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Bid To Defund Obamacare Gains Momentum In Senate GOP

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

This week it appeared Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee would wage a lonely war over their threat to hold up a continuing resolution to fund the U.S. government if they are not given a vote on a budget amendment to defund Obamacare. Now, it’s not quite so lonely. Sens. Marco Rubio and James Inhofe have joined Cruz and Lee, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that he “looks forward to supporting” the amendment.

It’s a significant step forward for Cruz and Lee. But the Senate Republican caucus remains deeply divided about defunding Obamacare. Sources say that at a Republican caucus lunch a few days ago, several GOP senators expressed opposition to Cruz and Lee’s proposal. And of course, the 55-member Democratic majority will not give it the time of day. But Cruz and Lee are determined to keep up opposition to Obamacare, even though it has flagged in some other quarters of the Republican Party.

And in Rubio, the two have an ally sure to bring a higher profile to the cause. The continuing resolution fight is “a perfect opportunity for us to have a debate once again on Obamacare,” Rubio told radio host Hugh Hewitt Friday. “I don’t think there’s been enough attention paid to it. It’s been awhile, we’ve moved onto these other issues, but there is, right now out there, probably nothing more damaging to our economy in the short term than this implementation of Obamacare.”

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The ObamaCare War On Marriage

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Photo Credit: Human Events“Companies have a new solution to rising health-insurance costs: Break up their employees’ marriages,” says the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch:

By denying coverage to spouses, employers not only save the annual premiums, but also the new fees that went into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. This year, companies have to pay $1 or $2 “per life” covered on its plans, a sum that jumps to $65 in 2014. And health law guidelines proposed recently mandate coverage of employees’ dependent children (up to age 26), but husbands and wives are optional. “The question about whether it’s obligatory to cover the family of the employee is being thought through more than ever before,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health.

But… but… “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

Such exclusions barely existed three years ago, but experts expect an increasing number of employers to adopt them: “That’s the next step,” Darling says. HMS, a company that audits plans for employers, estimates that nearly a third of companies might have such policies now. Holdouts say they feel under pressure to follow suit. “We’re the last domino,” says Duke Bennett, mayor of Terre Haute, Ind., which is instituting a spousal carve-out for the city’s health plan, effective July 2013, after nearly all major employers in the area dropped spouses.

MarketWatch cites anecdotal evidence that some people are dropping their personal coverage so they can migrate to joint coverage provided by companies that do continue to offer it. That’s a nice near-term solution… if you happen to be married to someone who works for such a company. In the longer-term, what happens to the remaining plans that offer spousal coverage, after they’ve attracted all of those expensive spouses?

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Sessions: Jack Lew ‘Complicit’ In Violation Of Medicare Law

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Photo Credit: APThe office of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the senate budget committee, sent out a statement claiming that Jack Lew, former White House Chief of Staff and current Treasury Secretary nominee, is “complicit in” violating the law that is “aimed at saving medicare.”

Alarmed by the unsustainable growth of Medicare’s unfunded obligations and the direct threat this posed to seniors, Congress in 2003 enacted a legal requirement that the President submit legislation if the Medicare Trustees issue a funding warning for the program as part of their annual report. This provision of federal law is commonly known as the Medicare Trigger, and it is intended to ensure that steps are taken to shore up the program’s finances before it is too late.

In 2008, then-President George W. Bush submitted Medicare legislation to Congress in response to such a warning being issued for the first time. Throughout the past four years of President Obama’s first term, no such legislation has been submitted, despite warnings from the Medicare Trustees every year.

Sessions’ office points out that the warnings were ignored “despite a clear and unambiguous legal obligation” to submit legislation in response. Jack Lew, as the head of the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 and 2011, was responsible for responding to the Medicare Trigger.

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Legislation Repealing ObamaCare Tax Paid By Small Business Reintroduced

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A bipartisan coalition of congressmen introduced legislation Friday calling for the repeal of the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) on fully-insured premium markets imposed by ObamaCare.htm” rel=”tag” target=”_blank”>Obamacare.

