Obama can't pass buck on health insurance

(CNN)The Obama administration has had plenty of advance notice about the King v. Burwell decision and the potential outcomes, but it seems the President's only plan is to continue pointing his finger at the states for a problem he created. In fact, when testifying recently about Obamacare implementation and the upcoming court decision, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell refused to give concrete answers to basic questions about the administration's contingency plan or willingness to work with Congress on a fix.  

Just last week, Secretary Burwell was in Wisconsin. She could have used the opportunity to tell Wisconsin residents how the federal government is going to solve its Obamacare mess, but instead she promoted the use of "free" Obamacare services. Free for who? According to data gathered by the Manhattan Institute, individual insurance premiums in Wisconsin for a 40-year-old male climbed 83% compared with pre-Obamacare numbers, and 38% for a 40-year-old woman. For a 27 year-old, the hike was even greater. It seems that P.J. O'Rourke was frighteningly accurate when he said: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

When the federal government pushed Wisconsin to expand Medicaid, holding out the promise of millions in federal funds in 2013, we said "No thank you." We knew trusting the federal government to follow through on its promises would end with Wisconsin taxpayers on the hook.  Forced to accept the confines of Obamacare, our goal was to chart a path to protect those in Wisconsin who needed Medicaid the most, while moving people toward true independence.  

Wisconsin is the only state that didn't accept the Medicaid expansion funds and that has no gap in coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. For the first time in state history, everyone living in poverty has access to coverage.  But despite our best efforts to mitigate the damage of Obamacare, the consequences of the law have been profound as employers have cut hours, while some workers lost their insurance altogether and are struggling to pay the dramatic premium increases. Meanwhile, even many families that have Obamacare coverage can't afford the deductible and doctor fees, while others can no longer see trusted doctors. 

It's clear Obamacare must be repealed and replaced with a plan that puts patients and their families back in charge. 

From the beginning, the President's implementation of Obamacare has been called into question, and in the next week, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on King v. Burwell, deciding a central component of Obamacare's structure: Can the federal government subsidize healthcare plans purchased on the federal exchange?  

If the high court rules in favor of the administration, Obamacare will continue, unchanged.  And that means the Republican House and Senate must redouble the fight to repeal and replace Obamacare. 

Via: CNN

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Somebody Call a Doctor! GOP Replacement for Obamacare Will Not Solve the Problem

In anticipation of the Supreme Court ruling of King v. Burwell in the next few days, Republicans are frantically trying to conjure up an alternative to Obamacare should the subsidies outlined in the case be deemed illegal. While the GOP should get an A for effort, if they don’t properly diagnose the reasons why the healthcare system needed “fixing” in the first place, the treatment regimen will be ineffectual at best, harmful at worst.

Most agree that the healthcare system had many problems before Obamacare, but couldn’t articulate why costs were out of control and not everyone could get coverage. My bold assertion is that programs like Medicaid and Medicare sowed the initial seeds of failure within the healthcare system years ago by artificially setting prices (in the form of reimbursement costs) of everything from drugs to equipment to services by government fiat instead of letting markets determine the price.

Just as government intervention in the economy distorts free market capitalism, government intervention in healthcare knocked that system out of whack. Since the prices that government sets for goods and services differ from the actual costs to the providers in the private market, those providers relying on government reimbursement had to raise their prices in order to make money and continue to operate. Once those initial goods and services had their true prices distorted, the price of everything else related followed suit, hence the upward cost spiral that has you paying $30 for an aspirin at the hospital and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a surgery. As providers asked for relief, in came more government “help” in the form of subsidies.

However, economics shows us that when you subsidize something, you invariably raise its price because you are artificially lowering the cost to the consumer and thus increasing demand. It contributes to a feedback loop that distorts the price of everything that set its price based on the value of the initial good. If the GOP alternative includes more subsidies, then they are not really attacking the root of the problem. They would simply be applying a band-aid that would eventually require another band-aid down the road, and then another, and then another.

