Here’s the link to the list.

From the Wall Street Journal

Democrats think they know how to run the insurance industry better than the insurance industry, and they’re getting the chance to prove it under ObamaCare. Consider the early returns on its plan to insure Americans denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

To judge by President Obama’s rhetoric, the insurance industry’s victims have been wandering the country like Okies in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Thus ObamaCare gave the Health and Human Services Department the power to design and sell its own insurance policies. The $5 billion program started in July and runs through 2014, when ObamaCare’s broader regulations kick in.

So far that statement accurately describes a single person in North Dakota. Literally, one person has signed up out of 647,000 state residents. Four people have enrolled in West Virginia. Things are better in Minnesota, where Mr. Obama has rescued 15 out of 5.2 million, and also in Indiana—63 people there. HHS did best among the 24.7 million Texans. Thanks to ObamaCare, 393 of them are now insured.

States had the option of designing their own pre-existing condition insurance with federal dollars in lieu of the HHS plan, and 27 chose to do so. But they haven’t had much more success. Combined federal-state enrollment is merely 8,011 nationwide as of November 1, according to HHS.

Read the rest of the column here.

From NCPA

By John Goodman – I’ve been through this three times. You’d think that someone would notice a pattern. Learn lessons. Avoid repeating dumb mistakes. Alas, it was not to be.

First there was the Medicare Catastrophic Care Act of 1988. A drug benefit added to Medicare was passed one year and repealed the next. It was the first repeal of a major federal welfare program in 100 years. Grass-roots negative reaction was so intense that House Ways and Means Chairman, Dan Rostenkowski, was chased down the streets of Chicago by angry senior citizens. Then there was HillaryCare. After working for a year, the designers of this plan met ignoble defeat. There was never a hearing. Not even a vote. And now there is ObamaCare.

In all these cases, politicians and special interests met behind closed doors to carve up huge chunks of the medical marketplace. They then emerged and announced their plan to push everyone around and tell them what to do in the most intimate and personal aspects of their lives. In all three cases, the voters replied “no.” 

The reaction of nonseniors to the latest reform is easy to understand. How many times did Barack Obama say, “If you like the health plan you are in, you can keep it”? Inside the Beltway, I’m sure no one bothered to count. They weren’t listening anyway. That’s because no one in Washington — whether Republican or Democrat, man or woman, old or young, tall or short, fat or thin — no one took this promise seriously from the get-go.

But out in the Hinterland, people did take it seriously. And when it was obvious that the promise was not going to be kept and that no one who voted for ObamaCare could explain why the promise was not being kept, the negative reaction was palpable. Adding to the understandable fear and anxiety was a threat by McDonald’s to abolish health insurance for 30,000 employees and 3M’s announcement that it would end coverage for its retirees.

Folks, this is only the beginning. Over the next two years, many more people will get hit with similar unpleasant surprises. In an earlier Health Alert, I predicted that this election would not go well for people who devised the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If this Rube Goldberg contraption is not opened up and seriously repaired, we will have another election in 2012 just like this one.

As for seniors, this is all a no-brainer. For every $1 of benefits under the new bill, they will bear $10 of cost. As Joe Newhouse explained in Health Affairs, by the end of the decade their access to care will be worse than low-income families on Medicaid. (See the very excellent chart prepared by the Office of the Medicare Actuary.) Not only will seniors have to turn to community health centers and safety net hospitals for their care, they will be the least preferred patients in the waiting lines.

Read the rest of the column

Perhaps one of the most chilling videos you will see talking about the implications of ObamaCare.  Dr. David Janda is a nationally known orthopaedic surgeon from Ann Arbor, Michigan.  If this video does not convince you of the need to repeal ObamaCare, nothing likely will.

From Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Aerospace giant Boeing is joining the list of companies that say the new health care law could have a potential downside for their workers.

In a letter mailed to employees late last week, the company cited the overhaul as part of the reason it is asking some 90,000 nonunion workers to pay significantly more for their health plan next year. A copy of the letter was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

“The newly enacted health care reform legislation, while intended to expand access to care for millions of uninsured Americans, is also adding cost pressure as requirements of the new law are phased in over the next several years,” wrote Rick Stephens, Boeing’s senior vice president for human resources.

