Blog and News

The Wall Street Journal holds no punches in an editorial today, entitled "Farewell, Medicare Advantage" about the president's plan to re-sell ObamaCare -- backed by a $125 million campaign funded by labor unions and other interest groups:

"Seniors in particular should curb their enthusiasm. 'First and foremost,' President Obama told seniors on Tuesday in Wheaton, Maryland, 'what you need to know is that the guaranteed Medicare benefits that you've earned will not change, regardless of whether you receive them through Medicare or Medicare Advantage.' First and foremost, nothing about that sentence is true," the editors write.

"Advantage gives almost one of four seniors private insurance options, and Democrats are about to cut its funding by some $136 billion over the next decade even as health costs rise. The Congressional Budget Office says these cuts will cause enrollment to drop by 35%, the Administration's own Medicare actuaries predict 50%, and both outfits take for granted that benefits will also decline. The President knows this, so he and his fellow Democrats are gearing up to blame these cuts on ... insurers, rather than on their own policies," they write.

Employer shock: Employer reps are in shock over a draft copy of regulations circulating in Washington that address the circumstances under which existing employer health insurance plans will be required to meet all the expensive and onerous new mandates in the health overhaul law. Most employers believed (hoped?) their plans would be grandfathered since the president promised people so very often that "if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep it."

Apparently not. The reg writers estimate that more than half of all employer plans will fail to meet the test. The mid-range assumption is that two-thirds of employees of small businesses, and half of those in large employer plans will lose their grandfathered status by 2013 and will then have to comply with all the new federal rules.

This is going to be very, very unpopular. Deloitte released a surveyyesterday showing that 82% of those surveyed consider themselves "well" or "adequately" insured, and that virtually all of them (96%) are "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their insurance company's performance. Since most Americans like the coverage they have, they are going to wonder what happened to the president's promise that they can keep their current coverage.

And the more that employers are forced to change their plans to comply with the federal edicts, the more likely they are to drop coverage altogether and opt for the much cheaper fine for not providing coverage.

These are the facts. This legislation will have serious adverse effects on our economy, our health sector, on patients, doctors, taxpayers, and the future of medical innovation -- with health insurance costs accelerating, job losses coming inside and outside the health sector, outrage over the coming federal health insurance mandates impacting individuals and business, medical infrastructure being swamped with 16 million more Medicaid patients, and doctors leaving practice or closing practices to Medicare patients.

We've been warning about the impact of ObamaCare. Economic reality, which seems hard for many on the left to grasp, will ultimately prevail.