AHEC has recently completed an extensive fiscal and policy review of the Health Care Compact (HCC or compact), legislation that has been introduced in several states. The conclusion of our fiscal review of the HCC is that the compact's funding formula is fatally flawed and that it will shift $3 trillion of healthcare liabilities from the federal government onto the backs of the states. Our report even provides a break down of the fiscal shortfall that will be created in each state if the compact were to be widely adopted.

Ironically, the group pushing the HCC has confirmed AHEC's $3 trillion figure but has failed to inform state legislators of how this will impact their state's budget. It would be the height of fiscal irresponsibility for a state to pass the compact given the obvious flaws in the funding formula, particularly if a state does not have a plan in place to ensure that the state's most vulnerable citizens will not receive proper health care. Yet some states (Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia and Missouri) have done just that.

READ AHEC'S FULL REPORT ON THE HCC HERE.

AHEC has previously discussed the myriad of problems with the Health Care Compact.  You can read much of AHEC's previous work on the HCC in the following places:

1. AHEC's Blog: The Connection of the HCC to Efforts to Enact Socialized Medicine
2. AHEC's Blog: The HCC will lead to Taxpayer Funding of Abortions and Free HealthCare for Illegal Aliens
3. A Line of Sight: A Conservative Assessment of the HCC

If you are concerned about the implications of the Health Care Compact, please call your state legislators (especially in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan and tell them to oppose the Health Care Compact).

Be sure to follow AHEC on Twitter @TheAHEC and at Facebook.com/TheAHEC.

Over the July 4th Holiday Weekend, AHEC's staff gave a presentation in Columbus, Ohio on ObamaCare's impact on Ohio at the "We the People" convention.  The full presentation can be found on AHEC's Analysis page.

Be sure to follow AHEC on Twitter @TheAHEC and at Facebook.com/TheAHEC.  

According to yesterday's Politico's Pulse, the insurance commissioner of Mississippi has decided against applying for a medical loss waiver on behalf of his state.  He cited the fact that insurers in the state had not asked him to file a waiver application and, for that reason, he would not be able to put forward an application HHS might approve.

What is a medical loss ratio?  It is the amount insurers must spend on direct care and ObamaCare imposes a requirement that the MLR must be 80 to 85 percent.  According to Reason Magazine online last October, the regulations proposed by HHS in relation to MLR would prevent insurers from including anti-fraud expenses as part of the MLR.  This matters because anti-fraud policies benefit consumers by helping to keep premium costs lower.  So too, advertising expenses can help broaden an insurance pool which can lower prices for consumers.

By excluding these kind of provisions from the MLR regulations, HHS is adopting policies that will reduce consumer choices and with less choices comes higher prices.

According to the Pulse, the states stand as follows in relation to applying for an MLR waiver:
APPROVED - 1 (Maine)
APPLIED - 7 (Iowa, Ga., Fla., Ky., N.D., Nev., N.H.)
LEANING YES - 7 (Alaska, Ariz., La., Okla., S.C., Texas, W.Va.)
LEANING NO - 17 (Ala., Calif., Colo., D.C., Idaho, Mass., Md., Miss., Mont., N.J., N.M., N.Y., Ore., Utah, Vt., Wash., Wyo.)
 

As America nears the one-year anniversary of ObamaCare becoming law, AHEC has released a new document entitled: "A Policymaker's Primer on ObamaCare: The Myths, the Costs and a Practical Guide to Defunding the Government Takeover of Healthcare in the 112th Congress."

The following is the Primer's Abstract:

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is commonly referred to as ObamaCare. This law includes a series of provisions that will have a dramatic impact on America’s healthcare system, including: (1) increased taxes and compliance burdens imposed on small businesses; (2) changes to HSAs that make them less useful to individual consumers and increased fines for non-qualified distributions; (3) deep cuts to Medicare Advantage, the free-market portion of Medicare; (4) a significant expansion of Medicaid, which will threaten state budgets; and (5) an unprecedented use of the Constitution’s commerce clause to justify the imposition of an individual mandate requiring individuals to carry health insurance or face serious tax penalties. Supporters of the law have made a series of promises about this law, including that it will reduce costs and expand access to insurance. Opponents of the law, however, note that these promises have proven false, and that the law will actually increase insurance costs, increase federal budget deficits, and damage the U.S. economy. In response to the clearly negative impact the law will have on businesses, individual consumers, and America as a whole, this primer concludes that it is necessary to repeal ObamaCare and recommends a course of action for state and local policymakers to achieve that objective.

The document is available on AHEC's website here and can also be found in the Policy & Analysis area of AHEC's website.

Be sure to follow AHEC on Twitter @TheAHEC and at Facebook.com/TheAHEC.

LAS VEGAS, NV -- Earlier today, AHEC's President, Christopher Jaarda, and Executive Director, Shonda Werry, briefed a group of journalists about the implications of ObamaCare and how the law was negatively affecting consumers, small businesses, families and the economy.  

The pair highlighted the fact that, under ObamaCare, seniors were losing their Medicare Advantage, hard-working young adults were losing the option of enrolling in a "mini-med" plan, parents of young children were no longer able to buy "child-only" policies, and that ObamaCare incentivizes employers to drop the insurance they provide to their employees.

"Whether you are old or young, just entering the workforce or about to retire, ObamaCare is already negatively affecting your health insurance and restricting your choices as a consumer," Jaarda said, "The time has long since passed for Congress to repeal ObamaCare and instead adopt a series of reforms that will expand consumer choices.  More choices means more competition which will bring down prices.  ObamaCare is clearly going in the opposite direction, restricting choices, which is one reason why premiums are increasing faster under ObamaCare than if we had done nothing at all."

Jaarda and Werry also took questions from the audience.  Several of those questions focused on Jaarda's comments that "many states are trying to have it both ways when it comes to ObamaCare."  28 states have sued the federal government seeking to have the courts declare ObamaCare unconstitutional, while at the same those states are actively applying for, and accepting, federal grant money under the same law they argue is unconstitutional.

Jaarda said, "Take Governor Mary Fallin in Oklahoma or Sam Brownback in Kansas, both voted against ObamaCare while serving in Congress last year, both Oklahoma and Kansas are suing the federal government, yet both of their states have also accepted ObamaCare grants.  They should follow the lead of former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and issue an executive order prohibiting state officials from accepting this money."

#####