The Obama administration maintains that its Affordable Care Act is a complex construct that's endangered if the Supreme Court finds its central feature -- the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance -- unconstitutional. It's certainly true that eliminating the "individual mandate" will immediately expose the plan as unworkable. It can only succeed by creating a broad, universal insurance pool that collects big premiums from the young and healthy. If the young and healthy aren't required to sign on, they won't. Hence, the pools won't be remotely large enough to pay for the older, sicker folks who get the best deal, and are bound to flock to the state exchanges.

In reality, the reform plan's success doesn't depend on the Supreme Court's decision at all. Its faulty design virtually guarantees that all the things the administration warns will happen if it loses will happen anyway. Even if it stands, the legislation will spawn insurance plans crowded with high-cost folks, driving premiums higher, hobbling competition as carriers abandon the exchanges, and leaving tens of millions of Americans uninsured.

When Congress created Medicare Part D, the created two benefits for seniors. The first is a basic benefit where seniors pay 25% of their annual drug costs up to $2,830 (in 2010) and the government pays the rest. The second is a catastrophic benefit where the government will pay 95% of a senior's drug cost above $6,440. In the middle (from $2,830 to $6,440), seniors are responsible for 100% of the costs. The benefit to taxpayers is that the gap between the two benefit programs (critics call it the "donut hole") is that it incentivizes seniors to opt for generics to avoid the so-called donut hole. ObamaCare eliminates the donut hole and in turn one of the most important market-based aspects of Part D.

For more on this issue, go here.

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

Yesterday, the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Obama Administration to provide detailed information to the committee on the use of federal tax dollars for significant public relations campaign by HHS. Congressman Charles Boustany (a medical doctor) sent the letter.

A copy of the Ways & Means Committee press release can be found here.

Text of the Ways & Means Committee letter can be found here. 

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

A new article at The Apothecary details how many well-intended (but misguided) government policies have increased health insurance costs. As costs increase, more people drop health insurance or opt-out either because they cannot afford the higher prices or the do a simple cost-benefit analysis and decide that the benefit is no longer worth the cost. In either case, it is government mandates and policies that drive up costs with the end results being fewer people with insurance. ObamaCare repeats many of the failed policies of the past which will make the problems associated with higher cost health insurance even worse. Read the full commentary here.

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