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Guess what! It’s time for 700 pages more of fun Obamacare regulations

Guess what! It’s time for 700 pages more of fun Obamacare regulations

Nancy Pelosi was wrong:  Even after passing the bill, no one could have possibly known what was in it!

That’s because America’s finest bureaucrats are creating a galaxy of amazing new rules to implement provisions of the “Affordable Care Act”.  In the traditional Friday-night document dump that is the hallmark of how the Obama Administration operates, The Hill writer Megan Wilson reports that over 700 pages of new rules were released:

The four rules, which are scheduled for publication in mid-March, finalize both major and minor parts of the healthcare reform law that Congress passed in 2010.

Three of the regulations are final and roll out the multistate healthcare exchanges and reforms to the insurance market, including provisions to encourage cost-sharing, stabilize health insurance premiums and prevent providers from denying coverage….

The other rule is a proposal to implement the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), making it effective on Jan. 1, 2015.

The change in the effective date is due to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services receiving comments that warned of the difficulties in implementing the program.

The only thing one can say with certainty: These new requirements will ensure that the Affordable Care Act is anything but!

Interestingly, Court TV founder Steven Brill appeared on The Daily Show and provided clear details on the the complex and senseless market forces that drive the American health care industry…none of which the new law addresses.

Rules such as those found in 700 pages of legalistic documentation do nothing to help businesses to open or expand. In fact, the founder of a famous food chain near and dear to my family says today’s regulatory environment would have stopped him from opening a store in the first place.

It’s hard to imagine a world without the $5 Footlong. But Subway founder Fred Deluca says the sandwich chain would not exist if it started today.

“I’ll tell ya, if I had started Subway today, Subway would not exist,” ” Deluca said on Wednesday. ”Because I had an easy time of it in the ’60s when I started, and I just see a continuing increase of regulations.”

Deluca spoke on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” about the current state of the economy. He said the economic environment is unfriendly toward businesses and has undergone drastic changes since he founded Subway in 1965.

And how about those pills President Obama wants Americans to take instead of surgery? Sadly, drug innovations that are a key Obamacare solution are crushed under the weight of testing requirements:

A recent report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology estimates that it costs an average of $1.2 billion to win FDA approval and bring a new drug to market. Given that biopharmaceuticals account for roughly two percent of the economy, this is no small matter.

The chief problem is the complex process of clinical trials, in particular “Phase 3,” in which a drug is tested and retested to prove its its effectiveness in treating conditions across a broad population. These trials have a strong track record, but they are poorly suited to new biopharmaceuticals, which are often very effective in smaller, targeted groups despite a lower success rate in the public at large. Under the current system, many of these drugs may fail their trials despite their effectiveness when prescribed correctly.

I suspect many of my fellow Democrats are going to be shocked at the realities of Obamacare implementation, because the devil was in the details that had yet to be written.

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Comments

I’m a retiree at 53, spine fractures, work related, an only signed up for SSD in 2010. Since, I’ve already seen some of Obama’s MSM praised “compassion. My medication has taked a massive jump in costs. The letter I recieved a month after the changes kicked in, gave no explanation as to why they went up so high, other than.. you no longer qualify.

But nothing had changed.. except for about 10 dollars a month,.. tried to buy supplemental prescription coverage, only to discover, in my state, you can’t buy it if you’re under 65.

I detested the Obama machine before this.. now..

Every doctors office I visit.. there is fear, in the staff’s.. the patients.. nobody but the very young, and hopelessly indoctrinated believe Obama has made things better.. and that will change too.. as more find out how badly they’ve been screwed.

Thank you Leslie. (And thank you Brill.) Some of us did know this, and it’s why we have been carrying on about Medicare and Medicaid waste, about Obamacare insurance company deals, and groaning every time various groups call for tort reform and blame costs on physicians’ bills and malpractice lawsuits. The cost problem comes in even with doctor office visits when people are sent for unnecessary things such as lab tests.

Insurance should never cover 100% of anything, and should be restricted to catastrophic coverage. It is the only way to get people aware and to care.

Obamacare is set to make these problems exponentially worse.

