Repealing Health Law Would Mean More Benefits for Members of Congress

Watch our new video featuring Republican Members of Congress denying that they voted to protect taxpayer funded health care benefits for themselves, while repealing critical patient protections for the middle class and doing nothing to create jobs.

Before last week's repeal vote, The Hill newspaper found that repealing the Affordable Care Act would "let members of Congress keep their government-subsidized insurance coverage after they retire -- a benefit they lost under the health law."
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/politics-elections/236823-repealing-health-law-would-mean-more-benefits-for-members-of-congress

The Hill found that "a Republican amendment to the Affordable Care Act -- kicked members of Congress and their aides out of the healthcare program for federal employees. Instead, lawmakers and staff have to get coverage through the insurance exchanges created by the healthcare law. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who championed that provision, said it ensures that lawmakers live under the same rules as their constituents."

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Repealing Health Law Would Mean More Benefits for Members of Congress

Watch our new video featuring Republican Members of Congress denying that they voted to protect taxpayer funded health care benefits for themselves, while repealing critical patient protections for the middle class and doing nothing to create jobs.

Before last week's repeal vote, The Hill newspaper found that repealing the Affordable Care Act would "let members of Congress keep their government-subsidized insurance coverage after they retire -- a benefit they lost under the health law."
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/politics-elections/236823-repealing-health-law-would-mean-more-benefits-for-members-of-congress

The Hill found that "a Republican amendment to the Affordable Care Act -- kicked members of Congress and their aides out of the healthcare program for federal employees. Instead, lawmakers and staff have to get coverage through the insurance exchanges created by the healthcare law. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who championed that provision, said it ensures that lawmakers live under the same rules as their constituents."

View the original article here

Supreme Irony: Would a 'single payer' health care plan be less vulnerable to the court than the Affordable Health Care ...

If the Supreme Court does decide to strike down any or all of the Affordable Health Care Act, the implications will range from the political to the medical to the economic.

For me, such a decision will take its place among the more supremely ironic of unintended consequences: a law designed to avoid greater government intrusion into health care will have been invalidated as an unconstitutional overreach of government power, while a far more intrusive approach would have clearly passed muster.

How could this be possible? Welcome to the wonderful world of constitutional interpretation.

Let’s begin by imagining that Congress and the president decided to adopt a genuinely radical health care plan—the kind in place in most of the industrialized world. They decide on a  “single-payer” system, where the government raises revenue with taxes, and pays the doctor, hospital and lab bills for just about everyone.

Put aside the question of whether this is a good idea, or an economically sustainable notion. The question is: would such a law be constitutional?

The answer, unquestionably, is “yes.” In fact, it would be the simplest law in the world to enact. All the Congress would need to do is to take the Medicare law and strike out the words “over 65.” Why is it constitutional? For the same reason Medicare and Social Security are: the taxing power. Its reach is immense. During World War II, the maximum income tax rate was 91 per cent (it was paid by few, thanks to loopholes, but still). The same Congress that could abolish the estate tax could set just about whatever limit it chose; it could impose a 100 percent tax on estates over, say, $5 million. If it decided that a national sales tax was an answer to huge budget deficits, it could impose one at whatever level it chose.

(The remedy, of course, lies with the voters, who would be more than likely to send a powerful message at the next election, which is why the lack of constitutional limits on the taxing power do not lead to confiscatory rates.)

[Related: Romney pushed for individual mandate in Mass.]

So why is Obama’s health care plan, with a far more modest use of government power, in serious jeopardy? It’s because the key element in the plan—the “mandate” to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty—was not based on the taxing power, but on Congress’s power, under Article I, Section 8, to regulate interstate commerce. And that power, while broad, has its limits...even if those limits are murky.

Up until the late 1930s, those limits were more like shackles. The Supreme Court repeatedly struck down sate and federal laws regulating wages, hours and working conditions on the grounds that the commerce power only touched the distribution of goods, not their manufacture. But once the court changed its mind—after an effort by FDR to “pack” the court with additional justices had failed—there seemed to be no limits at all. Back in 1942, the court said the government could stop a farmer from growing his own wheat for his own use, because of the potential effects on the wider market. But in 1995, for the first time in decades, the court said “no” to a federal law based on the Commerce clause—one banning firearms within school zones—because it could find no reasonable connection between the law and interstate commerce.

