The Daily Caller had a summary of the wonderful year that Obamacare had in 2011. Here are some…highlights…of that year.
Jan. 26: Pharmaceutical company Abbott Labs cuts 1,900 jobs “in response to changes in the health-care industry, including U.S. health-care reform and the challenging regulatory environment.”
Feb. 16: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testifies before the Senate Finance Committee and admits that the CLASS Act, a key portion of the law that was touted as a $70 billion savings, is “totally unsustainable.” Sebelius says her department has the authority to rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.
Hold that thought.
March 23: [T]he House Committee on Energy and Commerce finds that the temporary Early Retirement Reinsurance Program will spend its allotted $5 billion far earlier than its 1 Jan 2014 expiration date.
March 30: The CBO estimates that health care reform will cost $1.1 trillion, an increase of $90 billion from its February estimate.
May 17: The Daily Caller reports that 20 percent of new waivers from Obamacare have gone to gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, and fancy hotels in former House Speaker and current House Minority Leader (D, CA) Nancy Pelosi’s district. These waivers are to a provision of Obamacare that requires companies annually to increase the amount of coverage they provide their employees.
Hold that thought, too.
June 8: A McKinsey & Company survey of over 1,300 private sector employers found that 30 per cent of them definitely or probably would stop offering insurance to their employees after the law is implemented in 2014.
June 18: HHS decides that it will accept no more new or renewal waiver applications (for those exemptions from requirements annually to increase the amount of coverage provided) after Sep 22 of this year.
So much for the Pelosi Preferred waivers.
June 21: Middle-class Americans eligible for subsidized health care allegedly intended for poor people, a feature discovered after Obama signed Obamacare into law. Medicare’s chief actuary says the policy “doesn’t make sense.”
Well, NSS. On the other hand, no one needed to know about this before the bill was passed.
July 18: An Employment Policies Institute report finds that the Affordable Care Act would incentivize employees to switch to a government-subsidized insurance exchange even if employers were to continue their health care coverage, costing taxpayers “significant[ly].”
Oct. 13: A federal inspector general finds that the IRS is having trouble collecting the 10-percent federal tanning tax established by the law.
Oct. 14: HHS completes its review of the CLASS Act, determining that “we do not have a path to move forward,” Sebelius says. CLASS remains on the books, but the administration essentially gives up on it.
So much for “rework the legislation to make CLASS tenable.”
Nov. 9: The National Federation of Independent Business releases a report saying that in 2012 the law’s new health insurance tax will reduce private sector jobs by between 125,000 and 249,000.
Nov. 14: The Supreme Court agrees to hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act.
Dec. 18: Health care experts doubt that the federal insurance exchange program will be fully operational by the Jan. 1, 2014 deadline, since many states have refused to implement the state exchange program, the Washington Post reports.
This was the bill that was so wonderful that all of us—including our representatives who were hell-bent on passing it—could simply wait until it was passed before we found out what was in it.