Fix Health Care Policy

On the one-year anniversary of Obamacare, the problems of the health care law remain a constant frustration for doctors around the country. Many go about their lives feeling frustrated, but a few brave doctors are speaking out. 

Dr. Martha Boone of Atlanta is one of them. She’ll speak on a panel at The Heritage Foundation today at noon about the difficulties doctors face from Obamacare and other entitlement programs. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), a medical doctor, will join her along with Gurjeet Guram, a student at Harvard Medical School. Click to watch it . 

In an interview with Heritage last year, Boone explained how she was forced cut her salary by 32 percent and move to a less expensive, older office building. If she had not made these sacrifices, Boone would have been forced to refuse Medicare patients or lay off one of her employees. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Dr. Martha Boone, ObamaCare, repeal the bill, salary cut

The Kaiser Family Foundation polled 1,502 adults ages 18 and older, including 1,017 adults who say they voted, in the days after last Tuesday’s election. KFF allowed respondents to name, in their own words, the biggest factors influencing their vote for Congress. The top response was economy/jobs (29%), followed by voting for or against a specific party (25%), and then voting for a specific candidate (21%). Health care came in fourth at 17%.

But among those voters who said health care was the top factor influencing their vote, repealing all or parts of Obama was extremely popular. A full 71% of health care voters either want to repeal Obamacare entirely (45%) or repeal parts of the law (26%). Only 11% of health care voters (and only 16% of all voters) want to leave the law as is. Obamacare is not very popular among the entire population either KFF reports: (more…)

Tags: Kaiser Family Foundation, ObamaCare, Public Opinion, repeal the bill, voters

A new CNN Opinion Research poll, conducted over the weekend as the House debated Obamacare, finds that 59 percent of Americans now stand opposed to the health care legislation in Congress. Just 39 percent of the poll’s 1,030 respondents said they favored the bill.

These numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise — even to the White House. In fact, The Washington Post reported this morning that “President Obama is set to begin an immediate public relations blitz aimed at turning around Americans’ opinion of the health-care bill.” The White House plan will be both a short-term strategy to shore up political supporters of the legislation and a long-term effort to bolster Obama’s legacy. (more…)

Tags: CNN poll, government takeover, ObamaCare, Public Opinion, repeal the bill

Obamacare is still just one signature away from becoming law, but the battle over its repeal has already begun. Key to this debate will be which elements of Obamacare phase in when. Back in December after Obamacare first passed the Senate, Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Book produced the following chart (pdf) detailing how the policy is scheduled to be implemented between 2010 and 2017. Highlights from each year include:

2010: Physician Medicare payments decrease 21% effective March 1, 2010

2011: “Annual Fee” tax on health insurance, allocated according to share of total premiums. Begins at $2 billion in 2011, then increases to $4 billion in 2012, $7 billion in 2013, $9 billion in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016, and eventually $10 billion for 2017 and every year thereafter. Two insurers in Nebraska and one in Michigan are exempt from this tax.

2012: Medicare payment penalties for hospitals with the highest readmission rates for selected conditions.

2013: Medicare tax increased from 2.9% to 3.8% for incomes over $250,000 (joint filers) or $200,000 (all others). (This is stated as an increase of 0.9 percentage points, to only the employee’s share of the FICA tax.) (more…)

Tags: Individual Mandate, Medicare physician payments, ObamaCare, repeal the bill, taxes