The damage has already begun

NY Post ^ | January 18, 2011 | SALLY PIPES

[Scanian]

Repeal of ObamaCare can't come soon enough -- as several damaging provisions are set to take effect this year.

For starters, it has effectively stopped the construction of physician-owned hospitals throughout the country.

Section 6001 of the health-care law required physician-owned hospitals to obtain their Medicare certification by the end of last year. Without it, they can't treat Medicare patients. And the facilities needed to be open to get that certification.

So construction halted at 45 hospitals as the New Year arrived. Work on countless others will never start, having been effectively banned by ObamaCare. This will limit competition in the health-care marketplace, driving up costs for patients.

Of course, patients may have trouble finding not just a hospital, but a doctor. A Physician's Foundation survey revealed that 40 percent of doctors plan to "drop out of patient care in the next one to three years." Sixty percent said ObamaCare will "compel them to close or significantly restrict their practices to certain categories of patients" -- typically those on Medicare or Medicaid.

Health reform will force many folks to give up their current insurance, too.

New rules requiring insurers in the individual and small-group markets to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on medical claims are intended to ensure that consumers get good value for their money. Instead, they'll push many plans out of existence. And with fewer competitors to keep them honest, the insurers that survive will have an easier time raising rates.

Other measures kicking in are petty -- but punitive. For example, people can no longer use tax-free Health Savings Accounts on basic over-the-counter drugs. Instead, they must pay for a doctor's appointment -- and then get a prescription for a pricier pharmacist-dispensed drug.

[AlexW]

Would one ever read this in the New York Slimes?

[lonevoice]

ping

[pepsionice]

I believe that most folks...even hardcore folks who believed in the idea to start with...will all agree by the end of this year that it doesn’t save a penny. This acknowledgement drives home the entire discussion. We had a hundred ways to save on cost and make it affordable...but we avoided almost every single method. It was like an attempt to bankrupt ourselves in five years...without admitting it in public.

[Jacquerie]

I wonder which section of the law granted HHS’ Sebelius the power to threaten companies that criticize Obamacare?

“As the Secretary shall direct” is supposedly repeated hundreds of times. If that is not a grant of unconstrained, ie tyrannical power I do not know what is.

[ZULU]

Obama’s redistribute the wealth program - take health care from those who work and worked and give it to those who won’t.

[Lysandru]

I think that the following point needs to be made: Nothing in Obamacare actually encourages the private sector to provide more medical goods and services. And even the most ardent Obama Zombie does not claim that it does.

Obamacare is fundamentally about controlling the rationing of the existing (and now shrinking) pool of medical care.

A true market oriented health care reform strategy would look to encouraging competition and providing incentives for people to innovate and provide more care.

[goldstategop]

Obamacare IS chaos. Its intended to destroy the private health care sector by design, paving the way for single payer health care. That is what will happen if the law is not repealed in full.