The Great Exchange War of 2013

[Valin]

Commentary :

Tevi Troy

February 2013

 

ObamaCare survived both the Supreme Court challenge to its constitutionality at the beginning of 2012 and the election close to year’s end. With these obstacles to its existence vaulted, the health-care plan can not be repealed before its full implementation begins in 2014. Even so, this disastrous piece of legislation is actually facing its greatest challenge yet. The Obama administration must now begin putting the practical pieces of its byzantine law into effect.

 

ObamaCare, all 2,700 pages of it, is being activated in two phases. First is the imposition of new rules and regulations on insurers, a process that has already begun. It is now clear that the law will not curb rising health-care costs, as its advocates heatedly and repeatedly promised during the year leading up to its passage in 2010. Led by the president, they claimed the new law would reduce health-insurance rates by $2,500. Since its passage, rates have instead gone up by more than $3,065—a spread in excess of $5,500 per family. Even more requirements will mean even higher costs. And more requirements are coming.

 

The second phase is more troublesome. The law calls for the establishment of 50 health-care “exchanges,” one per state. The battle over the development of these exchanges will dominate the health-policy debates in 2013, and the ultimate disposition of that battle will tell us most of what we will need to know about the future of innovation and access to medical care in our system.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

States’ next major ObamaCare challenge: Marketing campaigns

Erika Johnsen

2/13/13

 

The extended deadline for states to inform the Obama administration of their intentions for either creating a state-run health insurance exchange, forging a federal partnership, or fully resigning the responsibility to the federal government is tomorrow; nearly half of the states have so far definitively declined to set up their own exchanges and several have yet to decide. In the meantime, another two states have rejected the administration’s oh-so-generous opportunity to sign up for the administration’s proffered Medicaid expansion program:

 

The decisions by Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Mike Pence of Indiana leave 10 remaining Republicans who have yet to decide on expanding their participating in the federal-state health care program for the poor. …

 

In Wisconsin, Walker outlined a hybrid approach that involves tightening income eligibility for Medicaid, lifting a cap on a program that covers childless adults and forcing more people to buy insurance through a government-run marketplace known as an exchange.

 

Pence was not as definitive as Walker, saying that he would not expand Medicaid but asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow the state to use its Healthy Indiana Program to serve the expanded Medicaid population.

 

Not all of the states have been quite as hesitant about cooperating with the Obama administration’s wishes, however; plenty of Democratic-led states have happily signed up for both the Medicaid expansion and have decided to run their own insurance exchanges — meaning that, besides the huge and expensive job of actually creating and administering the exchanges, their next task is marketing the dang things.

 

(Snip)

[clearvision]

Interesting 1st article. But not likely to happen.

[Valin]

Interesting 1st article. But not likely to happen.

 

We'll see.