Via: Human Events

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[COMMENTARY] The White House’s Latest ObamaCare Lie

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was pitched and eventually sold to the American public on a foundation of lies. Many of the most egregious examples of the calculated mendacity of ObamaCare’s designers were exposed by the law’s very implementation, but a few of its more subtle deceptions and the duplicity of the law’s authors was revealed in a series of videos featuring the refreshingly honest Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist and health care policy advisor Jonathan Gruber. It is fitting that, just days before the Supreme Court issues what might be its most far-reaching verdict regarding the ACA’s fraudulence, Gruber is again in the news.

As soon as the Affordable Care Act was implemented and revealed its hideous, multifarious visage to the public, the lies at the heart of the law became apparent even to observers committed to ensuring its success.

Premiums rose both for those on and off Affordable Care Act-related plans. Patients began losing their cherished and long-patronized doctors. The Supreme Court virtually rewrote the law when it ignored the administration and the solicitor general when it determined that the government had no right to penalize the public for failing to purchase health insurance. None of this would have come as a surprise to anyone who attended one of Gruber’s many lectures.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” the health care policy advisor conceded, because “if CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”

As for the substance of the case the Court will rule on before the end of the month in King v. Burwell, Gruber appeared to validate the claims of those who believe the law was intentionally crafted to deny states the subsidies they presently enjoy if they did not set up a state-run insurance exchange. “There’s a lot of responsibilities on the states to set up these exchanges, like we did in Massachusetts, to regulate them and run them,” Gruber insisted in 2011. “Will people understand that, gee, if your governor doesn’t set up an exchange, you’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens?”

Via: Commentary Magazine

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A handful of states could set up ACA Exchanges after King v. Burwell

It’s been difficult not to notice that a lot of states are having terrible experiences with their ObamaCare exchanges. In fact, a recent Washington Post article reports that “Nearly half of the 17 insurance marketplaces set up by the states and the District under President Obama’s health law are struggling financially.”

In a previous post, we mentioned that this fact should hinder attempts from state officials to establish a state exchange in the event that King v. Burwell eliminates the federal subsidies.

Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, nothing will change for the 16 states already running their own exchange. Also, Arizona recently passed legislation prohibiting the establishment of an exchange, so that 17 states will not be directly affected by King.

Thus, 33 states would lose federal subsidies if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs. At least 16 of these states appear to be led by officials who will make a strong push to establish an exchange in order to retain the subsidies.

If you happen to live in one of these states, it may be in your interest to contact state officials and tell them not to establish an ObamaCare exchange, even if King strikes down the federal subsidies.

After all, this is a problem the federal government created. It would be irresponsible to call on state governments to clean up a mess they didn't create. If state leaders end up caving into the pressure to establish an exchange, then ObamaCare repeal will become an even more arduous mission than it already is.

Via: Freedom Works

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GOP Not Quite Ready for the Health Care Victory It’s Dreamed About

Sisters hold a sign at a rally outside of the Supreme Court during arguments in the King v. Burwell case on March 4, 2015. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

With each passing day of Supreme Court suspense, the image of the dog catching the bus has come more warily into focus for congressional Republicans.

The wait could end as soon as Thursday, when the justices are expected to announce rulings in a few of the 17 cases remaining on this year’s docket. If there’s still no decision on the fate of the landmark health care law, many GOP members will indulge in a collective sigh of relief — because they will have been given a little more time to cobble together plans for a moment they’ve spent five years dreaming about.

There has been a striking disconnect between the overriding Republican policy wish for this decade, which is to see President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement eviscerated, and the party’s preparations for the very real possibility that wish could be granted. The volume and passion of their relentless Obamacare criticism has been inversely proportional to their public level of coordination and precision about what they’d do differently.

Their longstanding “repeal and replace” mantra has been all about the former until recently, although the political imperative to come up with a replacement has advanced from the theoretical to the potentially imminent as King v. Burwell has progressed to one step from ultimate resolution.

The Supreme Court has the power to take away a central tent pole of the law, the medical coverage subsidies now being provided to about 6.4 million people in the 34 states where the federal government runs the insurance marketplaces. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argue the wording of the law only permits those subsidies for people buying coverage from health exchanges run by states. The Obama administration says some sloppy legislative drafting should not be allowed to countermand the statute’s universally understood intent.

