OBAMACare Perspective: A Tsunami of Bureaucracy

Americans will be shocked by details of Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act expands America’s healthcare system to provide guaranteed insurance coverage for all citizens, financially incentivizes and targets healthcare providers’ services to improve the wellness of their patients, and makes healthcare’s system of compensation based on wellness instead of fees for the treatment of sickness and disease. These are, philosophically, lofty ACA ideals on which almost everyone can agree.

 

While the concept of universal health insurance promoting wellness for all Americans is good, concerns about implementing the ACA in 2014 on a nationwide basis are these:

• In 2014, the U.S. population will approach 320 million.
• Approximately 50 million U.S. residents are uninsured – a large number of new clients to evaluate and enroll into healthcare insurance plans, as well as provide quality medical services.

• The U.S. healthcare market now services around 250 million persons. Sixteen percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product is expended for medical services. Delays and mismanagement could have a significant negative impact on the health of the U.S. economy.

• Over 40 federal government agencies are authorized by ACA legislation to promulgate regulations controlling the healthcare industry. Many of these regulations have not yet been released to the public – even though implementation of the ACA is supposed to commence around October 2013.

• To fund the ACA, every resident will be required to purchase healthcare insurance from a private insurer or from a healthcare insurance exchange operated in each state by either the U.S. government or a state healthcare agency. Healthcare exchanges in over 50 percent of the states have not yet been either announced or established.

The cost will be expensive

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services) that ACA legislation was constitutional and requiring persons not purchasing mandated health insurance to pay a penalty to the U.S. government was a tax levied by Congress.

The ACA created a broad array of new taxes to help pay for the cost of universal healthcare insurance (irs.gov/uac/Affordable-Care-Act-Tax-Provisions).

There are numerous new taxes detailed at the referenced IRS website. Here are a few examples:

• 3.8 percent net investment income tax on unearned individual income over $200,000
• 0.9 percent additional Medicare tax
• 2.3 percent medical device excise tax
• Employer “shared responsibility” payment of $2,000 per employee
• Health insurance company taxes – based on each insurer’s market share
• Brand name prescription drug tax – based on drug maker’s market share
• Individual “shared responsibility” payment – effective in 2014.

ACA legislation was enacted March 23, 2010, and contained about 2,000 pages (healthcare.gov/law). Agencies of the federal government, as authorized by the healthcare law, are in the process of writing and issuing ACA regulations and guidelines. The precise number of pages of ACA guidelines is unknown but healthcare attorneys estimate they could total 20,000 pages by 2014.

As earlier stated, the lofty ideals of the ACA are goals most Americans would support. The concerns relate on how to achieve these goals. Bureaucracies of the U.S. government are not competent to manage one-sixth of the U.S. economy. The power of a free-market economy and the competitive forces of millions of American consumers will be diminished. The few government officials making decisions on healthcare cannot be adequately informed about the medical needs of more than 300 million Americans.

 

Implementation of the ACA could morph info a financial disaster. The healthcare industry could be overwhelmed by massive paperwork, corporate overhead costs, unsustainable operating losses, a backlog of new patients, slow bureaucratic response to time-sensitive matters, and mass confusion by millions of Americans endeavoring to deal with thousands of pages of legislation and regulations.
Only time will tell if the federal government can responsibly regulate the U.S. healthcare system or if ACA legislation reaches too far and attempts to do too much.

Original Article By: Ed Laneis chief executive of Lane Consultants, Inc. and publisher of The Lane Report