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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Avik Roy at the Apothecary has a very interesting take on testimony before the supercommittee.  According to The New York Times,  “Members of both parties told the [Congressional Supercommittee] that Medicare should offer a fixed amount of money to each beneficiary to buy coverage from competing private plans, whose costs and benefits would be tightly regulated by the government.” 

As Mr. Roy explains, the House Republican solution to fix Medicare, as contained in the budget they passed earlier this year, is a bipartisan supported solution. Why then have House Democrats demagogued the plan? Why have Senate Democrats done the same (and failed to even pass a budget in 2.5 years)? Why has the President talked down the only serious, bipartisan plan to save Medicare and reduce the deficit (which is, I might add, also the only plan that has passed either of House of Congress)?  Simple - they are playing politics instead of doing what is right and doing it now! In doing so, Democrats are also risking a further downgrade in the U.S. debt rating.

Read more on Mr. Roy's interesting take on the subject, here.

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The American Healthcare Education Coalition joined nearly 100 other organizations in signing a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, requesting that the Committee hold hearings on Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's role in developing the legal defense of ObamaCare. Before becoming a Justice on the Supreme Court, Kagan worked at the Department of Justice as Solicitor General. At the time of ObamaCares' passage in Congress she sent emails to her DOJ colleagues that clearly shows her bias in the ObamaCare case. In addition, federal law requires that she recuse herself - which she has not done.  

Read the full text of the letter, here.

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The House Ways & Means Committee links to a new report that details that links higher healthcare costs leads to fewer jobs. The committee concludes that: As a variety of mandates go into effect that influence the type and cost of plan an employer may offer under the Democrats’ health care law, health insurance premiums could consume 100 percent of wage gains for the bottom 30 percent of wage earners. This means that 30 percent of American workers would not see annual pay increases because that money would instead be used to cover higher health care costs." 

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Political pundits on the left continue to point out that Republicans have abandoned their efforts to "repeal and replace" ObamaCare with real reform. They note that the House and Senate Republicans haven't tried to repeal the law since April. The left wants to use this fact with the hopes of convincing the American people of the "inevitability" of the law, however, there are other issues that affect health care that have taken center stage - principally the fight over the debt limit and the need for entitlement reform. Make no mistake about it, these two issues are linked despite the fact that the President has said that any changes to ObamaCare, in relation to the debt limit debate, are off the table.

Some have suggested that the President has no debt limit plan.  That isn't exactly true - the President has a plan and that plan is to do nothing and maintain the status quo.  As The Heritage Foundation pointed out last month, ObamaCare is the President's roadmap for health care in America.  And while it will ObamaCare makes Medicare and Medicaid worse - effectively threatening the plans solvency and very existence, the President will not consider changes to these programs as part of the debt limit solution or program solvency. Reform Medicaid discusses the President's entrenched position on Medicaid as follows: adding 25 billion to an already unsustainable program that has terrible inefficiencies and horrible health outcomes.

Republicans need to push to replace ObamaCare's entitlement expansion as part of the debt limit fight - marry these two issues - to demonstrate to the American people that the fight for individual liberty and health autonomy is as fundamental an American value as limited government.

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Remember during the ObamaCare debate when advocates of the bill to impose a government takeover of healthcare said Medicare was more efficient than the private sector?  Remember too that this argument was used to push the so-called "public option" because it would be more efficient?  Well, in the word of Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC): "they lied!"

Avik Roy at The Apothecary has an excellent article detailing how Medicare is MORE expensive than the cost to administer health insurance in the private sector. The reasons that advocates of ObamaCare and the public option argument falls short is that their numbers failed to include the actual cost for all of the other government agencies to administer benefits, including collecting tax revenue.  When that is accounted for, the per beneficiary cost of Medicare is higher than that of the private sector.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has completed a review of the ObamaCare waiver applications related to annual limits on health benefits that were received, and either denied or accepted, by HHS.  This full report can be found here.

GAO's summary states, in part: "as of April 25, 2011, CCIIO received a total of 1,415 applications for a waiver... and approved most of these applications.... Approximately 3 million people were covered in approved plans and approximately 153,000 people were covered in denied plans.... CCIIO granted waivers on the basis of an application's projected significant increase in premiums or significant reduction in access to health care benefits. According to CCIIO officials, applications with a projected premium increase of 10 percent or more tended to be approved while applications with a projected premium increase of 6 percent or less tended to be denied."  In other words, Secretary Sibelius has used a rather arbitrary means to grant waivers to various applicants (no surprise since she gave herself waiver power while ignoring the fact that ObamaCare does not give her this authority).

The GAO report prompted Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY), the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee to state: “Americans were promised health care reform would save families thousands of dollars. As we can see from this new GAO report, the opposite is true. In fact, millions of Americans have had to seek waivers from a part of the new health law because their premium increases were set to rise by double digits. Even more troubling are the thousands of people who were denied waivers and will now be forced to pay higher premiums for health insurance.”

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Deroy Murdock has posted a compelling piece on National Review Online about the financial perils facing America's seniors due to Medicare's impending bankruptcy (which will occur in 2020 and a problem made worse by ObamaCare).  

House Republicans have been willing to lead on the issue by reforming Medicare in ways that would affect only those under the age of 55 while leaving the program the same for those over the age of 55.  Democrats, for their part, have indicated they have no plan to save Medicare and would not be putting forward a plan of their own.  Instead, Democrats have used false claims, smear campaigns, and demagoguery to attack the only viable plan to save Medicare.

Here is what the press is stating about the Democrats' false and misleading claims:

1. The Associated Press writes, “Democrats are distorting the fundamentals of a Republican plan to reshape Medicare, falsely accusing the GOP of pushing a proposal that tells the elderly ‘you're on your own’ with health care and that lets insurers deny coverage to the sick.”
2. The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin writes, "A number of separate, neutral fact-checking groups have lambasted the Dems for misleading the public on Ryan’s Medicare reform plan."
3. Glenn Kessler, also of the Post writes that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has said the Republican plan "would 'allow insurance companies to deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions.'  Neither of those claims are true."
4. The Wall Street Journal wrote: "the debate on Capitol Hill and in the media is too often fueled by partisan fear mongering instead of a thoughtful examination of the facts."

Here are what non-partisan, fact-checking groups have said about Democrats' claims:

1. The St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact called the claims "FALSE."
2. Additional resources can be found here, here and here.

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Kevin Williamson at National Review Online writes about HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius' efforts to implement price controls on insurance premiums.  Despite the fact that ObamaCare will impose a series of costly mandates on insurers but Sibelius will cap premium increases.  These factors will drive insurers out of the marketplace, creating fewer consumers choices, leading to scarcity and eventually, in the absence of market alternatives, a public option (as the only option).  

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