Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committeee, weighed in on a report from the National Governor's Association about the burden that Medicaid, and its expansion under ObamaCare, imposes on the states. From his November 29, 2011 Press Release:

"[T]he National Governors Association’s (NGA) Fiscal Survey of the States demonstrates why repealing the Medicaid Maintenance of Effort requirement, first imposed in the stimulus package and again in the $2.6 trillion health spending law, and modernizing the Medicaid programs is essential to allowing states effectively manage their Medicaid programs." 

"The report released today found that state budget deficits cumulatively amount to at least $365 billion over the next five years and that Medicaid enrollment is up by 17.7 percent with this joint federal-state program making up the largest portion of state budgets. The NGA also found, "spending on Medicaid is expected to consume an increasing share of state budgets and grow much more rapidly than state revenue growth, resulting in slow or no growth in education, transportation or public safety.

Reports about Medicaid can be found: here (from the RGA) and here (from Members of Congress). 

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According to this article, the federal government may have intentionally hidden the true cost of the public. Read more here.

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According to a new Weekly Standard article, 4.5 million Americans have lost their health care insurance since ObamaCare became law. This has occurred despite the President's promise that if you like your health insurance you can keep it.

As the article points out, the Congressional Budget Office had predicted that nearly 6 million more Americans would have health insurance in 2011 than in 2010 - including 3 million more people as a result of ObamaCare. So the Washington beancounters are off by a net total of 10.5 million people.

Read the full Weekly Standard article here.

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Testimony this week before a House subcommittee revealed that ObamaCare's exchange subsidies will not be made available to many Americans. The Washington Examiner reported that Richard Burkhauser, a Cornell University economics professor, testified that under ObamaCare: (1) employers are required to provide insurance to their employees or pay a fine (tax); (2) the employer mandate does not require employers to provide coverage to their employee's dependents; and (3) that if one family member has employer-provided coverage the whole household becomes ineligible for subsidies offered through the state-based exchanges. What does this mean for a low income worker who has employer provided coverage? They will have to buy insurance on the individual market to insure their family.  Thanks to the increase in premiums that are a result of ObamaCare, the cost for insurance could cost a family of four making $28,000 per year as much as 43% of their income.  ObamaCare does not make the American families concerns over insurance costs better, in a lot of cases it will make those concerns worse.

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The Obama Administration is finally publicly admitting what critics of ObamaCare have known about the CLASS Act (the new long-term care entitlement program created in ObamaCare) prior to ObamaCare passing Congress - that the program was completely unsustainable.

On October 14, 2011, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius notified Congress that the there was no "viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time." She also indicated that the program would be suspended indefinitely.

The Congressional Budget Office had originally advised Congress that the CLASS Act would increase federal revenue by $86 billion from 2012 to 2021 (critics correctly called this a budget gimmick in ObamaCare because this provision would collect revenue in the short term while the major costs of the CLASS Act would occur in the out years).  With the suspension of the CLASS Act, ObamaCare will lose that "revenue" that helped give ObamaCare the appearance that the law was budget neutral.  

This comes on the heals of Congress repealing ObamaCare's 1099 reporting provision that was also supposed to produce $17 billion in revenue over 10 years.  As a result, ObamaCare has lost $103 billion in revenue over the past 18 months and the law is not even scheduled to take effect for another 27 months. This shows that the financial footing of ObamaCare will not be budget neutral and makes it even more imperative that Congress repeal the law.

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Last week, Senator Thune published a great op-ed in The Washington Times, detailing the absurdity of the sheer size and scope of the federal government now that ObamaCare is the law of the land.

Docs4Patient Care has great commentary on Sen. Thune's op-ed, which can be found here.

Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY) has introduced a bill to close one of ObamaCare's loopholes that allows early retirees with high incomes to enroll in Medicaid at the expense of federal and state loopholes.  Enzi has introduced a bill to close that loophole - according to Enzi's press release, his bill will save the taxpayers $13 billion.

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On June 24, 2011, CQ's HealthBeat News reports on recent statements by Obama Administration OMB head Peter Orszag. Orszag left the Administration and now is a VP at Citibank and has published a new article in Foreign Affairs magazine about ObamaCare.

In the article he suggests that the "biggest substantive shortcoming" of ObamaCare was its lack of medical liability reform. Orszag suggests that med-mal reform should have taken the form of providing "safe harbor for doctors who follow evidence-based guidelines" in treating patients.  This of course ignores the reality of medical practice. Guidelines are just that - guidelines.  In some cases, they may be the best course of action and in other cases not.  To suggest that doctors follow a bureaucratically developed timeline and course of treatment as the only way to avoid a malpractice claim would not serve patients well.  Once again, Orszag gets its wrong.

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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin have a new op-ed published in The Washington Post on June 17, 2011 that details how ObamaCare will lead to lower quality of care and runaway costs.  You can read the op-ed here.

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Karl Rove writes in The Wall Street Journal about the continued bad news related to ObamaCare.  He notes that the McKinsey study that concluded that 78 million people could lose their insurance as a consequence of ObamaCare breaks the President's "if you like your insurance, you can keep it," promise.  Rove confirms AHEC's earlier estimate that ObamaCare could cost $3 trillion over the next decade (tripling the original cost estimates).

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