Boeing is the latest major employer to signal a shift for its workers as a result of the legislation, which expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and ranks as President Barack Obama’s top domestic achievement. Earlier, McDonald’s had raised questions about whether a limited benefit plan that serves some 30,000 of its employees would remain viable under the law. That prompted the administration to issue McDonald’s a waiver from certain requirements under the law.

Read the rest of the story.

From the New York Post

Betsy McCaughey

Yesterday, in a federal courtroom far from the noise of town-hall meet ings, Tea Parties and talk shows, Judge Roger Vinson quietly compelled the Obama administration to show why the new health law, enacted on March 23, does not trample the Constitution.

The ruling is a victory for the cause of freedom and limited government.

Vinson reminded the nation that even in the face of a perceived crisis, such as the number of uninsured and rising health costs, it isn’t enough that a law be wise or expedient. That law must also respect the limits imposed by the US Constitution. Those limits are not merely “formalistic,” he said; they protect liberty.

 Vinson rejected many of the administration’s arguments for throwing out constitutional challenges brought by 40 percent of all the states in the nation: Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, Indiana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Alaska.

The ruling paves the way for a trial to begin in Florida in December, with appeals expected all the way to the Supreme Court. The final word from the nine justices would likely come late in 2012, before the presidential election.

This is the second legal defeat for the administration. On Aug. 2, another federal judge ruled against the administration’s motion to dismiss a separate lawsuit by Virginia. That judge noted that it was far from certain that Congress had the authority to compel Americans to buy insurance or penalize those who don’t.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said that his state’s challenge was “about liberty, not health care.” David Rivkin, the lead attorney for the 20-state challenge, calls that case “the most important of my lifetime.”

If ObamaCare’s insurance mandate law is ruled unconstitutional, the whole law could collapse. Most complex legislation contains a boilerplate statement that if one part of the law is struck down, other parts remain enforceable. But the authors of the Obama health law removed that statement, suggesting that the whole scheme was unworkable without compulsion.

Read the rest of the story

From the Washington Times

After taking a beating at the hands of Missouri voters in August, “Obamacare” could be roughed up once again at the ballot box in November.

Following the lead of the successful Missouri initiative, which passed with 71 percent of the vote, Arizonans, Coloradans and Oklahomans will decide this fall whether to approve proposed constitutional amendments that would allow them to opt out of key provisions of President Obama‘s signature national health care law.

The three initiatives prohibit the government from forcing individuals to buy health care insurance – a “mandate” that critics say violates the U.S. Constitution – and would allow patients and employers to pay providers directly without penalty. The idea is to protect state residents from “the ongoing takeover of health care by government,” backers of the Colorado campaign say.

There’s just one problem, say opponents of the state ballot initiatives: The entire strategy is “an exercise in futility,” in the words of Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat. Federal law trumps state law, meaning that the measures are certain to be overturned even if they win 100 percent of the vote.

“No state has the authority to selectively ignore federal laws of its choosing, no matter how much some people may dislike them, and any attempt to do so will be ruled unconstitutional by the courts,” said Mr. Henry, who opposes State Question 756. The only practical outcome of the vote, he added, would be a “costly legal battle.”

“I don’t think it makes sense to waste taxpayers’ money on a legal action we know we will lose, particularly during a historic revenue crisis,” he said.

Jon Caldara, who is spearheading the Amendment 63 campaign in Colorado, said opponents are forgetting about “a pesky little thing called the 10th Amendment,” which reserves to the states “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”

“There have been numerous examples to suggest that there are times when state law supplants federal law,” said Mr. Caldara, president of the free-market Independence Institute in Golden. “If federal law always supplanted state law, then we wouldn’t have 20 state attorneys general suing to overturn the federal law.”

That joint lawsuit, challenging the constitutionality of the health care law primarily over the insurance-buying mandate, is proceeding in the courts even as the political fight continues.

Mr. Caldera added that, if opponents truly thought the states and the voters were powerless, then “they wouldn’t have spent so much trying to keep us off the ballot.”

Read the rest of the story.

From Reuters

The U.S. healthcare reform law will worsen a shortage of physicians as millions of newly insured patients seek care, the Association of American Medical Colleges said on Thursday.

The group’s Center for Workforce Studies released new estimates that showed shortages would be 50 percent worse in 2015 than forecast.

