Fix Health Care Policy

The Slow Dismantling of Obamacare

Things aren’t going so well for Obamacare.

Even Democrats in Congress aren’t huge fans any more. It seems after passing the law and finding out what’s in it, the allure has faded—so much so that Congress actually repealed part of Obamacare in the fiscal cliff deal last week.

That’s right—part of Obamacare has been completely undone. It was the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, essentially a new entitlement program for long-term care. But this new government program for people who end up needing assisted living or other long-term services was poorly designed and bound to fail,  as Heritage’s Alyene Senger explains.

“CLASS was a bad deal for both taxpayers (who would likely have had to bail out the program) and beneficiaries (who would be better served by choosing among private options),” Senger wrote.

The program was so poorly designed that one of its own administrators warned Congress in 2011 that the program could collapse.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: bad deal, CLASS Act, entitlement, government program, ObamaCare, taxpayers

Six Reasons States Should Be Skeptical of Medicaid Expansion Cost Estimates

As states weigh their options regarding the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid, many have sought out cost estimates to assist them. However, in a new paper, Heritage experts Ed Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski caution state lawmakers that state cost estimates rest on key assumptions, some of which may be questionable.

There are six reasons state cost estimates could be unreliable:

Read the reasons on The Foundry…

Tags: bad deal, higher costs, Medicaid Expansion, ObamaCare, repeal the law, taxpayers, voluntary