The Heritage Foundation has a new analysis that details many of the consequences that will befall consumers as a result of many of the ObamaCare benefit mandates.  Mandates are bad, bad stuff.

That analysis can be found here.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffitt has written a very insightful analysis of how ObamaCare’s health insurance exchanges will serve to undermine state authority and flexibility.

Among the points that Moffitt makes are that the exchanges will:

(1)         Undermine state regulatory authority;

(2)         Impose unknown costs on consumers, insurers and states;

(3)       Impose a on-size-fits-all approach for each state while ignoring that each state may have different issues affecting the cost and access to healthcare;

(4)         Undermines consumer choices; and

(5)         Undermines competition which would surely increase costs. 

HHS released a report this week entitled: At Risk: Pre-Existing Conditions Could Affect 1 in 2 Americans: 129 Million People Could be Denied Affordable Coverage without Health Reform.  In an ongoing attempt to scare Americans about the effect of repealing ObamaCare, HHS wrote this report with several serious factual errors.  

First, the report states that between 50 and 129 million Americans have some type of pre-existing condition.  How scientific!  Between 50 and 129 million?  That means, by this very imprecise calculation, that somewhere between 19 and 50% of Americans have a pre-existing condition.  With such precise calculations, is it any wonder that Americans are wary of putting the federal government in charge of the entire healthcare system?  

The report goes on to state that 20% of all people with pre-existing conditions (25 million Americans) are uninsured.  So, for purposes of this calculation, HHS works with the higher number - that 129 million Americans have pre-existing conditions.  Then with that dubious number, HHS makes another wild assumption - that 25 million people with pre-existing conditions are without health insurance.  We have been told repeatedly that 43 million Americans are uninsured.  Now HHS wants us to believe that well over half of the uninsured in this country suffer from pre-existing conditions and are unable to get health insurance?  

Avik Roy over at National Review Online has a wonderful response to HHS's misleading report.  

Today the Department of Health and Human Services released a press release about Blue Shield of California's proposed premium increase.  

Secretary Sebelius made the following comments:

“The practice of insurers imposing these kinds of rate increases without public scrutiny would be the wave of the future without the Affordable Care Act.  If the law were repealed, we would be left with few tools to protect consumers against these kinds of rate increases.  Insurers would be able to spend more on profits, marketing, and CEO bonuses, instead of care.  Families and small businesses would lose their ability to negotiate more competitive rates in the Exchanges, and insurers would again be able to deny coverage to children based on their pre-existing health conditions.” 

A closer examination of the facts, however, reveals a huge disconnect between the statements by Sebelius and reality.  Secretary Sebelius claims that the repeal of ObamaCare would mean that insurers could rase their rates without any consequences.  Well, not exactly.  California has its own independent review of premium increases and already evaluates all rate increases that the state deems to be excessive.  What exactly does it mean for Secretary Sebelius to say that ObamaCare is necessary to protect consumers?  Is she forgetting about the fact that California (and 42 other states) prior to ObamaCare already reviewed rates? 

AHEC recently published an analysis of the deleterious effects of HHS's proposed rule to micro-manage the states' review programs and to attempt to impose price controls on the insurance industry.  The full report is available here: Price Controls.

Jeffrey Anderson at The Weekly Standard blogs about the new powers that Secretary Sebelius has acquired through the latest 136-page regulation that came out during Christmas week.

Sebelius Seizes Even More Power

Jeffrey H. Anderson
December 23, 2010 11:10 AM

Not satisfied with the colossal amounts of power that she would acquire under Obamacare if it isn't repealed, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued a 136-page "rule" that will now give her (and her subordinates) largely unchecked power to pass judgment on the prices of health insurance throughout the United States. Notwithstanding the fact that 43 states already regulate and approve health insurance premiums, Sebelius claims that we need an additional, more centralized, protection against insurers' unseemly 'profit motive.' But a far greater threat to the future of American republicanism is posed by the impulse that animates Sebelius and the bulk of the Obama administration: the power motive.

It's staggering that one person would think that she should ultimately get to decide what a product, which Obamacare would soon require all Americans to purchase, should cost. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal writesthat Sebelius's "rule" marks "an effort to end-run Congress, which by some miracle declined to give HHS the formal legal authority to explicitly block premium increases, despite a direct appeal from President Obama." Not having been granted that formal power, "Ms. Sebelius is creating by regulatory fiat larger de facto powers to achieve the same end."

The Journal adds that this "is typical of the vast ad hoc powers that Obamacare handed to regulators," which will be wielded "to punish the insurance industry for rising health costs that the new entitlement is already turbocharging." 

If the passage of a 2,700 page "law" (more like an entire legal code) weren't telling enough, this latest development provides yet another reminder that Obamacare wouldn't merely lead to $2 trillion in new federal spending in its real first decade, from 2014 to 2023 (according to the Congressional Budget Office); a $300 billion increase in nationwide health costs (according to the Medicare chief actuary); higher health-care premiums (according to the CBO); higher taxes (according to the CBO); Medicare cuts (according to the CBO); and lower-quality health care (according to the American people).  It would also lead to results of even greater importance:  the politicizing of health care, the compromising of liberty, and the debilitating consolidation of power in the hands of the unelected few.

AHEC's Executive Director, Shonda Werry, writes today in A Line of Sight about how ObamaCare eliminates mini-med health insurance plans, which currently cover more than 1 million Americans.  HHS Secretary Sebelius has issued hundreds of waivers to companies across the country to avoid a political disaster.

The article is available here: ObamaCare Waivers and HHS Hypocrisy

Here is an article from Investor's Business Daily from several months ago that outlines many of the new powers that HHS Secretary Sebelius has been granted through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare).

One strange item to note: ObamaCare gives the Health and Human Services Secretary several undefined powers.  In many instances, the new healthcare law gives the Secretary of HHS the power to create and define her new authorities.  

 

On September 30, 2010, the State of Alabama accepted a 1 million dollar ObamaCare grant from HHS.  

This grant will be used to implement the state exchanges, which ObamaCare requires.

The details about this grant are below:

Alabama
Administrator: Alabama Department of Insurance
Amount Awarded: $1,000,000
-Assess the status of health insurance in Alabama as it relates to the uninsured, the underinsured and the currently insured to determine what the environment will look like in 2014 and what consumer demand for the Exchanges will be.
-Determine the best governance structure for the Exchange.
 -Incorporate a broad-based workgroup and working subgroups of interested stakeholders to assist the Department as it envisions an Alabama Exchange 
-Seek appropriate legal and regulatory authority to establish an Exchange.