[Related: Biggest insurer to keep parts of health law, regardless of ruling]

In the health care case, the questioning by several justices indicated strong skepticism about the mandate. If the commerce clause can compel a citizen to buy a specific product—in this case, health insurance—what couldn’t it do? Could it, as the now famous question had it, compel citizens to buy broccoli on health grounds? (Well, a defender might have pointed out, the government does compel taxpayers to “pay for” all kinds of things in the form of government subsidies, such as ethanol. It could clearly do the same with a broccoli subsidy.)

As a policy matter, it’s clear that a “mandate” is a much more modest extension of government power than a single-payer system. The citizen would choose which insurance to buy; in fact, under the law, a citizen could choose not to buy any insurance, and pay a penalty instead. The whole premise of a mandate is to spread risk as widely as possible; as Mitt Romney used to note when he was defending the Massachusetts plan he designed, the mandate to prevent “free riders” from benefitting from treatment once they are sick or injured. That’s why the genesis of the idea came from such conservative roots as the Heritage Foundation.

[Related: Two-thirds of Americans want health law struck down]

As a constitutional matter, however, the idea of compelling a citizen into a specific economic activity raises alarm bells. It evokes the specter of some bureaucrat inviting himself into your home, while checking the shelves to make sure you’ve purchased multigrain cereal and cage-free eggs. (It’s a specter the administration tried to avoid by arguing that the health-care market is unique, one in which we are all likely participants at some point, voluntarily or otherwise. Unlike life in a Robert Heinlien libertarian “utopia,” hospital ERs do not have the power to say to an uninsured heart attack or auto accident victim: "you chose not to buy insurance? Sorry...have a nice day.”)

So, for its effort to design a health care plan that moved in the direction of less government intrusion, the Obama administration faces the distinct prospect of having its signature domestic program shot down for exceeding the limits of the constitutional power it did choose to use.

I somehow doubt the White House will appreciate the irony.

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Health Law Would Not Implode Without Mandate, RAND Study Finds

If the Supreme Court knocked out the health care reform law’s individual mandate, but preserved everything else, the sky would not fall, according to a new analysis from RAND Health.

The study, published on Thursday, looked at the effects of enrollment and premium increases in a universe in which health care reform stayed on the books without the controversial requirement that everyone have health insurance or pay a fine. In briefs before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration is arguing that the mandate is the key piece of a larger regulatory structure that  expands coverage without causing premiums to skyrocket.

The experiences of states that have tried insurance reforms without a mandate bear out this argument, and two prior studies of the federal law concluded that prices would go way up and enrollment way down without a requirement to buy insurance.

The argument for the mandate--originally made by conservatives during 1990s-era efforts at health care reform--is that without it, too many younger, healthier people will gamble on going without health insurance, driving up costs as only those with a greater immediate need for insurance buy it.

The RAND report agrees with those other analyses that fewer people would have health insurance without the mandate—87 percent of the non-elderly population versus 91 percent with a requirement. And it also concludes that insurance premiums would increase.

But by looking at the actual premiums new enrollees would pay, RAND finds that prices for most individuals would rise by only 2.4 percent, compared to the 10 percent or higher average premiums calculated by the prior studies. That could be a difference between what some critics have called a “death spiral” of adverse selection and the sort of change that would keep insurance relatively affordable for those who choose to buy it.

The RAND report did not, however, conclude that health care reform without a mandate would be a big bargain for the government. Because more people who bought insurance without a mandate would be old and sick, the government’s bill for tax credits to help middle-income Americans afford their premiums would not go down by very much. If Congress made no other policy changes, the cost would be $109 billion with a mandate versus $99 billion without—a difference in per-person cost of $7,468 versus $3,659.

According to RAND’s Christine Eibner, the report shows that the mandate could probably be severed from the rest of the law without causing calamitous results. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.

“That depends on your policy goals,” she said.

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Otter Not doing health exchange would be $300 million hit.mp4

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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