The Heartland Institute

From the archives: A guide to severability and the individual mandate. Several state legislators have reached out to me recently with questions about the nature of severability and Obamacare . Since some folks seem to have questions as well , I thought I’d explain a bit about what this means. Most laws of large size and scope ...

If you're looking for a timeline of the laws and regulations of Obamacare, here are several which have been produced by various entities. You may find a particular timeline more useful depending on what you're looking for. Kaiser Health News: Implementation Timeline (graphically the most appealing) NFIB: Timeline for Small Businesses ...

Now that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare”) is law, “what is in it” is revealed by 3,256 pages of legislative text, including the 858 pages of the reconciliation bill (as printed at my local library). Most of the bill’s provisions, except its tax increases, do not go into effect until 2014. So ...

A provision of President Obama’s health care law will mandate public reports on any incidents in which physicians accept speaking fees, five-star meals, or other compensation from pharmaceutical or medical device companies. The new requirement will publish on the internet the names of doctors and the value of the gifts they ...

The recently published U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations for implementing Obamacare’s health insurance rate reviews, effective September 1, are another instance of the arbitrary and politically manipulated regulations that inevitably result when Congress enacts vague, subjective, and aspirational legislation ...

New regulations issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are accelerating the demise of so-called "mini-med" health care insurance plans by eliminating a waiver program the plans needed to survive regulations within President Obama’s health care law. Under mini-med health insurance plans, a person takes out a health ...

Beginning in 2014, ObamaCare will require employers with fifty or more full-time employees to offer affordable coverage to all of their employees or risk a hefty per-employee fine. As industries weigh the benefits of cost of coverage versus paying the fines, officials for trade groups representing nursing homes and other low ...

The official unemployment rate is back up to more than 9 percent, and the percent of workers who are unemployed or have given up trying to find jobs is higher than it was during the Great Depression. George W. Bush may have owned the Great Recession of 2008 2009, but Barack Obama owns the Second Great Depression of 2011 ...

In an April speech to the nation on budgetary issues, President Obama proposed strengthening one of the more controversial boards created under his health care law as a deficit reduction measure. The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), consisting of fifteen unelected officials, will be tasked with reining in Medicare s costs ...

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, states are required to create a health insurance exchange. While these exchanges must be submitted for approval from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency has not yet promulgated rules for the exchanges or made clear what specific types of exchanges ...

Louisiana s Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, has announced his state will not create a health insurance exchange mandated by the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act. Confirming an earlier report in Health Care News , Gov. Jindal s press office released a statement on the anniversary of Obamacare s passage indicating the ...

As the battle over Obamacare shifts to the courthouses and the statehouses, lawmakers in one state, Idaho, have implemented some measures to stop implementation of the federal health care law. Last year Idaho became the second state to enact the Health Care Freedom Act, which signaled opposition to the federal mandate that ...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may have dramatically overpaid for three controversial television ads touting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) during the run-up to the 2010 elections. The health law changes the plans offered seniors, such as by increasing premiums and limiting access ...

Seniors, beware. Buried in the President’s April deficit speech was a plan to give even more power to the Medicare rationing board created in his health-overhaul law. President Obama proposes giving the unelected, unaccountable Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) new authority to tighten the screws on payments. He clearly ...

In the latest round of public opinion shifts among employers regarding President Obama s health care law, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has done an about-face. Originally a strong supporter of Obamacare, he has now expressed worry about how the employer mandate to provide insurance may harm businesses, including his own. Burdensome ...

Louisiana is the most recent state to seek a waiver from the medical loss ratio (MLR) requirements in President Obama s health care law from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The MLR is the amount of the premiums spent directly on medical costs. Under Obamacare, individuals and those in small group markets ...

When President Obama took office, he promised his White House would be the most open and transparent in history. Some House Republicans, however, are dismayed the promise doesn t extend to records about whom the Obama administration met with in crafting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In mid-February the ...

Many observers maintain that the increase in healthcare spending is the result of the development and overuse of new medicines, devices, and diagnostics. In making this case, proponents of this view make three assumptions. First, that most of the =overuse does not improve health or extend life. Second, that CER information about ...

State policymakers face a complex task as they decide whether to implement President Barack Obama’s health care law. For those in one of the 29 states currently mounting legal challenges to the law, the decision of how to proceed in the short-term is even more complex. They must decide whether to implement a series of burdensome ...

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research (CER). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to set priorities for this research and disseminate its findings to health care decision makers. Proponents ...