CQ Healthbeat is reporting that nearly every state is taking ObamaCare cash - including those that are fighting the law in court. This reeks of hypocrisy on the part of Republican Governors and state legislators who have authorized the states to fight ObamaCare in the courts. Taking money appropriated by a law that one believe's is unconstitutional is not just hypocrisy, it is a betrayal of the very people who elected you to fight for their freedoms. Reports are that the following states accepted money:

• Alabama, $8.5 million
• Arizona, $29.8 million
• Delaware, $3.4 million
• Hawaii, $14.4 million
• Idaho, $20.3 million
• Iowa, $7.7 million
• Maine, $5.8 million
• Michigan, $9.8 million
• Nebraska, $5.4 million
• New Mexico, $34.2 million
• Tennessee, $1.5 million
• Vermont, $18 million
• Rhode Island, $58.5 million

Today, CMS announced that it had doled out nearly $200 million to 13 states to establish ObamaCare exchanges and released a series of Questions and Answers about the Exchange money.

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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 Galen Institute has put together a very thoughtful list of healthcare reform ideas (and ideas to avoid) for the so-called "Congressional Super Committee" that is charged with producing nearly $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings. You can read the full list of reforms here. 

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The Apothecary reports that the Medicare Actuary has released information that health insurance costs will grow three times faster under ObamaCare. Read more here.

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The Obama Administration issued a new regulation that mandates insurers cover birth control and other procedures. It is worth noting that the regulation lacked adequate conscience clause protections - to which HHS said they would address that later.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents the insurance industry, said the IOM’s recommendations 'would increase the number of unnecessary physician office visits and raise the cost of coverage,' broadening the scope of mandated preventive services 'beyond existing evidence-based guidelines.'"

Read a WSJ article about this issue here.

The Heritage Foundation has a commentary on this issue here. 

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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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The Heritage Foundation has raised a scary question about the impact of ObamaCare on taxes and spending. One of the points raised is the following: "The tax credits in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will substantially increase the number of households that do not contribute to the cost of government. In fact, as a direct result of these credits, the number of households without any federal income tax liability will likely exceed half of all American households. If this happens, it may be very difficult to ever get a handle on out-of-control government spending."

The implications are grave.  Heritage quotes an unknown commentator who said: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."

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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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