Obamacare Archives - Page 3 of 13

Obamacare is for the Little People: McDonald’s, 29 other Firms get Health Care Coverage Waivers

It’s called crony capitalism when the people in power give government benefits to their hand-picked beneficiaries. We now know that President Obama is hand-picking Obamacare winners at the expense of the little people. It’s more proof that the federal government is in the pocket of powerful special interests who get favored treatment while everybody else must obey the law.

USA Today: “Nearly a million workers won’t get a consumer protection in the U.S. health reform law meant to cap insurance costs because the government exempted their employers. Thirty companies and organizations, including McDonald’s (MCD) and Jack in the Box (JACK), won’t be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans, which are often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees.”

Amicus Brief in the Virginia Case Challenging the Constitutionality of the Obama Health Care Plan

Ilya Somin, Associate Professor of constitutional law at George Mason University School of Law, published his “amicus brief in Virginia v. Sebelius, one of the cases challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care plan’s individual mandate . . . I hope the brief will help dispel the myth that there is an expert consensus to the effect that the mandate is constitutional (see also here). It should by now be obvious that many well-known and highly respected scholars believe otherwise”

See Ilya Somin’s post on his amicus brief on The Volokh Conspiracy.

Harvard Pilgrim Cancels Medicare Advantage Plan

Boston Globe: “Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has notified customers that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of the year, forcing 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to seek alternative supplemental coverage.”

HEALTH CARE: ‘You Dummies’

Richmond Times Dispatch: “Several months ago President Obama promised that Democrats would be proud to campaign on the new health care overhaul. With campaigns now peaking, the only Democrats who mention the law these days are the ones who voted against it. So supporters have decided to try a new approach: calling voters dimwits.”

Obamacare Killing Many Types of Health Insurance Plans

Just as the opponents of Obamacare predicted, the new healthcare law is causing insurance companies to cancel various types of insurance policies because unlike the government, private insurance companies cannot survive by operating at a loss. Here are stories about recent policy cancellations:

“Kids 0, Insurance 0 – The first fruits of ObamaCare” – “This week, almost every big insurance company in America—including Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Humana, Coventry, some Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates and others—stopped writing “child-only” policies in the individual market. This is a niche product that parents typically buy when their employer health plan doesn’t cover dependents.”
“Two Minnesota insurers stop selling individual policies” – “HealthPartners says it is temporarily suspending sales of individual health insurance policies due to uncertainty created by the new federal law.”
“A Future for Student Health Plans?” – “Sandy Praeger, a Republican who is Kansas’s insurance commissioner, isn’t sure student plans will be able to survive much past 2014. . . . ‘If I were the CEO [of a student insurer], I’d start looking for some alternatives to compete in a different way or figure out some other businesses to go into’.”

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