newsletter

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Own a small business? Brace for Obamacare pain ["The changes put as many as 90,000 policies across Nevada at risk of cancellation or nonrenewal this fall…"] Local insurance brokers are reporting spikes ranging from 35 percent to 120 percent on policies that renew from July to December. The increases are especially acute among employers with workforces made up of younger, healthier men. That’s because Obamacare prohibits offering lower rates to healthier...

Washington Examiner: Obamacare youth sign-ups at or below 25% in 15 states ...This is far below the 40 percent threshold White House officials initially said was required to ensure healthy insurance exchanges…nationally, about 28 percent of those signing up through the exchanges were aged 18 to 34. But national numbers are only a rough indicator of the state of play on the exchanges, because in reality, the insurance market is made up of 51 different risk pools - one for each state, plus...

The Federalist: No, Obamacare Did Not "Save The Economy" Last Quarter GDP growth figures for the fourth quarter of 2013 were released by the federal government, and the numbers were not good. The economy just barely avoided painful contraction, posting annualized growth of only 0.1 percent. But for the Obamacare Truther Brigade, there was a tiny glimmer of hope. It turns out that higher than expected health care spending growth was just enough to keep that quarterly growth number out of the...

Washington Post: The White House's Obamacare victory lap looking more like a false start Democrats have been claiming a turning point in the battle over Obamacare for the better part of the last month. First came the news that 8 million people had signed up [yet again we do not have reliable data as to how many of these people are enrolled and paying premiums or how many of these sign-ups were previously uninsured] -- exceeding the law's goals -- and then came the Congressional Budget Office...

Wall Street Journal: A Doctor's Declaration of Independence It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession [CMS] dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby [CMS - the government agency] tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic...

The Federalist: Obama's Census Bureau Officially Plans To Cook Obamacare's Books The New York Times reported…that the U.S. Census Bureau planned to radically alter its method of calculating the number of people without health insurance in the U.S. The result? The changes will be so radical that “it will be difficult to measure the effects of President Obama’s health care law in the next report, due this fall, census officials said.” You know what else is due this fall?...

Wall Street Journal: Odd-Hour Workers Face Loss of Employer Health Plans Redrawn Lines Between Full- and Part-Timers at Sodexo Decide Who Is Eligible for Coverage Thousands of these so-called variable-hour employees—many of whom work on college campuses that don't operate during summer months—could lose their benefits as employers use new formulas to classify workers as full time or part time. The distinction determines which employees are entitled to company-sponsored health...

The Federalist: Kathleen Sebelius's Resignation Hands Republicans A Golden Opportunity Not even the New York Times thinks Sebelius is leaving because she succeeded. …it appears that this resignation presents Republicans with a golden opportunity to reignite their crusade against Obamacare with Sylvia Burwell’s nomination as a proxy for all the problems with the law. Burwell is a political loyalist and a veteran of the shutdown fight with no record on health care, and will likely be...

The Federalist: Obama Administration To Insurers: There's No Such Thing As Illegal Immigrants When It Comes To Obamacare, All Immigrants Are Legal. Lost in the overall shuffle concerning the many problems with Obamacare’s exchanges is the central problem of enforcement of those aspects of the law the president hasn’t waived or delayed yet – including the particular challenge when it comes to verifying the immigration status of those applying for taxpayer subsidized...

The Transom: WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE OBAMACARE NUMBERS REALLY ARE The long-teased RAND study of how many people have actually gained coverage under Obamacare is finally out, and the most startling thing about it is how massive a gap there is between their numbers and the Obama administration’s… The headline number you’ll hear today is 9.3 million gaining coverage – but that’s a net, because RAND also estimates that over five million lost coverage at the same...

National Journal: Administration Backs Down on Medicare Cuts The Agency overseeing the system says it's turning a proposed cut into a slight payment increase for Medicare Advantage plans [Democrats joined by many Republicans and the insurance industry pressured the Administration into reversing MA cuts as prescribed by Obamacare. These cuts were a part of the "savings" imagined by Obamacare] The federal agency that runs Medicare has reversed at least some proposed cuts to private Medicare...