So far we have found out that people are losing work hours as a result of the legislation, that former supporters are now backtracking from their support of the legislation, that the legislation has no chance at all of being successful since it did not attack the true root causes of our escalating health care costs, that the cost of the legislation is going through the roof, and that words such as train wreck, problematic, silly, horror show, etc. are accurate descriptors of the legislation.
Today will be a clean up of the disasters we have not discussed so far:
1) A USA Today article from December 30, 2012 correctly predicted that many Americans would see their work hours reduced as a result of Obama Care. Excerpts from the article include the following insights:
- Ernie Canadeo, president of EGC Group, a Melville-based advertising and marketing agency with 45 employees, planned to add 10 next year but now says he may add fewer so he's not subject to the legislation‘s requirements.
- Rob Wilson, head of Employco, a human resource outsourcing firm, says other companies already over the 50-employee threshold plan to add more part-time workers or cut the hours of full-timers.
- Wilson goes on to predict that other companies will hire more temporary workers, whom they won't have to cover.
- Nearly half of retailers, restaurants and hotels will be affected by the law, according to the article. Since low-wage workers in retail, restaurants, and hotels are widely available, it often hasn't been cost-effective or necessary for employers to offer them coverage
- "I think you may see employees with fewer hours as a consequence," says Neil Trautwein, vice president of the National Retail Federation.
- Thirty-one percent of franchisees surveyed recently by the International Franchise Association said they plan to pare staff to get under the 50-employee threshold.
2) On February 11, 2013, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the Virginia General Assembly has now affirmed Gov. Bob McDonnell’s decision to order Virginia state agencies to cut back part-time employee hours to no more than 29 a week to avoid triggering a requirement under the Obama Care legislation to provide health insurance to employees.
Thus, it it is not only restaurants, hotels, and retailers that are feeling the budget pressure from the legislation, now government agencies are also cutting back workers’ hours to protect their budgets’ integrity.
3) A Florida based Sun Sentinel newspaper article from February 22, 2013 summarized the growing doctor shortage in the state of Florida, partially driven by Obama Care’s expansion of Medicaid:
- Number of doctors in Florida today: 44,804
- Number of Florida people with health insurance coverage today: 15 million
- Number of insured residents expected in 2014, including a Medicaid expansion as a result of Obama Care: 17 million to 17.5 million
- Percentage of physicians expected to retire in the next five years: 5,600
- Percentage of Florida doctors who are accepting new Medicaid patients: 59%
4) The Americans For Tax Reform website reported on March 5, 2013 that the General Accountability Office tabulated that the IRS has 47 different taxes and regulations it must enforce under Obama Care. And the IRS is not ready to execute these new responsibilities:
"It is unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function...[t]his is going to lead to problems, sir...“[t]hey have to determine what enforcement mechanisms they’ll employ … how they go about determining who to audit and who not to."
Treasury Inspector General for the IRS Russell George
March 5, 2013
Testimony before House Committee on Appropriations
“This is going to lead to problems.” Could not have said it better but the fact it comes from an actual IRS Inspector General lends credibility to this new impending Obama Care disaster. According to the GAO, Obama Care will result in the IRS having to collect new or higher taxes in at least twenty new areas. Given that the IRS has readily admitted that it fails to collect over $380 billion a year from existing tax evaders on existing taxes, who in the world thinks that all of a sudden they can do 47 more functions with any kind of efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness?
You can review this 47 item wish list at the following link:
http://www.atr.org/reasons-irs-unprepared-enforce-obamacare-a7504?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+americansfortaxreform+%28Americans+for+Tax+Reform+RSS%29
No chance in hell the IRS can pull this off.
5) A March 18, 2013 article by the Heritage Foundation, based on But first, remember that Obama promised Obama Care would “cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year”? As 2014 and full implementation of Obama Care gets closer, it is almost absolutely certain that this will be another Obama promise or lie that will never get fulfilled as insurance costs, as analyzed by many independent sources, are surely likely to skyrocket.
Heritage points out that two tenets of the legislaiotn will have the greatest impact and be the biggest drivers of higher health care costs:
Age rating restrictions. Obamacare limits variation in premium costs to a ratio of 3 to 1 based on age. But as Heritage research shows, “The natural variation by age in medical costs is about 5 to 1—meaning that the oldest group of (non-Medicare) adults normally consumes about five times as much medical care as the youngest group.” This means that under Obamacare, young adults will pay significantly higher premiums than they would have prior to Obamacare, and older adults will pay only slightly lower premiums.
New benefit mandates and cost-sharing rules. Heritage expert Ed Haislmaier explains, “The new law adds a number of health care services that insurers must cover and in some cases restricts the ability of insurers and employer self-insured health plans to impose limits on the amount of services patients can consume. This combination will drive up health plan costs and premiums for both individual insurance and employer-group coverage.” In addition, Obamacare prohibits cost sharing on many preventative services, which will dramatically increase utilization of those services—pushing premiums even higher.
Heritage goes on to point out a study done by staff members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, working with committee staff people from two Senate committees, a study which compiled over 30 cost studies to project how much health care insurance premiums will rise by each state (double click for a larger view):
As you see from the state by state table the staffs compiled, Americans can expect their premiums to go up in the near future and go up very substantially regardless of what state they live in. So much for the hollow promise of REDUCING health insurance premiums via Obama Care.
We will try to wrap this nonsense tomorrow but as soon as we write and discuss the latest disaster from Obama Care, new disasters and fiascos pop so no promises on whether tomorrow will be the end of the agony for this month.
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