FixHealthCarePolicy

Side Effects: Obamacare’s “Donut Hole” for Young Adults

College seniors are eagerly ordering caps and gowns for May graduation ceremonies. But graduation day often brings loss as well as gain. Many graduates will lose coverage under their parents’ health plans as soon as they get their diplomas.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Obamacare promised to let “children” remain on their parents’ health plan until the age of 26. It was one of the few provisions in the law to attract bipartisan support. Yet the hastily drafted legislation managed to botch even this seemingly simple reform.

Young adults constitute “one of the biggest groups of the uninsured,” according to the Fiscal Times. The paper cites a Commonwealth Fund survey of 2,002 young adults that found that nearly half (45 percent) of those aged 19 – 29 lacked coverage for at least part of 2009. (more…)

Tags: "child coverage", "donut hole", Commonwealth Fund, Fiscal Times, ObamaCare, parents' health plan, pre-existing conditions, Side Effects, young adults

Side Effects: Laws No Longer Mean What They Say

Major flaws in the gargantuan Obamacare bill started to emerge almost immediately after it was signed into law. One of the most embarrassing: failure to ensure immediate coverage for kids with pre-existing conditions—something Obamacare supporters had constantly promised was part of the bill.

Looking to provide cover for those who wrote the bill, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius fired off a warning letter to insurers. “Health insurance is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition,” she scolded. As though it was their mistake! (more…)

Tags: health insurers, HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius, ObamaCare, pre-existing conditions, Side Effects

Rep. Paul Ryan: The Way Forward on Health Care Reform

While President Obama and congressional liberals have yet to come down from the high of passing their historically horrible health care legislation, conservatives are still hard at work promoting health care reform. This is because with its numerous new taxes, mandates, penalties, regulations, and new role for government, Obamacare can hardly be called reform. Instead, the recently passed law is more likely to aggravate existing problems and create new ones for our health care system, not to mention add staggering new amounts to the federal deficit.

One crusader still hard at work is Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). In an article published last week in the New York Times, Rep. Ryan writes, “To be clear: it is not sufficient for those of us in the opposition to await a reversal of political fortune months or years from now before we advance action on health care reform. Costs will continue their ascent as the debt burden squeezes life out of our economy. We are unapologetic advocates for the repeal of this costly misstep. But Republicans must also make the case for a reform agenda to take its place, and get to work on that effort now.” (more…)

Tags: greater government control, mandates, new taxes, ObamaCare, patient choice, penalties, pre-existing conditions, reform tax treatment, regulations, Rep. Paul Ryan

Side Effects: Obamacare Doesn’t Work on Children After All

A signature achievement of Obamacare, we were told, was that it would provide immediate protection for children with pre-existing conditions. In the brave new world of Obamacare, no ailing child could be denied coverage.

Turns out, that just ain’t so. According to the Associated Press, “Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday. However, if a child is accepted for coverage, or is already covered, the insurer cannot exclude payment for treating a particular illness, as sometimes happens now.” (more…)

Tags: denied coverage, ObamaCare, pre-existing conditions, Side Effects

VIDEO: Solving Pre-Existing Conditions Doesnt Take 2,700 Pages

Ed Haislmaier, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, takes on the 2,700 pages of Obamacare — and the notion that all that legislation is needed to fix the problem of pre-existing conditions.

As Haislmaier explains, Congress could solve the pre-existing conditions problem quite simply and in only two pages. How? Watch this video to find out.

Tags: health insurance premiums, ObamaCare, pre-existing conditions

The President’s Health Summit Proposal: Rhetoric vs Reality

The President’s health care proposal contains little that is new. The well tested rhetoric used by the White House to sugarcoat the health policy outline should not fool ordinary Americans. This proposal is even more expensive than the Senate bill upon which it is apparently based: $950 billion over ten years rather than $871 billion.

Consider the claims made by the White House regarding the effects of the President’s proposal on the health care system.

The Rhetoric on Affordability.
“It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today.”

The Reality: In fact, the tax credit would be limited to only a limited number of persons within a limited set of income brackets, not the entire middle class. One cannot ignore the tax increases, or the prescribed cost of the health care benefits packages themselves. As the premiums increase, the cost of the subsidies, based on percentage of income, would track these increases, resulting in another direct cost shift onto all taxpayers. In fact, the President’s proposal, based on the Senate bill, would result in major tax increases (estimated at $629 billion over ten years) and would include a variety of middle class tax increases. This, of course, once again violates the president’s promise to refrain from imposing taxes on those with family incomes of less than $250,000 per year. (more…)

Tags: budget, Health Care Summit, health exchange, health insurance premiums, pre-existing conditions, President's proposal, tax increases