If anything, it's going to strengthen the private insurer market.
[Because Obamacare forces insurers to cover a buffet of benefits that they dont have to today, the cost of insurance will go up. Another driver of higher premiums is the fact that insurers will have to cover everyone, regardless of previous health status, a change that will attract sicker enrollees at the expense of healthier ones.
Some Obamacare defenders try to argue that these cost increases dont matter, because a slice of the low-income population will benefit from the laws subsidies. But if youre not eligible for subsidies, or only partially eligible, you will be exposed to the laws dramatic increases in the cost of insurance. And remember that Obamacare has an individual mandate, which will force most Americans to absorb these higher costs.]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/20...-insurance-premiums-by-30-says-obama-adviser/
Also wonderfully interesting:
[A multitude of flaws in President Obamas health- care law have been exposed, both prior to its enactment and since it passed on a straight party line vote. They range from tax hikes on small business owners and the middle class, to gutting $716 billion from Medicare, to its punitive individual mandate.
Little attention has been paid, however, to a component of the Affordable Care Act found in section 1311(h), which will prove catastrophic to the doctor-patient relationship. These few lines empower one bureaucratthe Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretaryto determine whether a physician is providing quality health care measures.
Based on that finding, the Secretary is empowered to cancel a physicians health insurance provider policy, effectively forcing him out of practice.
Allowing the HHS Secretary, who is not governed by the Hippocratic Oath or a state medical board, to define quality health care measures will have a devastating impact on our health care system. Consider the recent controversy surrounding mammogram guidelines. In 2009, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force advised mammograms for women over 50, which contradicts the American Cancer Societys typical guideline that screenings begin at 40, and therefore served to divide the medical community.
Under President Obamas health care law, should the HHS Secretary determine that performing mammograms on women younger than 50 violates a standard of care, the provider must comply, regardless of his or her concerns. Failure to do so would allow the Secretary to shut down a medical practice. The powers given to the Secretary are so broad, he or she could literally dictate how all physicians nationwide practice medicine.
This violates the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, as physicians are trained to treat patients individually and not with a one-size-fits-all approach. Under this new regulation, patients standard of care may be diminished. This rule also threatens access, driving more doctors from their practices and creating an even greater shortage of medical providers. In turn, patients will face longer wait times in between appointments, and in some cases, it will be time they cant afford to lose. Oftentimes, it is the sickest and poorest Americans access to care that is disproportionately threatened.
The Safeguarding Care of Patients Everywhere (SCOPE) Act repeals this regulation...]
http://www.nationalreview.com/critical-condition#
[An overriding concern was how to make this law work in real life. For example, we were thinking through how a ban on pre-existing conditions really works in practice. You can see that things might happen like insurers evading people who are sick by imposing waiting periods for specific benefits like chemotherapy or autism treatment, or limiting benefits in ways that might make them unattractive to consumers with serious health problems. The secretary of Health and Human Services has said its permissible for insurers to limit the number of visits to certain providers, for example.
If it isnt squarely addressed, some insurer may say, Well, its not expressly prohibited
]
http://gantdaily.com/2012/10/30/con...-state-rules-will-impact-scope-of-health-law/
Lord, this all just scratches the surface of this ghastly overall. Healthcare access and improvement is one thing, this is just a Lernaean Hydra. We have yet to see how far and deep this monster will go.
The devil is in the details when it comes to implementation of the health care overhaul, but a reasonable assumption is that it WILL be a nightmarish windfall of regulations, incompetencies, stonewalling, and net financial loses.