Fix Health Care Policy

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health recently held a hearing to review how Obamacare regulations will affect employers’ ability to maintain health coverage.

To illustrate the magnitude of the new regulatory burdens on businesses, subcommittee chairman Joe Pitts (R–PA) displayed a stack of over 3,500 pages of Obamacare rules, notices, and regulatory guidance issued so far by the Administration. This additional burden, the hearing highlighted, will harm employers’ ability to offer health coverage and disrupt coverage for Americans across the country.

Among the new regulations are “minimum loss ratio” (MLR) requirements, which force health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium revenues on medical claims costs or “activities that improve health care quality.” The MLR requirements are likely to force some insurers out of the market, leaving businesses with fewer coverage options.   (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: health insurance, House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, medical claim costs, minimum loss ratio, Rep. Joe Pitts, repeal Obamacare

Heritage Distinguished Fellow and former Congressman Ernest Istook (R–OK) recently unveiled Obamacare’s “dirty little secret”: $105 billion of advance appropriations which make it difficult for current and future Congresses to control spending on the unpopular new law. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health delved further into the problems with this “phantom funding” at a hearing last week.

Within its 2,700 pages, Obamacare has been given billions of dollars in advance appropriations—$6 billion was immediately appropriated, while over $105 billion was appropriated for the years following. In this way, the 111th Congress made spending decisions for years in advance, making a clear “attempt to handcuff the current Congress and prevent it from determining current levels of spending,” Congressman Istook told members of the committee. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: $105 billion slush fund, appropriations, House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, ObamaCare