What Obamacare forces on the state Medicaid programs

The amicus brief by Cato--states can't opt out, but still have to send money to Washington. Tim Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation explains some of the implications of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. Obamacare forces more people on to Medicaid. States will lose all the federal money if they don't comply. "Your money or your life," is not exactly a fair trade. The demands exceed the constitutional powers of the federal government.



Four free market advocacy groups filed a 39-page amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that the individual mandate in President Obama’s health care reform law is unconstitutional.

If the PPACA is upheld swelling insurance coverage by 32 million (leaving 18 million still uninsured, according to NEJM), they will be pushed onto the 2/3 of physicians who currently accept Medicaid patients. Then the government will have to force physicians, and costs will increase. People already don't like this legislation, so if the court backs the President, it could doom his reelection.

Obamacare shell game:

HHS has now finalized a rule requiring insurance plans operating in states that permit elective abortion coverage in their exchanges to segregate premium costs into two separate pools: one to cover abortion services and another to cover all other benefits. That abortion surcharge, which must be at least $1 a month, must be paid with private dollars by every enrollee in plans that cover elective abortion. The affordability tax credits, according to the Obama Administration, can then be used to subsidize other non-abortion-related benefits coverage for eligible enrollees.

With this shell game in place, the Obama Administration has attempted to declare itself free from accusations of using taxpayer funds for abortion. Nevertheless, this new rule will force all enrollees in plans that cover elective abortion to pay the abortion surcharge with private funds—or drop out of the plan entirely and hope a comparable one exists in the state exchange without abortion coverage. In some states, there will be options; in others, there will be few or none.

Moreover, under the rules finalized last week, insurance companies that provide abortion coverage are required only to disclose the abortion surcharge at the time of enrollment. It is possible that many individuals who would otherwise object to paying for coverage of abortion will not even be aware of the surcharge on their insurance, since the rule requires the premium not to be itemized and the required disclosure at the time of enrollment may be as little as a single sentence in a massive plan document. New rules for the shell game