But if the court calls a halt to the federal marketplace subsidies, the economic pain will be immediate for millions of potential 2016 voters, many of them in presidential and congressional battleground states.

The subsidies, delivered as a tax credit to people with lower incomes, average $272 a month, meaning without them many will no longer be able to afford any coverage.

The biggest population affected would be in Florida, where 1 in 12 people younger than 65, or 1.3 million, are now getting federal help. The same is true for 3 percent or more of the adults in the likely presidential swing states of Michigan, Virginia, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Via: Roll Call

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The Federalist: The Media Doesn't Want Americans To Know Anything About King v. Burwell

According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 7 in 10 Americans have heard little or nothing about King v. Burwell, the U.S. Supreme Court case that will, any day now, decide the fate of Obamacare’s health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. Yet 63 percent of those surveyed also say that if the court rules against the government, Congress should act to keep those subsidies in place.

Got that? The vast majority of Americans know almost nothing about this case, but 63 percent have an opinion about what Congress should do in response to a ruling that carries certain policy implications. How can this be?

Other recent polls about Burwell and Obamacare also appear to be contradictory, as David Harsanyi noted about the recentWashington Post-ABC News poll, in which the conflicting results stemmed from how pollsters framed the question:

Harsanyi’s response: “Chew over the absurdity and bias of that query (it’s worse when you dig deeper). For starters, it has absolutely nothing to do with the legality or constitutionality of the Obamacare challenge—the reason the case is in the courts. It’s about the theoretical consequences should the court side with the challengers.” In philosophy, this is called petitio principii, the Latin term for the logical fallacy of “begging the question”—when one assumes in the premises the very conclusion one is trying to prove.

Via: The Federalist

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Hidden Costs of Health Benefit Mandates

The upcoming King v. Burwell ruling, with its ramifications for the Affordable Care Act, has health-insurance costs back in the spotlight. Health-care mandates in particular have been an ongoing source of controversy. But states have been quietly passing their own health-insurance benefit mandates —requirements that insurers cover specific treatments and conditions — for decades, and there's much we can learn from them.

The number of state-level health-insurance mandates has steadily grown since the 1960s, with the average state imposing nearly 40. This growth surged recently due to the ACA's "Essential Health Benefits." The scope of the services targeted by these mandates varies widely, from cancer screening and prenatal care to acupuncture and chiropractic services.

Some mandated services seem essential to an adequate health-insurance plan, while others are of questionable benefit. What they all have in common is that they increase the cost of insurance by raising premiums for the people and employers who buy it. And higher premiums lead to other hidden costs as well.

In new research for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, we find evidence that new state health-insurance mandates distort state economies by leading to the existence of more large firms and fewer small firms.

The key to understanding how state mandates affect firm size lies in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. Under ERISA, employers who self-insure (that is, directly bear the cost of paying their employees'benefit claims instead of buying coverage from an insurance company) are exempt from state health-insurance mandates. While technically a firm of any size is able to self-insure its health plan, in practice it is only the largest employers who opt for this form of coverage. This is because any form of insurance is more cost-effective when risk is pooled over a larger population.

A large employer can easily absorb the cost of one employee's expensive cancer treatment, because the costs are relatively insignificant when spread out among its many more fortunate workers. However, if a small business had to pay the entire cost of the same cancer treatment, it could go bankrupt.

These incentives are clearly illustrated by breaking down the self-insurance rate by firm size. Approximately 84 percent of employees at large firms (employers with at least 1,000 workers) are covered via self-insurance plans, compared with only 13 percent of employees at small firms (fewer than 50 employees).

Because it is easier and cheaper for large firms to self-insure, and thus escape state health-benefit mandates, they face less of a burden than small firms. This grants them a competitive advantage in the form of lower labor costs. The result is surprising: We find that each state health-benefit mandate leads to about 3,000 fewer small firms (with, for instance, 15 workers each), but about 20 more large firms with 1,000 or more workers. The overall level of employment is essentially unchanged.

