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As U.S. Struggles with Health Reform, the Amish Go their Own Way

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Jonathan BachmanThe debate over U.S. healthcare reform that has gripped the nation and led to a government shutdown is of small concern in rural Pennsylvania’s Amish country for a very simple reason.

Along with eschewing cars and many other modern technologies, the descendants of 18th-Century German immigrants who practice the Amish and Old Order Mennonite religions, have effectively opted out of Obamacare, along with most federal safety net programs.

A little-known provision of the law with its roots in a 1950s battle over Social Security exempts these communities from the individual mandate, an element of the Affordable Care Act that requires most Americans to purchase health insurance in some form.

But it is not the idea of health insurance the Amish reject – the close-knit communities essentially insure themselves.

“We have our own health care,” said a retired Amish carpenter, who like other Amish interviewed for this story, asked that his name not be used because of a traditional aversion to publicity and bringing attention to oneself.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare: States Want a Delay, Too

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Photo Credit: George Ruhe‘I wish we had one more year:’ States are struggling to launch Obamacare on time

By Sarah Kliff. Facing tight deadlines and daunting workloads, states across the country are scaling back ambitions for implementing the Affordable Care Act.

At a monthly board meeting of Connecticut’s health insurance exchange, members of the standing-room-only crowd got a reminder that they, too, were behind schedule. The insurance marketplace they were working on nights and weekends won’t be completely ready on time.

“It is highly complex, it’s unprecedented and it’s not going to be smooth,” Kevin Counihan, chief executive of the state’s exchange, Access Health CT, told the group.

That’s why Connecticut — like other states across the country — has lowered the bar, doing what it can in the time it has left before the health-care law’s major programs are launched Oct. 1.

Although the states are promising to provide new marketplaces for individuals to compare and buy health insurance plans, the Web portals will be a bare-bones version of what was initially envisioned. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Karen T. BorchersCBO: Obamacare Delay Will Cost Feds Billions

By Tony Pugh. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government will lose $10 billion in employer penalties in 2015 because of the delayed enforcement. Likewise, many expect that federal outlays to help low- and moderate-income people purchase coverage will grow with employers no longer required to provide coverage next year.

“At a minimum, the federal revenue from fines is gone. More realistically, the costs of already bloated insurance subsidies will escalate and the red ink will rise,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank.

Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who helped design the federal health law, said the decision to forego the $10 billion in penalties was both pragmatic and political.

“Basically, it was their judgment that it was causing too many logistical and political headaches and it wasn’t that essential to the law, so they decided to just delay it a year and live with the revenue loss,” Gruber said Wednesday.

Obama officials said as much on Tuesday, when they announced plans to “revamp and simplify” the process of reporting the status of employee coverage and calculating appropriate penalties. “We will convene employers, insurers and experts to propose a smarter system and, in the interim, suspend reporting for 2014,” said White House special adviser Valerie Jarrett. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/GettyObama Skips Past Congress Again With Health Mandate Delay

By Steven T. Dennis and Matt Fuller. President Barack Obama’s latest legal end run around Congress — delaying enforcement of the employer health mandate — has sparked more questions about whether he’s abusing his executive discretion under the Constitution.

The move announced late Tuesday was the latest in a string of decisions where the president, facing a divided Congress unable to get much done beyond keeping the government running, has taken matters into his own hands.

Where a previous president might have asked for a legislative fix if a mandate was proving too onerous for business, the Obama administration put out a couple of blog posts saying that, in listening to the business community, it decided not to enforce a key part of the 3-year-old health law for another year.

The administration notes that parts of laws are delayed in implementation all the time — including various pieces of the tax code.

A Treasury official said the administration has “longstanding administrative authority to grant transition relief when implementing new legislation like the ACA.” Read more from this story HERE.

Republican Alternative to Obamacare Gives Tax Credits for Low Wage Earners to Buy Health Insurance

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Republicans, long criticized for pushing for the elimination of the health care reform law without a way to replace it, have come up with their own plan.

Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., an orthopedic surgeon, has authored a 247-page bill, entitled the “Empowering Patients First Act” [that is] one-tenth the size of the Affordable Care Act [and] repeals the entirety of Obamacare.

It offers in its place refundable tax credits of up to $5,000 for low-income individuals and families to purchase health insurance on the private market. And those who buy health insurance privately rather than through their employment, would be able to deduct the among on their taxes, which they are currently unable to do.

Other provisions in the bill include allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, which some believe will lower costs by increasing competitiveness. The legislation also aims to reform the medical malpractice industry, which has dramatically raised insurance costs for doctors, by creating health care tribunals to review malpractice cases and make recommendations about liability and compensation.

Read more from this story HERE.

By 22-Point Margin, Voters Favor Obamacare’s Repeal

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard It would be a major understatement to say that Obamacare has had a bad spring. Around the time of Lincoln’s birthday, registered voters told Fox News that, by a margin of 6 percentage points (48 to 42 percent), it would “be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009” than it would be “to leave the new health care law in place.” Three months later, as we head into Memorial Day, nostalgia for the good ol’ days of 2009 now beats Obamacare by a whopping 22 points (56 to 34 percent).

That’s saying something, because, back in 2009 — largely as a result of Republicans’ refusal to do much of anything on health care in the nearly decade-and-a-half between their defeat of Hillarycare and their defeat at the hands of Obama — Americans clearly weren’t very happy with the health-care status quo. Every one of the half-dozen polls published by RealClearPolitics in the first half of 2009 — before Obamacare clearly took shape — showed Americans favoring efforts to reform our health-care system. Now, Obamacare is even more unpopular than the unpopular pre-Obamacare status quo — and that has been true for nearly four years.

