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A Bitter Pill
William S. Smith


National Review Online, 07/08/11

If revenge is a dish best served cold, the pharmaceutical industry may soon be experiencing a Siberian winter. Reports on Capitol Hill indicate that during debt-ceiling talks with the White House, some congressional Republicans are offering to institute Medicare Part D rebates as a way to raise revenue. These would hit the pharmaceutical industry hard — and as satisfying as that would be for the GOP, they should be opposed on solidly conservative grounds.
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Administration Halts Survey of Making Doctor Visits
Robert Pear


The New York Times, 06/28/11

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had shelved plans for a survey in which “mystery shoppers” posing as patients would call doctors’ offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments.“We have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this research project,” the Department of Health and Human Services said late Tuesday. The decision, after criticism from doctors and politicians, represents an abrupt turnabout. On Sunday night, officials at the health department and the White House staunchly defended the survey as a way to measure access to primary care, and insisted that it posed no threat to privacy.
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An ObamaCare Legal Precedent?
David B. Rivikin Jr. and Lee A. Casey


The Wall Street Journal, 06/28/11

The Supreme Court's most important ruling this year may have been its unanimous decision in Bond v. United States, which held that individual citizens can challenge federal statutes when they encroach on authority the Constitution reserves to the states. The decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, has far-reaching implications—especially for the government's efforts to defend ObamaCare.
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No, You Can't Keep Your Health Insurance 
Grace-Marie Turner


The Wall Street Journal, 06/08/11

ObamaCare will lead to a dramatic decline in employer-provided health insurance -- with as many as 78 million Americans forced to find other sources of coverage.
This disturbing finding is based on my calculations from a survey by McKinsey & Company. The survey, published this week in the McKinsey Quarterly, found that up to 50% of employers say they will definitely or probably pursue alternatives to their current health-insurance plan in the years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014. An estimated 156 million non-elderly Americans get their coverage at work, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
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White House Waivers Make a Splash
Grace-Marie Turner

The Washington Times, 05/26/11 

In a bizarre near-admission that the so-called "Affordable Care Act" is anything but, the White House issued a blog post defending the waves of waivers it has been issuing that exempt employers "from the annual limit provision of the law if it would disrupt access to existing insurance arrangements or adversely affect premiums, causing people to lose coverage." In other words, Obamacare would cause people to lose their insurance coverage or cause costs to go up if they don't grant these waivers. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to do just the opposite?   Read more...

Obama skirts rule of law to reward pals, punish foes
Michael Barone

The Examiner, 05/24/11

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan. Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.  Read more...

Obamacare Tax Subsidies: Bigger Deficit, Fewer Taxpayers, Damaged Economy
Paul Winfree

The Heritage Foundation, 05/24/11

The number of Americans who pay federal income taxes has been shrinking every year, with a recent report suggesting that less than half of American households owed federal income taxes in 2009. One of the key components of Obamacare, tax subsidies to purchase federally approved health insurance, will substantially increase the number of people who are not paying for government services and thus have a lower incentive to be concerned about record-breaking government spending. These tax subsidies, which take effect in 2014, will also harm the economy by increasing the national deficit and by creating huge marginal tax rates that will discourage productivity for many households. Obamacare’s tax subsidies are one of the primary reasons to repeal Obamacare. This Heritage Foundation analysis lays out the facts.   Read more...

ObamaCare Repeal Means Waivers for Everybody
Grace-Marie Turner

The Washington Examiner, 05/22/11 

There are now 1,372 companies, labor unions and states that have applied for and been granted waivers from an early provision of the health overhaul law that says health policies must provide at least $750,000 a year in insurance protection. And one-fourth of the latest batch of waivers went to restaurants, spas, and other businesses in Rep. Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district. Clearly, if you have friends at the White House and pay your dues, you, too, can be exempt from Obamacare's rules. Obamacare is barely in place, and we see administration officials using it to pick winners and losers based upon political favorites. The waivers are just one more reminder of why Obamacare will not stand.    Read more...

Obamacare Transparency Fail: Who's Still Waiting for Waivers and Who Got Denied? Obama Won't Tell Us
Matthew Boyle

The Daily Caller, 05/19/11

Amidst the news that 38 of the 204 Obamacare waivers approved in April went to posh entertainment venues in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district, new questions about the Obama administration’s transparency pledge have arisen. Although the administration has approved more than 1,300 Obamacare waivers and published the recipients’ application information online, it has not made public which companies and other entities have been denied waivers and why they were denied.   Read more...

The $6,400 Question
James C. Capretta

National Review Online, 05/19/11

When President Obama decided to take the political low road and demonize House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s Medicare-reform plan in his budget speech last month, it wasn’t really surprising. President Obama already demonstrated that he was a world-class practitioner of shamelessly dishonest political attacks when he went after Sen. John McCain in the 2008 campaign for proposing a change in the tax treatment of health insurance — and then pushed for a change himself once he was elected. Given this track record, there was every reason to believe he would jump on the chance to demagogue on health care again if the opportunity presented itself. And boy, has he.   Read more...