americans were against the Democrats' government takeover of health care before it passed and opposition is growing by the day.

Not only is ObamaCare hurting private sector employers and failing to lower premiums, a new government report says ObamaCare may be unconstitutional, citing specifically its unprecedented mandates. South Dakota is one of 17 states suing the federal government to stop ObamaCare for this very reason.

It's raising costs on states already struggling with budget gaps and high unemployment. It makes taxpayer funding available for abortions. And it will take an army of 16,000 new IRS agents to fan out and enforce this health care takeover that Americans didn't want and can't afford.

We need to lower health care costs by repealing ObamaCare and replacing it with common-sense solutions. Solutions like reining in junk lawsuits, letting Americans shop for coverage across state lines without new federal bureaucracy, and letting small businesses band together to buy coverage the same way big companies and unions do.

We don't need more spending or more taxes, and we certainly don't need more government.

The American people need to let the Obama administration know that we're serious in our opposition to the government takeover of our healthcare system. People are asking, "Where are the jobs?" But Democrats aren't listening. Their "tax, spend, and borrow" agenda has left us with two things: more debt and fewer jobs.

Somehow, we have got to stop this!

 

[Steve]

US healthcare was expensive, considered broke, but still worked.. now it is more expensive, broken more, and no one knows if it will even work,... so much for reform ???...

make you wonder how much it will cost for the next "comprehensive reform" of the Obama health care reform law?

 

[ranch hand]

President Barack Obama's new health care law could potentially add at least $115 billion more to government health care spending over the next 10 years, congressional budget referees said Tuesday.

more...http://www.ktvq.com/news/health-care-overhaul-could-cost-155b-more/