A friend in the health care industry predicted back in 2010 there would be over 400,000 pages of regulations written by the time Obamacare was fully implemented. He was not pulling numbers out of the air, he had been advised by many good sources what to expect with passage of this massive piece of legislation. He was hosting a fundraiser to replace the Dem congressman who voted for the bill when we had this discussion. Small businessmen, doctors and lawyers in my community were there filled with dread and anger such a law would be passed with blatant disregard for the myriad of unintended consequences that will eventually touch each and every person in the United States.

In a more recent conversation with someone I know was at least mildly supportive of the reform I expressed my anticipated enjoyment when the dupes who went to vote to reelect this president get the bill for their free birth control. His response to me was Obama never has to stand before them for reelection. When I had initially suggested the mandate was unconstitutional this person scoffed. By the time SCOTUS was set to deliver its decision this same person was hoping it would be found unconstitutional. We all know how that turned out.

There are many people who are going to be shocked when the realities of ObamaCare finally hit home. The question is when do they wake up? Obama seems to be banking on the notion he can turn on the power of his campaign machine to turn out enough voters to restore the House to Democrats. He’d like to have the opportunity pass more legislation like Ocare before we finally see the last of him in the White House. We just can’t allow that to happen.

This Stephen Brill only tells a part of the story. The problem is not so much that health consumers are captive, but that they are 1) uninformed about prices before purchasing, and 2) usually don’t care about high prices because they most have insurance. The roots of our healthcare cost problems–and much of our debt–is the implementation of non-taxable, employer-provided health insurance for basic healthcare needs.

Does anybody want to bet that full implementation of Obamacare will be delayed until after November 2014 just like the Small Business Health Options Program?

And for those of you who don’t believe that the Constitution prohibits the Executive Branch from exercising Legislative Branch powers, these consequences of the Affordable Care Act – named by the law of contraries no doubt – arise solely because the law pretends to grant the Executive Branch authority to make laws. Here is a real-life practical example of why it is wrong – in the practical not theoretical sense – for Congress to grant such powers to the Executive Branch. It is of no consequence, that they’re called “rules” or “regulations” or “diktats” or “ukasks”; if they have the force of the laws passed by Congress, they are laws in fact and in law. And we, those trodden underfoot by our “betters”, have zero input into what those laws will be. At least when Congress considers a new law, we are allowed to write to the Congress-critters who pretend to represent our interests and squeal before being turned into bacon. Evidently, that was too much for our “lords and masters” to tolerate; hence the practice of letting bureaucrats in the Executive Branch write the actual laws which govern us.

Midwest Rhino | March 5, 2013 at 12:23 pm

Wasn’t Obama (or his minions) meeting secretly with various interests like drug makers, hospitals, insurers? He essentially bought their support, by ignoring their excesses. Obamacare actually promised to fund the excess by requiring expensive plans.

The high costs had to continue to keep “the 1%” happy. The avenue for funding those low income, non-paying regular customers on Medicaid, is to “tax” the responsible middle/working class to death. Another glorious unicorn promise of FREE STUFF, funded by the middle class. Why do they rob the middle class? Because that is where the money is.

Global warming and health care, both designed to extract giant sums from the working class. Skyrocketing energy costs, public unions … everything from Democrats is designed to take over our life and extract a large fee, while removing choice. What better Trojan horse (unicorn) than “Affordable Health Care”.

Can I opt out of Obamacare if I pose as an Indian? Or, plead insanity? Or, have dsylexia?

We have become a country of (legal) drug addicts and O’bammy wants to push more pills???

What ever happened to solving problems by seeking the root cause???

I seriously think that within the last four years that more of dis-services to the American public have been inflicted than have occurred during the previous two hundred years.

Gawd he’p us…

Where the Daily Show is wring is the implication that all medical services are emergent. Some clearly are, but not all. I suspect that if patients can shop for routine services, the price of emergency care will also go down. I also don’t like that attitude that making money is somehow sinful.

    jacksonjay in reply to edgeofthesandbox. | March 5, 2013 at 2:10 pm

    Exactly! How old is the concept of a “second opinion”? I shopped around for a colonoscopy and saved myself some money! Brill contradicts himself when he says that one hospital charges $6K for the MRI and another charges $2K!

    God forbid I get a doctor who does not care about making money! That doctor will be LESS concerned about providing a quality service!

Not only is the affordable care legislation not affordable, it is impossible for almost anyone to grasp the complexity of the program. This will be a nightmare that implodes on itself providing a lower quality care at a much higher price.

Never have so few screwed so many under the guise of “helping them”.