Posts

Biden PROMISES to Bring Back Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

As one of the more controversial aspects of Obamacare, the individual mandate was the successful target of Republicans in 2017. The tax bill signed by President Trump nixed it While speaking to CNN on Monday morning former vice president and 2020 Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden promised to bring back the individual mandate if elected—not really surprising anyone since his candidacy is tied to President Obama’s legacy,

In the interview, Biden said, “If you provide an option for anybody who in fact wants to buy into Medicare for All, they can buy in. They buy in and they can do it. But if they like their employer-based insurance, which a lot of unions broke their neck to get… they shouldn’t have to give it up. The flip of that is, if you don’t go my way, and you go their way, you have to give up all of that.” He added, “Yes, I’d bring back the individual mandate.”

The sticking point for many regarding the individual mandate is the financial penalty imposed by the government on those who don’t have health insurance. In other words, the federal government takes away your choice. And as much as leftists don’t want to admit it, the individual mandate amounts to a tax on the working poor. . .

Joe Biden has either lived in the land of privilege for too long that he doesn’t comprehend what it’s like for the working poor or he simply doesn’t care about them. America’s hardworking men and women don’t need the federal government making it harder for them to get ahead. They need the federal government to help clear the way so that their hard work enables them to climb the economic ladder. If Joe Biden is elected president, America’s working poor will suffer. (Read more from “Biden Promises to Bring Back Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Inside the Trump Administration’s Debate Over Expanding Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

. . .Preliminary fiscal analyses of partial expansion proposals suggest the policy has few obvious supporters. Liberals will complain that partial expansion could lead to hundreds of thousands of individuals dropping coverage in states that have already expanded Medicaid. By contrast, conservatives will object to the sizable price tag associated with the policy—because government actuaries believe it will encourage more states to expand Medicaid.

The Times reported that some within the administration—including CMS Administrator Seema Verma and White House Domestic Policy Council Chairman Andrew Bremberg—have embraced the proposal. But if the plan overcomes what the Times characterized as a “furious” internal debate, it may face an even tougher reception outside the White House. . .

After the Supreme Court made Medicaid expansion optional for states as part of its 2012 ruling upholding Obamacare’s individual mandate, the Obama administration issued guidance interpreting that ruling. While the court made expansion optional for states, the Obama administration made it an “all-or-nothing” proposition for them.

Under the 2012 guidance—which remains in effect—if states want to receive the enhanced 90 percent federal match associated with expansion, they must cover the entire expansion population—all able-bodied adults with incomes under 138 percent of the federal poverty level (just under $35,000 for a family of four). If states expand only to some portion of the eligible population, they would only receive their regular Medicaid match of 50-76 percent, not the enhanced 90 percent match.

Because individuals with incomes above 100 percent of the poverty level—but only individuals with incomes above 100 percent of the poverty level—qualify for subsidized coverage on insurance exchanges, states like Arkansas and Massachusetts have applied for waivers to implement a partial expansion. If the Trump administration approves such proposals, Arkansas and other states that have already expanded Medicaid would still receive the 90 percent federal match, while shifting the population with income between 100-138 percent of poverty from Medicaid to exchange coverage. (Read more from “Inside the Trump Administration’s Debate Over Expanding Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

A Federal Judge Finally Exposes the Lies at the Heart of Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

A federal judge in Texas has brought long-overdue clarity to our interminable debate over health care reform. On Friday, District Judge Reed O’Connor struck down Obamacare in its entirety, arguing that the individual mandate—the part of the law that forces American to buy insurance or pay a penalty—is unconstitutional. Because O’Connor ruled that the mandate can’t be separated from the rest of the health care law, he invalidated the whole thing.

It’s about time. No serious person has ever doubted that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, because no possible reading of the Commerce Clause could support such an outlandish scheme. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted during oral arguments before the Supreme Court in 2012, if the government can force you to buy health insurance under the Commerce Clause, it can also force you to buy broccoli, or a car, or pretty much anything. Allowing the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause powers would give Congress unlimited authority to regulate almost every aspect of our lives.

In his majority opinion for that case, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts declared rather straightforwardly that, “The Federal Government does not have the power to order people to buy health insurance.” But then Roberts did something not straightforward at all. He construed the penalty—the Orwellian-sounding “shared responsibility payment”—as merely a tax, and therefore permissible under the federal government’s taxing power. By this rather crude rhetorical legerdemain, Obamacare survived.

Of course, the individual mandate penalty was never a tax, and everyone knows it. When Congress passed last year’s tax bill, it set the penalty to zero, beginning next year. That one move exposed the cynical heart of Obamacare for what it is. If there is no penalty, and no revenue being brought in for the federal government, then the penalty isn’t a tax. And because the individual mandate violates Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause, the mandate must be struck down, along with the rest of the law. . .

