Gov. Tim Pawlenty today voiced his opposition to ObamaCare, saying:

“They’ve offered us money to get involved early in other aspects of ‘Obamacare,’ including exchanges and high-risk insurance pools, which we already have by the way in the state, and various other things, and we have turned that down.”

Pawlenty correctly pointed out that states who accept ObamaCare grants from the federal government will be on the hook for years to come to pay for those programs.  He points to Medicaid as an example of the federal government's inability to fund its current health programs.

He continued, “[The federal government] get[s] these states hooked up on these programs. And now you look at a program like Medicaid, which is so out of control with costs going up so fast — this is the health care for the disadvantaged and poor — the costs are going up beyond any reasonable ability to pay for it, beyond any reasonable growth in revenues, and state’s technically have the ability to opt out to just go it their own and there’s some states that may consider that.”

Tevi Troy over at National Review provides a clear overview of the impact of ObamaCare without the individual mandate.  Mr. Troy explains that Judge Henry Hudson's ruling in the Virginia lawsuit that the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional will cause both premiums and the number of uninsured in the United States to rise.

His full post is worth a read, so it is pasted in its entirety below:

What Happens if the Mandate Disappears: Premiums and Uninsured Both Increase

December 14, 2010 12:27 P.M.

By Tevi Troy  

Judge Henry Hudson’s ruling that the individual mandate to require the purchase of health insurance is unconstitutional will make the unpopular new health law even more unpopular by making its impact worse than originally anticipated. If Judge Hudson’s narrow ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court and nothing happens to change the current law — always a safe assumption given our sclerotic system — the mandate will go away, leaving the rest of the problematic legislation behind, with potentially disastrous effects.

Last June, the Congressional Budget Office prepared an analysis of the impact of the removal of just the individual mandate. According to the CBO, the elimination of the mandate would increase the number of uninsured compared to current expectations. Many people fail to realize this, but the new law, for all its spending and bureaucratic machinations, would not eliminate the problem of the uninsured even with the mandate. Per CBO, there are likely to be 23 million uninsured residents in 2019 under the new law. If the mandate were to go away, this number of uninsured would increase even further, to 39 million in 2019. The 16 million additional uninsured people would come from a mix of fewer people getting Medicaid, coverage in the individual mandate, or exchange coverage.

In addition, the loss of the mandate coupled with the new regulatory burdens that the law imposes on insurance companies, would lead to significant health insurance premium increases. This is because of adverse selection — healthier uninsured people who are not forced to purchase or procure insurance will not do so, while less healthy people will take advantage of the government subsidies and new requirements that insurers take all comers and purchase insurance. Insurers will as a result have to cover a less healthy pool of individuals, which will lead to increased premiums. As CBO puts it, “This adverse selection would increase premiums for new non-group policies (purchased either in the exchanges or directly from insurers in the non-group market) by an estimated 15 to 20 percent relative to current law.”

These changes would also reduce the cost of the new law. According to CBO, the mandate-less version of the Obama health law would shrink the deficit by $252 billion over the period from 2011-2020, largely because fewer people would take up government subsidized health offerings, be they from the expansion of Medicaid or the new exchanges. But the law would still be hugely expensive, and would not have that much of an impact on the number of uninsured, which was after all its primary selling point. It certainly would not “bend the cost curve down,” an old selling point that has largely disappeared from Democratic rhetoric.

In a nutshell, the result would be some decrease in the cost to government, fewer people covered than projected, and increased premium costs to individuals. The lower cost will not be felt directly, but the increased premiums and higher number of uninsured will. The judge’s ruling makes the already unsustainable legislation even less sustainable, from both an economic and a political perspective.

Today U.S. Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson (E.D. VA) struck down ObamaCare's individual mandate provision, which requires individuals to buy insurance or pay a punitive tax.

The decision came in a lawsuit filed by Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who argued that the mandate is unconstitutional.  The court agreed with Cuccinelli's argument, and Judge Hudson wrote in his opinion that the mandate "exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power."  

More on this decision can be found at 

The Wall Street Journal.

The Fraser Institute today released the definitive study on wait-times to see a physician in Canada.  

ObamaCare will help to ensure that Americans can also enjoy long wait-times to see doctors and to schedule a visit with a specialist or to have an operation.  

The highlights from Canada: 

18.2 week wait-time between the visit with the primary-care doctor and the specialist 
91% of all Canadians on wait-lists are waiting against their will (as opposed to their own scheduling conflicts)

According to a new study from the Buckeye Institute, ObamaCare's expansion of Medicaid eligibility will bankrupt the state of Ohio. Presently, a household of four in Ohio pays approximately $2,000 annually to support the state's Medicaid program.  ObamaCare, the nation's new healthcare law, will significantly increase the burden on Ohio taxpayers.

The full report, entitled Crushing Weight: National Health Care Law Threatens to Make Medicaid an Unsustainable Burden for Ohioans can be downloaded here.

Welcome to the American Healthcare Education Coalition (AHEC) website.  We hope you will find the information on this website informative and helpful.

