◼ Among the raft of guidelines announced on Thursday in response to the mounting implementation problems confronting President Obama's health care law, the Department of Health and Human Services said it was extending for one extra month a transitional program that temporarily covers Americans with pre-existing conditions. - Philip Klein/Washington Examiner @philipklein
What’s interesting about PCIP is that it ended up attracting much fewer Americans than expected while also costing more than expected. The reason was that those who did enroll ended up being those with extremely high medical costs — even by the standards of a program for those with pre-existing conditions.
By March 2013, HHS suspended enrollment in the program because it couldn't afford to cover any new applicants.
As the New York Times reported in May, “The administration had predicted that up to 400,000 people would enroll in the program, created by the 2010 health care law. In fact, about 135,000 have enrolled, but the cost of their claims has far exceeded White House estimates, exhausting most of the $5 billion provided by Congress.”
The same story explained that HHS announced it “was cutting payments to doctors and hospitals after finding that cost overruns are threatening to use up the money available.”
...given the dismal enrollment numbers to date, it’s worth asking whether the exchanges could end up encountering similar problems to PCIP — only on a much bigger scale.
◼ INSURANCE PROVIDERS ONCE AGAIN INVITED TO IGNORE “THE SETTLED LAW OF THE LAND” - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o
There’s nothing funnier than watching an ObamaCare apologist describe it as a “law,” usually in a tone of high dudgeon that any treasonous saboteurs would even dare think of repealing it. It should be obvious to even the dimmest left-wing partisan by now that ObamaCare is not a “law,” but of course that doesn’t bother them, because they don’t think their beloved all-wise all-knowing super-government should be bound by laws. The will of our benevolent aristocracy should not be thwarted by the sort of legal speed bumps, tar pits, and bear traps that routinely impose trillions of dollars in cost upon private industry. Not even the dusty old Constitution should be an obstacle when a duly credentialed Great Man or Woman of the Left has a really swell idea that would benefit society....
It’s a joke to refer to ObamaCare as “central planning.” Very little of it has been “planned” at all, which torpedoes its central premise. The idea behind this, and every other statist scheme, is that the government is better able to manage operations and intelligently allocate resources. Nothing has discredited that foolish notion faster or more thoroughly than ObamaCare, which is not a “law” but a power grab. The difference is that a “law” places equally firm restrictions and obligations upon both the government and its citizens. Raw political power, on the other hand, knows neither responsibility nor restraint. May our children learn that lesson by studying the failure and repeal of ObamaCare.