“While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,” the group said in a statement.

“The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare.”

Medicare is the federal health insurance plan for people over the age of 65, and census projections show that group growing as the giant baby boomer generation born from 1946 to 1964 hits retirement age.

The U.S. healthcare reform plan signed into law by President Barack Obama in March is designed to provide insurance to 32 million Americans who now lack it.

The AAMC projected a shortage of 33,100 physicians in specialties such as cardiology, oncology and emergency medicine in 2015.

It calls for Congress to increase funding to train new doctors. “The number of medical school students continues to increase, adding 7,000 graduates every year over the next decade,” the AAMC said.

It said at least 15 percent more were needed.

Other groups, such as the nonprofit Rand Corporation and the Institute of Medicine, have also projected various physician shortages.

From the New York Post

New projections from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid paint a stark picture of the impact of the ObamaCare law: We’re in for a massive redistribution of health resources.

When the projections were released this month, news reports stressed that the president’s “reform” utterly fails to slow the growth of health-care spending. Every year through 2019, employers and consumers will face higher premiums than if the law hadn’t passed.

But worse news is how radically the Obama law spreads the health wealth around.

In 2014, a staggering 85.2 million people — 31 percent of all nonelderly Americans — will be on Medicaid and CHIP (the Medicaid-like children’s health program). This accounts for the majority of those who’d gain health coverage. Amazingly, only 3 percent more people will have private insurance.

President Obama pledged to reduce the number of uninsured by making health plans affordable — but that’s not how his law actually does it. Rather, it loosens Medicaid eligibility by raising the income ceiling and barring asset tests.

In short, it pushes our country toward a welfare state.

Read the rest of the column.

Back to the future with ObamaCare?

From the FitsNews

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has issued a stern warning – and a threat – to America’s health care providers for allegedly engaging in “scare tactics” related to rising health care costs and recent premium increases.

As it did during the debate over so-called “financial reform,” the Obama administration is once again bullying the private sector in an attempt to silence criticism and hide the true impact of its overreaching policies.

Apparently government’s contempt for the free market is matched only by its contempt for the First Amendment.

In a letter sent Thursday to the leader of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) – a group that represents the health care industry in Washington, D.C. – Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius accused health care providers of falsely blaming premium increases on “consumer protections” included in Obama’s new socialized medicine law.

She also threatened to shut them out of new government-created “markets” that are scheduled to open in 2014 under the new law.

“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” Sebelius writes in the letter (which you can read by clicking here).

Read the rest of the story

From UK Telegraph

From Human Events

The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is providing $160 million to the state of Pennsylvania to set up a new high-risk insurance pool program that pays for abortions, as part of a larger $5 billion commitment of taxpayer funds that will include abortion coverage for over 400,000 people nationwide.

“This is the boldest admission yet from the Obama administration that the President’s Executive Order on taxpayer-funded abortion was a sham.  The fact that the high-risk pool insurance program in Pennsylvania will use federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortions is unconscionable,” said House Republican leader John Boehner.

Steven Ertelt reports on LifeNews.com that HHS has approved the program in Pennsylvania that will soon spread to other states paying abortions nationwide.

From the report:

[HHS] has quietly approved a plan submitted by an appointee of pro-abortion Governor Edward Rendell under which the new program will cover any abortion that is legal in Pennsylvania.
…
“The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million in federal tax funds, which we’ve discovered will pay for insurance plans that cover any legal abortion,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.

Johnson told LifeNews.com: “This is just the first proof of the phoniness of President Obama’s assurances that federal funds would not subsidize abortion — but it will not be the last.”
…
The pro-life community strongly opposed the executive order and said Rep. Bart Stupak and other House Democrats who voted for the pro-abortion health care bill in exchange for it were selling out their pro-life principles. This first case of forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions under the new law appears to prove them right that the bill language and executive order were ineffective.

Boehner has led the effort to require President Obama to keep his word that no tax dollars would be used to fund abortions.  Holding the president to his word is a tall order.

“Just last month at the White House I asked President Obama to provide the American people with a progress report on the implementation of his Executive Order, which purports to ban taxpayer-funding of abortions.  Unfortunately, the President provided no information, and the American people are still waiting for answers,” Boehner said.

Read the rest of the story

From the Washington Times