Fix Health Care Policy

On September 30th, Janet Adamy reported for The Wall Street Journal that McDonald’s was considering canceling its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless new Obamacare regulations were waived. The White House pushed back hard with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Jessica Santillo claiming: “This story is wrong. The new law provides significant flexibility to maintain coverage for workers.” But this Tuesday we learned that Adamy was correct. According to Bloomberg News McDonald’s had sought, and eventually won, a waiver from the upcoming Obamacare regulations. This allows them to continue providing health insurance coverage to 115,000 workers. In fact, McDonald’s workers were just some of the over 1 million of Americans who were spared losing their current health care coverage thanks to one-year waivers from the Obama HHS.

The White House effort to discredit reports that Obamacare is forcing companies to consider dropping health care coverage comes on the heels of a letter HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent to the nation’s health insurers threatening to exclude them from the yet to be implemented Obamacare health exchanges. The letter warned there “will be zero tolerance” for “falsely blaming premium increases” on Obamacare. And who would determine if premium increases were or were not due to Obamacare? The Obama administration of course. When it comes to the health care sector, Obamacare has turned Secretary Sebelius into judge, jury, and executioner. And we are just beginning to witness the scope of Obamacare’s bureaucratic powers. (more…)

Tags: Galen Institute, Hillsdale College, McDonald's, Obamacare waiver, redistribute wealth, zero tolerance

Galen Institute President Grace Marie-Turner in a new blog questions how President Barack Obama can back the new House health care bill when it breaks many of the promises he and his Administration have been making for months.

Turner details how the legislation would break the following reform pledges:

– The health reform bill would lower health spending. In fact, the House bill pushes the federal cost curve up, not down, by costing $1.05 trillion in the first 10 years. And that’s not even addressing the “doc fix” issue that will cost $245 billion.

– Middle-class families would not be taxed. There are a wide buffet of tax increases in the House bill that violate the president’s pledge. And add to that the $33 billion individuals would pay because they didn’t want to buy expensive, federally mandated health coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

– If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. A coalition of major business groups already said the House bill jeopardizes the health care insurance that employers provide to 160 million workers. Additionally, previous research has shown 88.1 million Americans would be shifted out of their employer-based health coverage if a public plan was introduced.

“The 400,000-word House health reform bill is absolutely astonishing in the level of government intrusion it would shove into the lives of every American, every business, and every health care professional. I won’t bore you here with the legislative jargon, but pick a page, any page, and you will see what I mean,” Turner writes.

Tags: Galen Institute, HR 3962, President Barack Obama