If there is no change in overall employment, just a shift in the size of the firm employing the average worker, why should we care? While it may seem harmless, the shift could actually have serious implications for the overall productivity of our economy. Take job growth, for example. A recent study found that new, small firms (as opposed to larger, more established firms) were the primary creators of new jobs. Given these results, we should be wary of any policy which places heavy burdens on small employers.

Via: Real Clear Policy

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ObamaCare: King v. Burwell -- More than Tax Credits

As the Obama administration nervously waits for a Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell, there is another aspect to the case that has nothing to do with ObamaCare or tax subsidies. King v. Burwell tells the story of a president who overstepped the limits of his authority by unilaterally changing key provisions of the law without Congressional approval. It’s also a story of an administration’s repeated efforts to interfere in Congressional inquiries to determine whether IRS and Treasury officials were pressured into promulgating rules that are contrary to statutory text and favorable to the administration’s political objectives. 

The issues raised in King v. Burwell weren’t created in a vacuum -- they are the consequence of a poorly written law that was hastily passed through the reconciliation process. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of plaintiffs would be a strong rebuke for President Obama, who repeatedly altered key provisions of the law. Even if the Supreme Court rules against plaintiffs, the story does not end, for there are other rules that are also contrary to the plain language of the law.

Almost immediately after Obamacare was signed into law, the Obama administration began to eliminate, postpone, and alter key provisions without Congressional approval. The first to go was the CLASS Act, a provision that the Congressional Budget Office relied on to justify the cost of the law. Next were the SHOPs, which were supposed to level the playing field for small business owners by expanding their options to purchase affordable and quality healthcare plans for employees. Next, and with no prior warning, President Obama delayed implementation of the Employer Mandate, but he did not do the same for the Individual Mandate. Other provisions, including COOPs and the Navigator program, fell to the wayside.  

Once the rulemaking process began, some members of Congress became concerned that department officials were not interpreting the law’s plain meaning. When the IRS issued its proposed rule for the tax credits in 2011, it was met with strong opposition from Congressional members including Senator Orrin Hatch, then the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. Hatch questioned the legality of the proposed rule and in December 2011 sent a letter to the Department of the Treasury asking for all of the documents related to the development of the rule and the reasoning behind it. To date, the IRS and the Treasury Department have not responded to Hatch’s request. 
In September 2014, Darrell Issa, then Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, issued a Congressional subpoena to the IRS and Treasury requesting the same documents. The subpoena was ignored. After Issa moved to compel production of the documents, the Obama administration intervened and blocked the request. To date, no documents have been produced. 

Via: American Thinker

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[VIDEO] Obamacare: It’s Still Unaffordable, Unworkable and Unfair

Earlier this week, President Obama taunted the Supreme Court for taking up a challenge to Obamacare and boldly declared that his health care law is a success.

“What’s more, the thing is working,” Obama boasted to reporters. “I mean, part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them come to pass.”

In reality, the president is willfully disregarding the facts and ignoring mounting evidence about the Affordable Care Act’s failures. Obamacare remains unaffordable, unworkable and unfair to the American people.

The Heritage Foundation decided to set the record straight for the president. This new video chronicles the problems playing out in states across America—many of which will be impacted by the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling in King v. Burwell.

Via: The Daily Signal

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[VIDEO] If SCOTUS guts subsidies, voters want Congress to fix Obamacare

As the Supreme Court prepares to unveil its decision on King v. Burwell, which could gut health care subsidies to millions of Americans on the exchanges–a point that some in the media say could harm Republicans. Hence, why some on the Hill are saying they might temporarily extend those subsidies if the Court nixes them. King is similar to another case–Halbig V. Burwell–that virtually argued the same thing:

Whether the Internal Revenue Service may permissibly promulgate regulations to extend tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through exchanges established by the federal government under Section 1321 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Last summer, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and the Washington Examiner’sPhilip Klein outlined the background for the case–and the consequences if the Court rules that the IRS does not have the authority to extend the subsidies. 

Via Turley:

The Halbig case challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program. In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out. The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges “established by the state.”