None of this, however, should lull Republicans into thinking there’s no need for them to advance conservative, limited-government reforms in lieu of Obamacare’s liberal, big-government model of centralized control over American medicine. For at least two main reasons, it’s crucial that the GOP push not only for the full repeal of Obamacare, but also for real reform.

Read more from this story HERE.

Businesses Already Boosting Employee Premiums, Co-Pays for Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Already hit with cost increases to cover minor Obamacare demands, businesses are boosting employee payments through higher insurance premiums and doctor visit co-pays in advance of the bulk of the health reform law’s rules taking effect Jan. 1.

A sweeping survey of several hundred U.S. businesses by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that their costs have already jumped because of a rule requiring them to cover employees’ children up to age 26.

To prepare for the full impact of Obamacare, said the foundation, employers are implementing “diverse cost-management initiatives.” Some 43 percent are boosting premiums, 34 percent are increasing employee dependent coverage costs, and 31 percent are raising co-pays or “out-of-pocket limits.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. has been Working “for Years” to “Gut Welfare Reform”

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Photo Credit: APThe Obama administration was planning to weaken the welfare work requirements as far back as 2009, GOP lawmakers charge.

An internal Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) memo from 2009 released Tuesday by Senate Finance Committee ranking member Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp explores the legal justifications to allow the HHS secretary to waive work and other requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) that were part of the 1996 welfare reform law.

Last summer the Obama administration issued an Information Memorandum allowing states apply to waive the TANF work requirement. At the time, the administration said this was due to requests from some states for more flexibility and was meant as a way to test strategies “to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”

Republicans, including then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney, charged that the action “gut” the 1996 welfare reform.

According to Hatch and Camp, the memo shows that the Obama administration was looking to find ways to get around the work requirement years in advance of receiving requests from states.

Read more from this story HERE.

Why Americans Will Never Love Obamacare

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photo credit: azrainmanMy college friend’s two-year-old son was born with a rare genetic disorder that severely compromises his immune system. He has been in and out of the hospital with life-threatening incidents since he was six months old, nearly dying seven times. His medical team consists of more than ten specialists, and dozens of nurses and physical therapists. My friend and her husband have health insurance, but their son’s medical costs eat up an entire salary from their two-career income. My heart aches for her; she has to endure not only her son’s terrifying illness, but also the crushing cost of keeping him healthy.

Like most Americans, I want to live in a society that takes care of people like my friend’s son; like most Americans, I would be ashamed if we collectively refused to lend a hand to people who, through no fault of their own, desperately need help. And, like most Americans, I do not support Obamacare. In fact, I despise it.

I do not suffer from cognitive dissonance. Obamacare is a despicable piece of legislation because it twists the noble desire to help those less fortunate into a duty to junk the entire United States health care system. It uses the common belief that we all should pitch in to help pay for the health expenses of a small percentage of the population as a disguise — a cover-up — for what it really is: a federal seizure of the administration and oversight of the entire health care and insurance system.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cantor Withdraws Obamacare Bill that Drew the Ire of Conservatives

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Photo Credit: John Shinkle House Republican leadership abruptly pulled a health care bill from the floor after concerns from conservatives that it extended President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The legislation, which was championed by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, had opposition from all corners of the conservative universe.

It’s a blow to the Virginia Republican, who touted the “Helping Sick Americans Now Act” and visited the Republican Study Committee meeting Wednesday to try to move votes.

The legislation attempts to transfer money from what Republicans call a “slush fund” — it’s actually a preventative disease account — to create high-risk pools for sick Americans. The Obama administration said Tuesday the president would likely veto the bill.

“We had good conversations with our members and made a lot of solid progress,” said Erica Elliott, a spokesman for Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “There’s still work to do and with members leaving town for the Bush Library dedication in Texas, we’ll continue the conversations after the district work period.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Catastrophe in the Making: Exchange Cost to Double, Number of Insured to Fall

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Obamacare critics warned that President Barack Obama’s rosy $2 billion cost estimate for the government’s so-called “insurance exchanges” would likely rise. On Wednesday, they more than doubled.

Health and Human Services Department (HHS) budget documents state that the federal government now expects to spend $4.4 billion this year on state grants to erect the government exchanges for the less than half of the U.S. states who are participating. In 2014, HHS says the cost will jump to $5.7 billion.

In addition to the cost spike, the number of uninsured Americans who will now be covered under Obamacare has fallen once again:

The result is that the number of Americans projected to gain insurance from the law has already eroded, by at least 5 million people, to 27 million by 2017, the CBO said in February. In addition, as many as 8 million people will lose health-care plans now offered through their employers, almost three times more than the CBO initially projected.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Administration Plans To Cut Medicare Advantage Reimbursements

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Photo Credit: AP

The Obama administration is planning new cuts to Medicare, a federal regulatory filing reveals, cuts that could mean higher premiums or seniors losing their coverage altogether.

The new cuts come in the form of a planned reduction in the reimbursement rates the government pays to insurance companies that operate Medicare Advantage plans, which are services administered by private for-profit or non-profit providers that offer additional services than can be found in traditional Medicare.

In a Feb. 15 regulatory filing, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the surprised rate cuts of 2.3 percent – meaning it would pay health care providers 2.3 percent less for providing services to patients.

CMS said it was cutting payments because it foresaw the overall costs of the Medicare Advantage program shrinking by 3.2 percent, despite the fact that health care costs – the driver of all federal health care program costs – are only rising.

Medicare Advantage is like traditional Medicare except that its plans are administered by insurance companies, who are paid a per-enrollee reimbursement fee by the government. If insurance companies can provide care to seniors at less than what the government pays them for it, they make a profit.

Read more from this story HERE.