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Obama Budget Dangerous Step to Rationed Medical Care

How much is a life worth? That is the question President Obama asks in his latest budget when he proposes the federal government negotiate drug prices under Medicare Part D. The truth is, as Europe’s experience shows, governments don't "negotiate" prices, they either set prices or prohibit access in their countries to higher-cost medicine.

This new budget continues Obama’s lurch toward a full-blown government-run healthcare system. The president wants to allow bean counters to conduct cost-benefit analyses on life-saving treatments, bypassing both doctors and patients. That will cost lives and crush medical innovation.

Consider the nationalized approach of some European socialist democracies. National health systems from Switzerland and Great Britain refuse to pay for cutting-edge drugs, limiting availability and subjecting patients to substandard care. Britain, in particular, forces drug manufacturers into an all-or-nothing program, where they either negotiate with the government or are unable to sell any drugs in the country.

That’s why Nivolumab, a drug that is "twice as effective as chemotherapy and carries far fewer side effects" will not be available to cancer patients in Britain.

By everyone’s estimates, Nivolumab is revolutionary; it took the one-year survival rate of severely-ill lung cancer patients up nearly 100 percent – from 24 percent under current treatments to 42 percent. The drug doesn’t just extend lives, but it also helps shrink tumors - an outcome experts say is "almost unthinkable on chemotherapy."

Yet as many life-saving procedures are, it is also costly: Around $90,000 per year for treatment.

That forced Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence into a position to quantify the value of lung cancer patients' lives. Their analysis: the costs are too high to justify the amount of lives saved. Potentially, more than 17,000 lung and skin-cancer patients a year will go without access to this innovative treatment.

But there’s another, potentially more disturbing trend in Britain – a disparity in care between patients in poor and affluent areas. How does that play out? A study of medical records from 2002 to 2013 found that patients in poor areas were substantially less likely to be prescribed anti-dementia drugs, according to the University College London:

"When access to any treatment is rationed, wealthier patients and their families tend to be better-equipped to navigate the healthcare system and get around the restrictions," explains study author Dr Claudia Cooper (UCL Psychiatry). "They might do more research and know what to do to get the diagnosis and treatment that they want. They could also be more confident and assertive in asking doctors for specific treatments. Observational studies like this can increase our understanding of possible links between inequality and treatment outcomes, but they do not show direct cause and effect as we cannot rule out other explanations."

For now, the U.S. is a great place to receive medical care, particularly as it relates to early access to prescription medication:

Americans also have faster access to new drugs than patients in many other countries. That’s in part because the U.S. has always been a very attractive market for pharmaceutical companies: It’s big, accounting for 34 percent of the world market; has low levels of price regulation; and offers few barriers to market entry once FDA approval has been secured. (By contrast, in some other countries there may be a time lag between clinical approval of a drug and the point when it is added to official lists of reimbursable drugs.)

The result is that companies often choose the U.S. to launch new products. And, because the US market is so big and profitable, investments in research and development have long been steered towards meeting its clinical needs.

That’s why Nivolumab is available in the United States, where the government does not yet hold the power to ration care.

Cross posted from RedState.

People Still Have to Buy ObamaCare Despite UnitedHealth’s Best Efforts

Democrats constantly push their narrative that more people are covered by health insurance now than before ObamaCare was implemented. There are, of course, a plethora of problems with this argument. ObamaCare is unequivocally bad for the healthcare system and for patients. Once again, we are reminded just how bad.

UnitedHealth, is now forecasting that it will lose $500 million this year on its so-called Affordable Care Act plans. That's up from $475 million loss in 2015. The nation’s largest insurer is also dropping products and hiking premiums in an effort to discourage individuals from buying its health plans. "But despite its best efforts," Politico said, "executives still project that 200,000 additional customers will sign up for UnitedHeath plans during the current open enrollment."