But despite that carrot — and to the great surprise of the administration — some 34 states opted not to establish their own exchanges, leaving it to the federal government to do so. This left the White House with a dilemma: If only those enrollees in states that created exchanges were eligible for subsidies, a huge pool of people would be unable to afford coverage, and the entire program would be in danger of collapse.

Indeed, the Halbig plaintiffs — individuals and small businesses in six states that didn’t establish state exchanges — objected that, without the tax credits, they could have claimed exemption from the individual mandate penalty because they would be deemed unable to pay for the coverage. If the courts agree with them, the costs would go up in all 34 states that didn’t establish state exchanges, and the resulting exemptions could lead to a mass exodus from Obamacare.

The administration attempted to solve the problem by simply declaring that even residents of states without their own exchanges were eligible for subsidies, even though the law seemed to specifically say they were not. The administration argues that although the statute’s language does limit subsidies to residents of places with exchanges “established by the state,” that wording actually referred to any exchange, including those established by the federal government.

Via: Hot Air

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The GOP's Secret Plan To Fix Obamacare

Congressional Republican leaders say they have a fallback plan ready to go if the Supreme Court cripples a core component of Obamacare this month.

But the details of the plan are being kept secret.

"We'll have a plan that makes sense for the American people," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday in a radio interview with The Joe Elliott Show.
But what's in the plan?

"We'll let you know depending on the outcome of the decision," the Kentucky Republican said, referring to the case King v. Burwell, which is expected to be decided this month.

Bloomberg tried to get answers Tuesday from the senior Republicans who work on health policy. Their fallback plan might interest millions of Americans who stand to lose their insurance subsidies, as well as the insurance industry, which would likely lose many customers and be compelled raise premiums. Details to come, the planners say.

"Yeah, we are" ready to act, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in an interview. But what will the action be? "We'll let you know if we have to do it," he said.

Senate Republican Conference Chair John Thune of South Dakota said that if the Supreme Court "give[s] us seven months to fix this, we'd love the opportunity to try to come up with a better alternative."

Via: Newsmax

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Obama to Supreme Court: You wouldn’t dare kill Obamacare

President Obama uttered more than 3,600 words on the stage of Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park ballroom on Tuesday, but his message could be summed up in three: You wouldn’t dare.

He was speaking not to the hundreds of hospital administrators assembled for the Catholic Health Association’s conference but to five men not in the room: the conservative justices of the Supreme Court, who in the next 21 days will declare whether they are invalidating the most far-reaching legislation in at least a generation because of one vague clause tucked in its 2,000 pages.

President Obama uttered more than 3,600 words on the stage of Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park ballroom on Tuesday, but his message could be summed up in three: You wouldn’t dare.

He was speaking not to the hundreds of hospital administrators assembled for the Catholic Health Association’s conference but to five men not in the room: the conservative justices of the Supreme Court, who in the next 21 days will declare whether they are invalidating the most far-reaching legislation in at least a generation because of one vague clause tucked in its 2,000 pages.

The appearance had been scheduled long ago, but White House officials elevated the importance of the speech to keep pressure on the Supreme Court, which Obama said at a news conference in Germany on Monday shouldn’t have even taken up the case. Obama said trashing the federal health-care exchanges, as a hostile Supreme Court ruling would do, is “not something that should be done based on a twisted interpretation of four words.”

The conservative justices, like conservative critics of the law generally, are unlikely to be persuaded by Obama’s recitation of the merits of the law, which he repeated at length Tuesday. But they may well be reluctant to upend a law that now has broad acceptance in American society.

Via: Washington Post

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Don't believe the liberal spin. ObamaCare is sputtering.

This month, the Supreme Court may well deliver a fatal blow to ObamaCare in King vs. Burwell, by ruling that the health insurance subsidies handed out through federal exchanges in 36 states are illegal. Many liberals seem to think that the only thing preventing the president's crowning domestic achievement from becoming a rip-roaring success is this largely specious and semantic lawsuit. But here's the thing: ObamaCare is teetering due to its own internal contradictions that have nothing to do with the lawsuit.