The tax is expected to primarily fall on small businesses and the self-employed, who are the main purchasers of fully-insured premiums. According to an earlier study, not repealing the tax could cost also cost between 125,000 and 249,000 jobs by 2021 and raise the cost of employer-sponsored insurance by 2-3 percent, a cumulative cost of nearly $5,000 per family.

“The [p]resident’s Health Care law is full of hidden tax increases. Beginning in 2014, millions of American small businesses will be subjected to a new health insurance tax (HIT) coming at a cost over $100 billion. This tax will close many small businesses and kill jobs once implemented,” Louisiana Republican Rep. Charles W. Boustany, a co-sponsor of the measure, said in a statement.

The bill, titled “The Jobs and Premium Protection Act,” is also sponsored by Democratic Utah Rep. Jim Matheson.

“We commend Representatives Boustany and Matheson for rising above the political gridlock and showing bipartisan support for small businesses and the Americans they employ,” said Jim Anderson, vice president of government affairs of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. “We look forward to working together with all members of Congress to ensure this important bipartisan legislation is passed.”

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Campaign 2012: The Return of the Death Panels

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Photo credit: eleanor ryan

Health care was supposed to be President Obama’s issue in 2012. The 2009 Obamacare law was hailed as his signature legislative achievement, but it’s never been popular. Its most onerous provisions were timed to kick in after the election specifically to avoid damaging the re-election effort. For months, the Obama campaign tried to negate the issue. It spent a great deal of energy seeking to inoculate itself from Mitt Romney’s attacks by claiming the Massachusetts health care law passed when Mr. Romney was governor was “just like Obamacare.”

Some of Mr. Obama’s supporters claimed to be thrilled by Mr. Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. The spin was that Mr. Ryan’s budget plan provided the necessary contrast to Obamacare to enable Democrats to move to the offensive. Pro-Obama commentators resurrected the allegation that the Ryan plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” a charge the nonpartisan fact checkers at Politifact dubbed the “lie of the year” in December 2011. Meanwhile, Republicans highlighted the $716 billion that Obamacare cuts from Medicare, a fact affirmed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. This cut was the talking point that stuck.

The Obama campaign has had to contend with a serious pre-existing condition, namely a lack of support from seniors. According to the latest Gallup data, Mr. Romney enjoys an 11-point advantage among voters age 65 and older. Among the same group, Mr. Obama’s approval rating is 37 percent, the lowest of any age demographic. Medicare is a critical election issue in general. A recent poll by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation found that 73 percent of respondents described Medicare as “very important” or “extremely important” in determining their votes. Mr. Obama now must explain to this skeptical cohort why he chose to cut a very popular program to pay for his very unpopular law.

Death panels also are back. At an appearance in Florida over the weekend, Mr. Ryan criticized the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) established under Obamacare to “contain” Medicare costs. The law “puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors,” he said. “We will make sure that this board of bureaucrats will not mess with my mom’s health care or your mom’s health care.”

Obamacare defenders scoff at the idea that the IPAB’s decisions would have fatal consequences for seniors, but the panel has been given an extraordinary and perhaps unconstitutional degree of power. Its proposals automatically become law unless Congress counters it with another plan. Overriding the IPAB requires a three-fifths supermajority in the Senate. The Obamacare law dictates that Congress may not even propose doing away with the IPAB until 2017 and may not actually get rid of it until 2020. This dubious provision undercuts the argument that the IPAB is a harmless advocate for government efficiency.

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83% of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare

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Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association.

The DPMA, a non-partisan association of doctors and patients, surveyed a random selection of 699 doctors nationwide. The survey found that the majority have thought about bailing out of their careers over the legislation, which was upheld last month by the Supreme Court.

Even if doctors do not quit their jobs over the ruling, America will face a shortage of at least 90,000 doctors by 2020. The new health care law increases demand for physicians by expanding insurance coverage. This change will exacerbate the current shortage as more Americans live past 65.

By 2025 the shortage will balloon to over 130,000, Len Marquez, the director of government relations at the American Association of Medical Colleges, told The Daily Caller.

“One of our primary concerns is that you’ve got an aging physician workforce and you have these new beneficiaries — these newly insured people — coming through the system,” he said. “There will be strains and there will be physician shortages.”

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Photo credit: Andrew Aliferis