This is worth reiterating – UnitedHealth is making its health insurance coverage worse AND more expensive, yet consumers are still buying. Why? Because they have to. If they don’t, the full weight of the Democrat-politicized IRS will weigh down on them.

Don't feel bad for UnitedHealth, they can pull out of the exchange at any time – and are even considering doing so in 2017 if losses continue to mount. The individual American, though, will be forced to participate in exchanges that will continue to grow even more expensive.

That will lead more individuals into financial hardships, and ultimately into a growing government crutch.

Earlier this month, a study by The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 20 percent of people under 65 with health insurance still struggled with paying their medical bills – the result of high premiums and gaps in coverage:

In recent years, health plans have come with growing deductibles and narrowing networks of providers, provisions devised to lower the cost of premiums. Those features have made health insurance accessible to a larger share of the population, but may also be leaving more insured Americans vulnerable.

This translates to real challenges for the average American, according to the survey:

We found that medical bills don’t just keep people from filling prescriptions and scheduling doctors’ visits. They can also prompt deep financial and personal sacrifices, affecting their housing, employment, credit and daily lives.

And that scathing critique is from The New York Times.

Cross posted From RedState.

With Hillary's Enemies, She Doesn't Need Friends

 

Image Credit: YouTube -  First Democratic Presidential Debate 2016 by CNN 10-13-2015 - FULL

During this year's first Democrat Presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said that she was proud to be enemies with “health insurance companies” – putting the insurance industry alongside the NRA, Iran and Republicans on her enemies list. That might be news to Clinton's campaign staff, which according to Politico Pro, recently held two high-level meetings with the insurance industry to hear – and presumably allay – any concerns they have:

"Top Hillary Clinton staffers are hosting insurance executives at the campaign's Brooklyn headquarters this week, coming face-to-face with an industry that Clinton ranked among her top ‘enemies’ during the first Democratic debate."

In the first meeting, "top Hillary Clinton staffers" hosted Marilyn Tavenner, the chief executive of the insurance industry’s trade association, AHIP, at Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign offices. Tavenner is part of Washington, D.C.’s revolving door; prior to her job at AHIP, she was the Obama Administration’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). At CMS, she was "in charge" of Healthcare.gov.

In the second meeting, the campaign met with executives from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose subsidiaries frequently appear as top donors to Clinton’s campaigns and the Clinton Foundation. In fact, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina alone donated between $1 and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Another $1 to $5 million came from Humana, another large insurance company.

Adding up Clinton's campaign contributions, insurance companies have poured millions into her various campaigns. U.S. News crunched the numbers:

"The insurance industry – which includes health insurers and also car, life and property insurance – donated $1,260,400 to her 2008 campaign, making her the third-highest recipient of cash from the industry that year and also in 2006, when she raised $397,110 for her reelection to the Senate. During her first bid for the Senate in 2000, she raised $167,550 from the industry.

She was the second-highest recipient of cash in 2008 from the health services sector and HMOs, receiving $636,670, and the highest earner in 2006, at $183,770. In 2000, she raised $70,575."

Why did Clinton's campaign meet with big insurance? Both Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield’s largest member company, and Humana are trying to consolidate with two other mega insurance companies, Cigna and Aetna, respectively. The combined total for these deals is in excess of $90 billion. So what’s a few million in campaign contributions?

Of course, these mergers will help insurance companies to squeeze even more profits out of their customers, who have suffered higher premiums along with less choice. The Center for Public Integrity outlined ObamaCare’s results:

"Among those who apparently have not yet benefited much at all, at least so far, are owners of small businesses who would like to keep offering coverage to their employees but can no longer afford it. They can’t afford it because insurers keep jacking their rates up so high every year that more and more of them are dropping employee health benefits altogether.

And let’s be clear, these insurers aren’t suffering. UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer, reported last week that it made $10.3 billion in profits in 2014 on revenues of $130.5 billion. Both profits and revenues grew seven percent from 2013."