ObamaCare's supporters would like everyone to believe that with Healthcare.gov now functioning, everything is just fine and dandy. Contrary to what the conservative press (which I guess would include me) has been saying about the many problems of ObamaCare, Vox's Ezra Klein declared last September that "in the real world, it's working." In February, his fellow Voxland inhabitant Sarah Kliff rattled off eight ways in which the law had proved its critics wrong.

But has it? Not really.

For starters, the exchanges have enrolled about 3 million fewer people than the Congressional Budget Office projected in 2010. And far fewer of the enrollees are from the ranks of the uninsured than hoped. Medicaid enrollment is lower too, for the simple reason that states refused to expand the program.

The core of President Obama's sales pitch to America was that the program, which he called the Affordable Care Act, would "bend the health care cost curve" and save an average family $2,500 on their premiums each year. How would it accomplish this feat? Essentially, he said, by forcing uninsured "free loaders" who show up in the emergency room to obtain free care to either buy (subsidized) coverage on the insurance exchange or sign up for the expanded Medicaid program. The point was that if they had coverage, they'd get cheaper care sooner in a doctor's office rather than more expensive care later in a hospital emergency room.

Via: The Week

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Obama: Notice You Haven’t Heard Any Obamacare Horror Stories Lately?

In a round of questions following his remarks on the G7 Summit in Germany Monday morning, President Barack Obama dismissed the King v Burwell Supreme Court case as a tortured misreading of the law, and added, “Anyway, the thing’s working!”

“Part of what’s bizarre about this whole thing is we haven’t had a lot of conversation about the horrors of Obamacare because none of them have come to pass,” Obama said, citing significantly higher insured rates and lower health care costs. “None of the predictions about how this wouldn’t work have come to pass.”

The King case questions whether the federal premium subsidies were meant to be part of the law; an ambiguous sentence suggests they might have been withheld to pressure states into creating their own exchanges. But most involved in the writing and passing of the Affordable Care Act say it was a vestigial idea long abandoned by the time the law was passed.

If the subsidies were overturned, however, it would wreak havoc in the health care industry, if not the economy in general. One reporter asked why Obama didn’t have a Plan B in this event.

He responded that the ACA was a complex and interconnected piece of legislation that would be difficult to untangle, though he added that Congress could just fix the ambiguous sentence.

“This would be hard to fix,” he said. “Fortunately, there’s no reason to have to do it. It doesn’t need fixing.”

Via: Mediaite

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This New State Data Shows the Real Story Behind King v. Burwell

Every day there seems to be another article focused on how many individuals might lose their subsidies if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case.

Map

Yet, an even bigger group of individuals harmed by Obamacare has an equally good claim for relief that hasn’t gotten as much attention—the people who, thanks to Obamacare, must pay more for health insurance but who never got subsidies.

The Obamacare subsidies were intended, in part, to hide the law’s unpopular effects. At their root, Obamacare’s costly regulations, dictating what insurers can sell and what individuals and employer can buy, have resulted in premium costs going up, not down. In the 34 states potentially affected by the Court’s ruling, those regulations have driven up costs not only for the estimated 6.4 million receiving coverage subsidies, but also for at least another 15 million who have been forced to pay more for their health insurance without getting any subsidy.

Last month, The Heritage Foundation published a report highlighting that on average premiums could decrease by as much as 44 percent for young adults and 7 percent for near retirees if Congress, in response to a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in King v Burwell, simply eliminate three of the most costly Obamacare regulations—the age-rating rules, the actuarial value restrictions and the benefit mandates—in the affected states.

Today, Heritage will release state-specific data for the 34 states potentially affected by the King v. Burwell ruling.

For example, in Arizona, premiums could drop by as much as $1,044 for a 21-year-old and $402 for a 64-year-old. Similarly, in Iowa, premiums could decline by as much as $1,068 for a 21-year-old and $486 for a 64-year-old. In Ohio, premiums could be reduced by as much as $1,125 for a 21-year old and $633 for a 64-year old.

Congress’ first step in responding to the Court’s ruling should be to get rid of the Obamacare regulations that needlessly increased the cost of coverage for both those with and without subsidies.

Via: The Daily Signal

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