Fix Health Care Policy

Though the government’s entitlement spending is still spiraling out of control, taxpayers have finally caught a break: The recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal included the repeal of one of Obamacare’s worst provisions, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act.

The CLASS Act was a new entitlement program included in Obamacare. CLASS was created as a voluntary, government-run long-term care (LTC) program. It was supposed to be fully funded from the premiums paid by its beneficiaries and require no federal taxpayer dollars.

But the program was so poorly designed—much like the rest of Obamacare—that even the Obama Administration had to admit it wouldn’t work. A letter to Congress in 2011 from a CLASS administrator warned of extreme adverse selection in the program, stating that “if healthy purchasers are not attracted to the CLASS benefit package, then premiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractive to purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market. This imbalance in the beneficiary pool would cause the program to quickly collapse.”

Many experts warned that the program would require either a mandate to participate or a permanent taxpayer bailout.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: CLASS Act, deal, fiscal cliff, ObamaCare, poorly designed, taxpayer dollars

On the subject of arms treaties with the Soviet Union, President Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.” Now many Members of Congress want to do the same with public funding of elective abortion under Obamacare, but they are meeting new resistance from congressional Democrats, some of whom, nonetheless, insist they have the same goal.

The battle dates back to 2009, when the abortion funding issue held up the passage of the massive health care bill known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In March 2010, the PPACA was finally adopted when a small group of House Democrats backed away from a proposal known as Stupak–Pitts, which would have plugged the abortion funding loopholes in the PPACA and established a strict standard governing the use of the new affordability tax credits created by the bill.

The House Democrats voted for the PPACA after receiving assurances that President Obama would issue an executive order that would plug the loopholes, or, as the President put it, impose “strict compliance with prohibitions on abortion funding in health insurance exchanges” and apply the fund restrictions to separate categories like community health centers. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: elective abortion, health insurance exchanges, ObamaCare, taxpayer dollars