All of this underscores the blunt reality that Obamacare was always at heart a bad-faith proposition. The basic operation of the law, never stated or acknowledged by its authors, was to force younger, healthier people to subsidize health insurance for older, sicker people. It was a redistribution scheme, plain and simple. (Read more from “A Federal Judge Finally Exposes the Lies at the Heart of Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Federal Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional

/0 Comments/in , /by

In a significant ruling Friday, a federal judge in Texas declared the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, to be unconstitutional in its entirety, citing a key change in the law implemented by Republicans in their big tax reform bill last year.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, a conservative George W. Bush-appointee, issued the ruling on the eve of the deadline for signing up for Obamacare coverage. His ruling is expected to be appealed, which means the conservative-majority Supreme Court, with newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, will have a chance to reassess the constitutionality of the law.

The lawsuit was brought by conservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 18 other Republican attorneys general, and one governor, the Denver Post reports. The plaintiffs argue that the law in its entirety is invalid because the removal of the penalty tax nullifies the argument used by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2012 upholding the law on the premise that the ACA is ultimately a tax and thus falls under the authority of Congress, which has “the power to impose taxes,” in this case “on those without health insurance.”

“Once the heart of the ACA — the individual mandate — is declared unconstitutional, the remainder of the ACA must also fall,” states the lawsuit, the Post notes. Democrats countering the suit claim that even though the tax is reduced to $0.0, it still remains a hypothetical tax.

In his ruling Friday, O’Connor agreed with Republicans that with the tax aspect of the law scheduled for elimination starting January 2019, the 2012 ruling’s defense of the law is invalidated, making the entire law unconstitutional. (Read more from “Federal Judge Rules Obamacare Unconstitutional” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

DC Council Bills Taxpayers Half a Million to Avoid Enrolling Themselves in Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

On the first of the month, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser held an event at Freedom Plaza to celebrate the start of Obamacare’s annual open enrollment period. She appeared with Mila Kofman, head of the District’s health insurance exchange, D.C. Health Link. In conjunction with the event, the mayor issued a proclamation declaring the open enrollment period “Get Covered, Stay Covered” months, and noting that “residents should visit [D.C. Health Link’s website] to shop for and compare health insurance.”

But in encouraging others to “get covered,” and promoting the D.C. Health Link site, Bowser omitted one key detail: She does not buy the policies that D.C. Health Link sells. My recent Freedom of Information Act request confirmed that Bowser, like most of her D.C. Council colleagues, received taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies to purchase their coverage through the District government, rather than through D.C. Health Link. Thus, DC spent nearly half a million in taxpayer funds because the mayor and council won’t be bothered to enroll in Obamacare.

Armed with this information, I asked Bowser about her insurance choices at a recent event. She noted that the Affordable Care Act doesn’t ask individuals to give up their employer-based insurance — a true enough statement. Individuals such as Bowser and members of the council can purchase insurance through Obamacare exchanges like D.C. Health Link, but they must forego their employer subsidy to do so.

Forfeiting generous employer subsidies might seem like an unreasonable request to make of the mayor and council. But earlier this year, the council passed, and Bowser signed, legislation requiring all District residents to buy health coverage or pay a tax — including tens of thousands of residents who do not qualify for subsidies.

According to public records, Bowser receives an annual salary of $200,000; council members receive $140,600 annually. This year, I will receive less income than any of them, and as a small business owner my income is far from guaranteed, unlike public officials’ salaries. Yet the mayor and council have required me to buy health coverage without a subsidy, even as they refuse to do so themselves. (Read more from “DC Council Bills Taxpayers Half a Million to Avoid Enrolling Themselves in Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Studies Indicate Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion Bought Democrats Votes

/0 Comments/in , /by

Forcing taxpayers to subsidize people’s health insurance increases the recipients’ voting registration, turnout, and likelihood of voting Democrat, says a New York Times article covering three recent studies. Among childless adults allowed to tap into Medicaid in Oregon in 2008, voter turnout subsequently increased 7 percent. Another study found 3 to 4 point higher voter registration in counties that expanded Medicaid.

While the Times said it’s impossible to know the overall political effects for sure, “the people eligible for Medicaid expansion tend to be poor, single adults, a demographic more likely to be Democratic-leaning. And the Oregon study showed bigger voting effects in more heavily Democratic parts of the state.” The effect fades after the election directly following an expansion of government redistribution, which provides yet another reason beyond ideology Democrats are so keen to keep increasing our welfare state.

The Times’ report suggests some utterly clueless potential explanations for this effect. Since healthier and wealthier people are more likely to vote, goes one, by making people more healthy and wealthy, perhaps Medicaid also makes them more likely to vote!

