Obamacare Side Effects: Unintended but Not Unforeseen
October 5, 2010
By Bethany Murphy
A little over six months ago, Obamacare became law. Americans have made their opinions on the legislation known: 57 percent oppose it.
President Obama made many promises on the campaign trail regarding health care reform. He told young Americans that “healthcare is about more than the details of a policy, it’s about what kind of country you want to be.” But it’s doubtful that those young Americans envisioned a country where they would be forced to purchase health coverage lest they incur a hefty fine. Nor did they likely envision Obamacare’s higher insurance rates, which would lead many to choose to pay the fine instead of paying for costlier insurance.
Parents are also in the hole. They may no longer be able to purchase child-only plans to protect their children. In order for companies to continue offering such plans, they are required to cover all children, including those who have preexisting conditions. Parents, therefore, have no incentive to insure their children before they get sick, creating an imbalance of sick children with few healthy customers to offset costs. Faced with possible bankruptcy, insurance companies have already stopped offering child-only plans in order to ensure others on their insurance rolls will continue to be covered.
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that they would be able to keep the health insurance plan they had. But thousands are losing coverage from their employers as well as from Medicare, as The Heritage Foundation points out. Obamacare will add millions to Medicaid rolls, further straining state budgets. As it is, few doctors accept Medicaid patients, and some doctors foresee a dangerous rationing of care in Americans’ future.
In National Review this week, a doctor from New York outlines the impact of Obamacare on his practice and on the quality of care he and fellow doctors will be able to provide under the new law. Dr. Marc Siegel expects to see his waiting room and ERs overcrowded either with patients that lack health insurance coverage or with insured patients who will be paying more than ever for coverage that is declining in quality and breadth.
The Heritage Foundation has created an “Obamacare Impact Calculator” to measure the impact of Obamacare on insurance premiums, healthcare spending, deficits, and health coverage. By Heritage’s calculations, Obamacare’s ramifications are far reaching and potentially catastrophic.
Magazine Names Feulner One of D.C.’s Most Influential
Celebrating its 45th year, the Washingtonian magazine published a list of the 45 Americans who have shaped our nation’s capital most. Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner made the list and is credited with “all but invent[ing] the modern Washington think tank.”
Feulner appears alongside presidents, senators, newspaper owners and sports heroes, and is the only president of a think tank to make the list in a city with literally dozens of such institutions. Feulner’s placement makes clear that the Washingtonian thinks his intellectual influence has been both enduring and essential to promoting conservative thinking.
Here is Feulner’s entry (not online):
Edwin Feulner As head of the Heritage Foundation since 1977, Ed Feulner all but invented the modern Washington think tank. He marketed his ideology and his think tank products smartly to policymakers, shaped a generation of Reagan thinkers, and educated thousands of future politicos, government staff and leaders through Heritage's tech-savvy channels. The organization he took over just after Jimmy Carter's election, with only nine employees, would be unrecognizable to the 220 people who now work out of its Capitol Hill headquarters, so large that it has its own dorm for interns.
> Other Heritage Work of Note
The Economist magazine ran an article recently critiquing what it calls “constitution-worship” by The Heritage Foundation and the tea party movement. The magazine insists that our efforts to promote First Principles as offering to current problems are “infantile.” Heritage analyst Julia Shaw countered this silly argument on the Foundry: “The Constitution may not proscribe policy or offer simple solutions to the problems of the day, but it does create the framework for our elected representatives to deliberate about and make policy that furthers the ends for which our government was instituted.”
Prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks, a government commission forecast another disaster that would kill many more Americans. Unfortunately, this report and its recommendations were not examined until after the attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Heritage’s James Carafano warns that history might be repeating itself. In September of this year, the Abbot-Keating Commission warned that “there is currently no comprehensive national integrated planning system to respond to either natural or man-made disasters.”
One of the ways Heritage helps promote conservative ideas on Capitol Hill is through the Heritage Congressional Fellows Program, which aims to educate congressional staff. This program recently graduated 40 new students, who return to the Hill armed with the best arguments for our ideas.
“Every nation derives meaning and purpose from some unifying quality,” Heritage scholar Matthew Spalding writes in a new report. “The United States is different. America was founded at a particular time, by a particular people, on the basis of particular principles about man, liberty, and constitutional government.” Spalding’s most recent book, We Still Hold These Truths, details America's founding principles, shows how they have come under assault and lays out a strategy to recover them.
In a recent speech, President Obama said that military operations have “shortchanged investments in our own people and contributed to record deficits.” Heritage President Ed Feulner takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to refute this claim. Writing with Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and William Kristol, director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, Feulner explains that “defense spending has increased at a much lower rate than domestic spending in recent years and is not the cause of soaring deficits.” The defense budget comprises about one-tenth of the budget that the government devotes to entitlements and interest on the debt.
> In Other News
A terror alert issued to U.S. travelers visiting Europe could further hurt the European economy.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders is being prosecuted for alleged hate speech against Muslims. “With me, the freedom of speech of many, many Dutchmen is on trial,” Wilders warns.
The AP reports: “The Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate a car bomb on a busy Saturday night in Times Square accepted a life sentence with a smirk Tuesday and warned that Americans can expect more bloodshed at the hands of Muslims.”
Residents of New York City were infuriated to discover that Uncle Sam has ordered all city street signs be replaced, even those in good condition. The change, intended to make signs more legible, will cost taxpayers $27.5 million.
Wall Street economists indicate that the global economy is distancing itself from the United States.
Hugo Chavez has dictated a government takeover of British-owned agricultural land in Venezuela.
Bethany Murphy is a writer for MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Nathaniel Ward; Amanda Reinecker and Andrew Vitaliti, a Heritage intern, contributed to this report.
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