AHEC relies on generous contributions from people like yourself.  Remember contributions to AHEC are tax-deductible. You can make a donation to AHEC by completing the online contribution form here. If you would prefer to make a contribution to AHEC by mail, you can download AHEC's contribution form and mail the completed form and your donation to AHEC.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report last month detailing the large amount of money contained in ObamaCare to fund implementation over the next ten years.  To those who read ObamaCare before it passed none of these individual spending provisions should come as a surprise.  The noteworthy aspect of the CRS document is that it aggregates these spending provisions, putting them into a concise document which details a vast amount of spending.

This is another problem with ObamaCare, it puts nearly $100 billion of spending to implement ObamaCare on autopilot and makes the job of Congress to conduct oversight regarding implementation harder.  Now that spending is already in motion, it will be harder for Congress to cut spending or withhold spending to gain leverage over the leviathan that is HHS.

AHEC has compiled a brief list of the amount and description of the Appropriations (the page numbers correlate to the hyperlink for ObamaCare contained above):

Section 1002 (page 139) – Consumer Assistance (Grants)
First FY, $30,000,000
Subsequent years, such sums as may be necessary

Section 1003 (page 140) – Federal Takeover of Premium Reviews (Grants)
$250,000,000

Section 1005 (HCERA) – Reform Fund
$1,000,000,000

Section 1101 (page 143) – Administrative Costs of High Risk Pools
$5,000,000,000

Section 1102 (Page 145) – Coverage for Early Retirees
$5,000,000,000

Section 1311 (page 173) – Health Benefits Plans
Blank Check – “amount necessary” to carry out this section

Section 1322 (page 188) – Grants to Create Non-Profit Insurers
$6,000,000,000

Section 1323 (page 195) – Community Health Insurance Option
Such sums as requested by the Secretary
$1,000,000,000

Section 2405 (page 305) – Expansion of A/D Resource Centers
$50,000,000 ($10,000,000 x 5FY)

Section 2701 (page 318) – Adult Health Quality Measures
$300,000,000 ($60,000,000 x 5FY)

Section 2707 (page 327) – Medicaid Psychiatric Demonstration Project
$75,000,000

Section 2801 (page 328) - MACPAC
$11,000,000

Section 2951 (page 343) – Home Visiting Programs
$1,500,000,000

Section 2953 (page 352) – Personal Responsibility Education
$375,000,000 ($75,000,000 x 5)

Section 2954 (page 352) - Education
$250,000,000

Section 3013 (page 384) – Quality Measure Development
$375,000,000 ($75,000,000 x 5)

Section 3014 (page 387) – Quality Measurement
Up to $100,000,000

Section 3021 (page 394) – CMS Innovation
$5,000,000
$10,000,000,000

Section 3024 (page 408) – Demonstration Project
$30,000,000

Section 3026 (page 415) – Transition Program
$500,000,000

Section 3027 (page ____) – Demonstration Project
$1,600,000

Section 3306 (page 470) – Assistance for Low-Income Programs
$300,000,000

Section 3403 (page 506) – Board
$150,000,000 ($15M adjusted annually for inflation)

Section 4002 (page 541) – Prevention Fund
$5,000,000,000

Section 4101 (page 547) – School Based Health Centers
$200,000,000 ($50M x 5)

Section 4108 (page 564) – Incentives to Prevent Chronic Diseases n Medicaid
$100,000,000

Section 4202 (page 570) – Wellness
$50,000,000 transfer

Section 4204 (page 473) – Immunization
$1,000,000

Section 4306 (page 587) – Child Obesity Programs
$125,000,000

Section 5210 (page 615) – Ready Reserve Corps
$100,000,000

Section 5507 (page 668) – Demonstration Projects
$425,000,000 ($85M x 5)
$15,000,000

Section 5508 (page 672) – Teaching Capacity
$230,000,000

Section 5509 (page 675) – Grad Nurse Program
$200,000,000

Section 6201 (page 727) – Background Checks
$160,000,000

Section 6301 (page 728) – Research
(1) Amounts in a fund
(2) $1.26B + trust fund sources (see formula)
(3) Fund based appropriations

Section 6402 (page 761) – Program Integrity
$350,000,000

Section 8001 (page 842) – Class Act
Up to amount collected in a trust fund

Section 9023 (page 883) – Therapeutic Discovery Project
Such sums

Section 10203 (page 931) – Enrollment Prgrams
$40,570,000,000

Secs. 10211-10214 (page 931) – Pregnancy Assistance grants
$250,000,000

Section 10323 (page 959) – Medicare for Hazardous Exposure
$215,000,000

Section 10502 (page 1003) - Facility Construction
$100,000,000

Section 10503 (page 1004) – Community Health Center Fund
$1,500,000,000
$1,500,000,000

The House Ways and Means Committee today reports that 30,000 New Yorkers who work for an SEIU-affiliate are losing their coverage.  6,000 children will be completely without health insurance as a result of this dropped coverage.  Mitra Behroozi,the Executive Director of benefit and pension funds for the plan for 1199SEIU explained the change, noting that: "[N]ew federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26.  Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible."  In other words, the new requirement under ObamaCare that health insurance providers extend coverage to adult children of beneficiaries up to age 26 is the reason that 6,000 children in New York are without health insurance coverage.  Expect more of these types of unintended (but not unforeseen!) consequences of ObamaCare in the coming months.

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.  

 

Here is an interesting article on A Line of Sight about ObamaCare's impact on seniors and the ensuing Medicare cuts.