Yet Medicaid leads to inferior health outcomes. Medicaid also has a higher proportion of people with heath problems that are the result of lifestyle choices rather than genetics or accident. Just ask a doctor how likely it is that his Medicaid patients smoke compared to his middle-class patients, or to compare the rates of soda and junk food intake between the two. So no, new Medicaid patients aren’t likely to be suddenly voting more because they’re more healthy and wealthy.

Or perhaps, the Times suggests, new Medicaid recipients simply vote in higher numbers because getting Medicaid put them in greater contact with government. If that were probable, getting busted for speeding or attending public school ought to also make you more likely to vote, but neither is true (private school graduates are more civically engaged). (Read more from “Studies Indicate Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion Bought Democrats Votes” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Did You Get a Quote or Sign up for Obamacare? You’ll Want to Know This Small Tidbit.

/0 Comments/in , /by

Roughly 75,000 people had their data exposed in a HealthCare.gov system hack earlier this month. Those who went through a broker or agent to receive a quote or sign up for the Affordable Care Act were compromised, CNN reported.

According to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the website, all agent and broker accounts that were compromised were “deactivated, and — out of an abundance of caution — the Direct Enrollment pathway for agents and brokers was disabled.” CMS hopes to have the brokers back up and running within seven days. . .

“I want to make clear to the public that HealthCare.gov and the Marketplace Call Center are still available, and open enrollment will not be negatively impacted,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in the statement. “We are working to identify the individuals potentially impacted as quickly as possible so that we can notify them and provide resources such as credit protection.”

Healthcare.gov has come under fire since its inception for its vulnerability to cyberattacks, the Wall Street Journal reported. In fact, back in 2015, Health and Human Services’ (HHS) inspector general said millions of Americans’ personal data was being stored in a system that had significant security flaws. (Read more from “Did You Get a Quote or Sign up for Obamacare? You’ll Want to Know This Small Tidbit.” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

How the GOP Has Taken Ownership of Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , /by

Republicans have not only betrayed their promise to repeal Obamacare, they have made Obamacare popular. They have championed its three core elements while refusing to even make the case against all its vulnerabilities and are now running on preserving it. While we are all focused on the results of November 6, we must gird up for a longer battle that, if not waged and won, will ensure we never have health care freedom in America, because a consensus for government-run monopolies is close to fruition.

Republicans are making Obamacare great again

Republicans, with their pre-existing condition of political stupidity, have committed such malpractice that they’ve managed to own all the liabilities of Obamacare and the status quo dumpster-fire health care system, while also raising the ire of voters who want handouts, as if they are somehow going to repeal Obamacare. In doing so, they have turned “repeal and replace” into “cut and paste” and “root and branch” into “plant and fertilize.” By refusing to show how the Obamacare regulations, subsidies, and Medicaid expansion have created an unhealthy monopoly of insurers and health administrators, forced doctors into early retirement, and made insurance for all those not subsidized completely unaffordable, they have permanently ceded the playing field and created a consensus for all those provisions. And indeed, almost every Republican is running on preserving and expanding them.

This should shock anyone who ever voted for a Republican any time since 2010. What’s worse than Democrats winning is Republicans permanently adopting their views and ratcheting us further down the path to socialism.

We haven’t had a semblance of a free market in health care for decades, and that is why health care and medical insurance (which are not the same) are convoluted and so expensive. Obamacare just exacerbated every element that broke the system to begin with. Voters are justifiably unhappy with the status quo and are concerned about health care. Along with immigration, health care has consistently ranked as the top issue for this election.

Where is the GOP vision?

Where is the vision of health care that would eliminate the insurance cartel from its position between you and your doctor?

Where are all the victims of Obamacare talking about premiums tripling over a few years to $20,000-30,000 per year for a family? Where are all the ads from doctors lamenting the paperwork that pushed them out of business? Where are all the ads showing the health care cartel getting rich, destroying private practice, and buying up all the hospitals, insurers, and pharmacies under a handful of corporate masters, all enabled by the pot of money created by the Medicaid expansion? Why is nobody showing how the Medicaid expansion is fueling the opioid crisis?

The only thing never discussed in this health care debate is actual health care. While Republicans unfortunately never had a holistic vision on health care because it’s not a serious conservative party, they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They did this successfully for three election cycles. And all the factors hurting doctors and patients that we all once talked about have gotten even worse over the past few years.

A recent survey of 8,774 physicians conducted by the Physicians Foundation found that morale in the profession is lower than ever. Here are the key findings:

Thanks to the monopoly created by Obamacare and the crushing red tape of owning your own practice, the number of physicians who identified as independent practice owners plummeted from 48.5 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2018.

62 percent are pessimistic about the future of medicine, 78 percent feel burned out, 46 percent are planning a career change, and 49 percent would not recommend the profession to their children.

