Health Policy Matters Post
The wheels are coming off ObamaCare even sooner than most had predicted.
The American people are not being fooled by the sugar-coated sales
campaign, jobs are being lost, health costs are rising, and the first
program to be launched is a dud.
A new CNN poll
shows that 56 percent of Americans oppose the health overhaul law, with
only 40 percent supporting it - virtually unchanged from March when the
legislation passed. Rasmussen's latest poll of likely voters shows 60 percent want it repealed.
Galen Institute Video
The Galen Institute has released a new rap song and music video called "Feelin' It" about the impact of ObamaCare on young people. The Free Market Boyz, a self-described group of "liberty loving young men," first came together in the spring of 2009 to produce an award-winning rap entry for the Galen Institute's "Do No Harm" video contest. "Feelin' It" highlights many of the most damaging provisions for young people in the health overhaul law, including "half-trillion in brand new taxes," increased health costs, and the individual mandate requiring people to purchase health insurance or face fines. 
What's New
 “Americans were promised they would save money and that their jobs and health insurance would be more secure if health reform passed. But the promises already are being broken, and workers will pay the price for ObamaCare’s failures. Health costs will rise, taxes will go up, millions will lose the health insurance they have now, wages will flatten, and businesses will find it harder to create new jobs. This is not a prescription for a more prosperous future.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently released rules for creating electronic health records. These rules came days after HHS issued regulations to safeguard the privacy of medical records. This digital revolution could dramatically improve medical care. The RAND Corporation estimates America could save $77 billion a year with health information technology (HIT). But policymakers must remember the interests of doctors and patients. If they don't, HIT could increase costs, hurt medical care and infringe on the doctor-patient relationship.
“Health care reform is entitlement reform.” So said Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s first budget director, at a bipartisan fiscal responsibility summit called by the president in February 2009. President Obama had assumed office just a little over a month earlier, and he was signaling to the country and to those present at the White House that his top domestic priority during his first year in office — securing a health care law that covered all Americans with health insurance — was consistent with his commitment to impose renewed fiscal discipline.
6 comments
The United States is unique in the developed world in that the majority of Americans have private health insurance that they receive through the workplace. This is not the result of a deliberate decision but rather policy that evolved as the unintended consequence of a World War II ruling. Factory owners were competing to lure and keep good workers and wanted to offer health insurance as a benefit, but they needed the government’s assurance that this wouldn’t violate wartime wage and price controls.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raised millions of eyebrows in
early March when she told reporters, we have to pass the health reform
bill "so that you can find out what is in it." It goes without saying that few, if any, of the federal lawmakers who
voted to pass the legislation had any idea of what was lurking in its
2,801 pages.
The Galen Institute, Inc., is a not-for-profit, free-market research organization devoted exclusively to health policy, promoting a more informed public debate over individual freedom, consumer choice, competition and diversity in the health sector.
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