Millions to Lose Health Coverage
frontpagemag.com
Survey: Almost 10% of employers may end health insurance
INDIANAPOLIS – Nearly one in 10 midsize or large employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014, according to a survey from a large benefits consultant.
Towers Watson also found in a survey completed last month that an additional 20% of companies are unsure about what they will do.
Another big benefits consultant, Mercer, found in a June survey of large and smaller employers that 8% are either "likely" or "very likely" to end health benefits once the exchanges start...
usatoday.com
ObamaCare: SEIU to drop healthcare coverage for children
americaswatchtower.com
What Is Seen and Unseen: Obamacare Edition
nationalreview.com
Walmart is increasing employee health insurance premiums and no longer offering the coverage for new part-timers because of rising costs.
Walmart informed employees last week that it is eliminating healthcare for future part-time employees who work less than 24 hours a week, the New York Times reported.
conservativerefocus.com
Unintended Consequences of ObamaCare Keep Rolling In
freedomworks.org
Nine Danger Signs in Obamacare...
1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.
2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.
3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report from the Joint Economic Committee shows small businesses will be hit hardest.
4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”
5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.
6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens. The remainder will be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and choose instead to pay the penalty.
7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”
8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.
9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.
Small Businesses, Families Suffer
This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious problems. They are not alone. As the congressional Joint Economic Committee, led by Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback (R), explains in a new report, a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014, will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage.
It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.
news.heartland.org
(at least the Class Act provisions were canceled, but the other problems remain) |