Doctors cited Obama’s “electronic health records” regulation, insurance requirements, and loss of clinical autonomy as the three biggest challenges to their success – even ahead of the medical malpractice problem.

Doctors reported that 23 percent of their time is spent on paperwork.

Republicans could have been riding high on health care

Several weeks after the 2016 election victory, I laid out a strategy for repealing Obamacare the day of the inauguration, “root and branch.” Republicans could immediately have grabbed the bull by the horns with the most capital they had had in a generation and would have had two years to deal with the issue. Instead, they created the worst outcome of all – preserving Obamacare and all its vices under their leadership and owning its fallout while giving other voters the perception they will take away entitlements. As my buddy John Hayward brilliantly put it, “Republicans have always had a rare gift for paying the political price associated with revolutionary change without actually accomplishing anything revolutionary. They’re savaged for actions they were intimidated out of taking.”

It’s pretty clear that over the past few weeks, the smart-set consultants – the same consultants who are politically illiterate on immigration – got into a room and told all the candidates to run on the Democrat language, premise, focus, and philosophy of “protecting pre-existing conditions.” Every single Republican Senate candidate suddenly began running ads extolling the virtues of what essentially destroyed insurance in America.

Really? Why are we legitimizing and emphasizing the core premise behind Obamacare and not focusing on the fundamentals of health care? What’s the macro-message that comes across to voters?

This is how you make Democrat premises popular. Who needs Democrats when Republicans serve as better messengers for their misleading talking points than Democrats do with their off-putting belligerence? At this point, why not just run Christine O’Donnell ads of “I’m not a witch?”

Republicans win either by uprooting a Democrat premise or ignoring it and focusing the debate elsewhere, not by getting into a bidding war on their terms. And even if somehow they pull off a win on this messaging, what in fact have we won? If “owning the libs” means winning by owning their policies, count me out. (For more from the author of “How the GOP Has Taken Ownership of Obamacare” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Over the weekend, Politico ran a report about how a “Trump policy shop filters facts to fit his message.” The article cited several unnamed sources complaining about the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and its allegedly politicized role within the current administration.

One of the article’s anonymous sources called ASPE’s conduct over the past 18 months “another example of how we’re moving to a post-fact era.” Richard Frank, a former Obama appointee and one of the few sources to speak on the record, said that he found the current administration’s “attack on the integrity and the culture of the office…disturbing.”

For all its focus on the Trump administration, the Politico article omitted another key story—one I told its reporter about last week, but did not make it into the article. During the early years of the Obama administration, ASPE lay at the heart of the failure of the CLASS Act, a $70 billion Obamacare program.

As a congressional staffer conducting oversight of the CLASS Act in 2011-12, I reviewed thousands of pages of e-mails and documents from the months leading up to Obamacare’s passage. Those records strongly suggest that ASPE officials, including Frank, withheld material facts from Congress and the public about CLASS’s unsustainability, because full and prompt disclosure could have jeopardized Obamacare’s chances of passage. . .

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS for short, intended to provide a voluntary insurance benefit for long-term care. Included as part of Obamacare, the program never got off the ground. In October 2011, HHS concluded it could not implement the program in an actuarially sound manner; Congress repealed the program entirely as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal enacted into law in the early days of 2013. (Read more from “Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Republicans Hide Obamacare Bailout Inside Health Savings Accounts Bill

/0 Comments/in , /by

. . .Multiple Capitol Hill sources confirmed to me on Wednesday morning that the House Ways and Means Committee’s markup of health savings account (HSA)-related legislation later in the day comes with a potential ulterior motive: Committee and leadership staff want to resurrect this spring’s failed Obamacare “stability” legislation—and see the HSA provisions as a way to do so.

When former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) talked about the problems “if we don’t fix Obamacare” at an event a few weeks ago, he hit the nail on the head. After running for four straight election cycles on repealing Obamacare, House leaders now seem hellbent on propping it up to save themselves from political attacks. . .

The leadership gambit seems simple: with the HSA provisions, placate conservatives who (rightly) don’t want to bail out Obamacare, and allow the package to pass the House solely with Republican votes—because Democrats likely won’t vote to support any “stability” legislation imposing robust pro-life protections. With Democrats intending to make Obamacare premium increases an issue in the November elections, House leaders think the vote would inoculate vulnerable Republicans from political attacks by the Left.

But a “stability” vote would demoralize the Right, by showing how completely Republicans have caved on their repeal promises. It would also set a horrible precedent, officially declaring Obamacare “too big to fail,” which would put taxpayers on the hook for an ever-increasing flow of bailout funds.

That flow would soon vastly overwhelm any small amount of HSA incentives that conservatives received in exchange for their vote. Eventually, lawmakers would run out of other people’s money to spend propping up Obamacare. (Read more from “Republicans Hide Obamacare Bailout Inside Health Savings Accounts Bill” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.