Despite the president’s assurance that “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan,” Obamacare caused significant disruption to people’s coverage as the health insurance exchanges prepared for their first open enrollment. Beginning October 1, 2013, insurers knew they would struggle to price policies in the exchanges accurately.
For years, health care spending has outpaced economic growth. However, in 2012, health care spending as a share of the economy declined slightly for the second year in a row, based on official government statistics released at the outset of 2014. This news was greeted in some quarters as evidence that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was beginning to bend the cost curve downward.
Whereas large corporations typically self-insure — paying their employees’ medical bills and hiring insurers to administer health benefits — small businesses purchase group health coverage from insurers and face cost-increasing regulations as they go through the annual ritual of renewing their coverage. Over the next few years, as regulations and mandates are finally implemented, Obamacare will affect how businesses operate — including hiring, employee compensation, growth and so forth.
Four years after its passage, Obamacare has now been largely implemented, and millions have had their coverage disrupted. For years, the administration has propagated a number of myths about Obamacare. Some have already crumbled, and others will fall as Obamacare continues to change the American health system.
Patients benefit enormously from safe and effective drug therapies. Highly advanced specialty drugs and biological agents are increasingly used to treat rare diseases and disorders for which there were no treatments only a few years ago. Advanced drug therapies are very expensive, and often require special handling and extensive patient monitoring.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes dramatic changes to the Medicare program in coming years. The provisions affecting Medicare are intended to slow the program’s spending. Lower future Medicare expenditures allows for higher federal spending on Medicaid and new spending on subsidies for individuals who purchase health insurance through the new insurance exchanges.
TRICARE, the military health insurance program run by the Department of Defense, has a well-deserved reputation for inadequate quality at an exorbitant public cost. Drastic changes to this program are needed to ensure access to health care for 9.6 million active-duty service members, National Guardsmen and Reservists, retired service members (age 60 and above), survivors and their families.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a negative impact on seniors. A portion of ACA funding is derived by cutting $716 billion from the Medicare program over the next decade — which could reduce seniors’ access to care. One provision includes a 25 percent fee reduction for physicians who treat Medicare enrollees.
In January 2004, 250 million non-elderly Americans gained access in principle to health savings accounts (HSAs). Since then, individuals have been able to self-insure for some of their own medical needs and manage some of their own health care dollars.
Arizona has responded to financial incentives in the Affordable Care Act by expanding Medicaid eligibility.
The number of people who lacked health coverage fell slightly to 48 million in 2012, from 48.6 million the year before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Income & Poverty report.
Free To Choose Medicine offers a compelling argument for the freedom of every patient, guided by the advice of his or her doctor, to make informed decisions about the use of not-yet-FDA-approved therapeutic drugs that are in late stages of clinical testing.
The following is a presentation provided by the research team at the Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas A&M University.
Our current system for purchasing health insurance is arbitrary and unfair, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will only make things worse.
Medicare, the nation’s health care program for seniors, faces growing problems of cost, access and quality. The solution lies in Medicare reforms that liberate health care providers to innovate, empower patients to control some of the money spent on their health care, and allow workers to save for their retirement health care expenses.
The Supreme Court’s ruling that provisions of the Affordable Care Act that would take away all federal Medicaid funds from states that refuse to expand their Medicaid programs are unconstitutional inadvertently liberated millions of people who might have been forced into Medicaid.
The following is a presentation provided by June O’Neill, Director of the Center for the Study of Business and Government at Baruch College in New York and former Director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Regardless of whether they are supporters or opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or ObamaCare) members of Congress will have to revisit the legislation soon to correct some serious flaws. Here is a revenue neutral approach to begin the necessary corrections: Delay the scheduled cuts in Medicare spending by five years and pay for that expense by delaying the 2014 starting date of ObamaCare by two years.
The number of people who lack health coverage fell to 48.6 million in 2011 — down slightly from 49.9 million the year before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A bright spot in the new report is that about 407,000 fewer adults between the ages of 35 and 44 were uninsured in 2011.
Medicare spending has been growing faster than the economy for four decades. In 2010, Medicare required nearly $280 billion in general revenue transfers to meet its obligations. By 2020 the cash-flow deficit will reach $600 billion, absent policy changes.
One of the hottest new ideas in health care is the Accountable Care Organization (ACO). Similar to health maintenance organizations (HMOs), ACOs are designed to bring hospitals, physicians and insurers together to reduce health care costs by improving quality and reducing expenditures for unnecessary tests and procedures.
In the groundbreaking book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis (published in May 2012 by The Independent Institute), NCPA President John C. Goodman reveals how healthcare is a “complex system” that cannot be managed from the top down. True reform requires liberating doctors and patients by allowing them to interact in innovative ways to help meet unique individual medical needs.
Selected exceprts from John C. Goodman’s book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis
Critics of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) need an alternative vision. What follows is a short explanation of the core ideas posted at the Congressional Health Care Caucus and developed in greater detail in the book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis.
The anticipated growth in future federal expenditures relative to federal income is largely driven by elderly entitlement growth. Social Security and Medicare benefits account for the bulk of these entitlements and will grow as a share of the economy as baby boomers transition into retirement.