Yes, that's the same UnitedHealth Group that is threatening to pull out of ObamaCare because it "loses hundreds of millions of dollars on the program." Maybe that’s why Tavenner told the New York Times that lobbying for health insurance companies was "a great opportunity."

According to The Hill, Clinton also has ties to another AHIP executive – Mary Beth Donahue, who served as a senior official in the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. Donahue, an executive vice president, as well as “several” other “high-ranking” AHIP officials are in "close contact with the White House and HHS." 

With enemies like Big Insurance, Hillary Clinton doesn’t need any friends.

Image Credit: YouTube - First Democratic Presidential Debate 2016 by CNN 10-13-2015 - FULL

Cross posted from RedState.

ObamaCare architect Gruber at it again

Jonathan Gruber is trying to blame the increasing the cost of health care on new drugs to treat hepatitis, instead of ObamaCare.

You Remember Gruber – one of ObamaCare’s chief architects? He helped draft ObamaCare while being paid nearly $400,000 by the Department of Health and Human Services. He is also the guy who admitted the Obama administration’s successful passage of the law was due to the "stupidity of the American voter."

In 2009, Gruber knew that ObamaCare would lead to increases in the cost of health care. At the time, Gruber even admitted that the only way to control costs is to effectively deny treatment. Nevertheless, he continued to claim the law would lead to lower premiums.

It’s wise to take anything Jonathan Gruber says or puts his name on with a grain of salt and to fact check his claims. This is after all the man who once said the “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” and boasted the Democrats relied on, “basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter” to pass the ObamaCare.

 You can watch Gruber make all these outrageous admissions in the following video:

Transcript via Real Clear Politics.

JONATHAN GRUBER, OBAMACARE ARCHITECT: This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay. So it was written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law that said healthy people are going to pay in -- if you made it explicit that healthy people pay in sick people get money it would not have passed. Okay.

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical in getting the thing to pass, and, you know, it's the second best argument. And I wish Mark was right, we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather have this law than not. So there are things I'd wish I could change, but I'd rather have this law than not.

Now Gruber is making new claims, this time as a member of the Governing Board of the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI). HCCI recently released its 2014 Health Care Cost and Utilization Report, the headline-grabbing finding of which is that life saving prescription medicines are increasing the cost of health care. The organization is backed by the insurance industry and uses insurance industry data. Its Data Integrity Committee, a group tasked with ensuring the completeness of the data it uses, is led by an insurance executive, Ted Prospect. But that hasn’t stopped the media and some in Congress from taking the report at face value.

In an obvious attempt to set up a future denial to patients of the benefits of the expensive, new drugs, Gruber’s HCCI report blames brand name prescription drugs like breakthrough medicines that cure Hepatitis C, as the principle culprit for the sky rocketing cost of health care. HCCI highlighted the new Hepatitis C drugs in its press release:

Hep C Drugs Drove Higher Spending on Brand Prescriptions

In 2014, spending grew fastest for brand prescriptions, with an increase of 8.2 percent ($45)–the largest increase in spending on brand prescriptions in recent years. By comparison, in 2012, spending on brand prescriptions declined by $3. Hepatitis C antiviral drugs accounted for $29.40 of the $45 increase. The average price per filled day (not including rebates, discounts, or coupons) of Hepatitis C drugs was $983.30, compared to $38.30 for all other brand anti-infective medications. There were 30 filled days of Hepatitis C drugs per 1,000 individuals in 2014.

To make sure you get the point, in an apparent afterthought, there is something titled, "Trend to Note: Hepatitis C Drugs and the National ESI Population," which again hits the cost of the three named drugs.

I'm no more a fan of expensive drugs than the next guy, but even the New York Times Editorial Board recognizes the value of these recently approved expensive Hepatitis C drugs:

The drugs are sorely needed. The hepatitis C virus caused nearly 20,000 deaths in the United States in 2013, many in patients who were also infected with H.I.V., the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, a double whammy that triples their risk of liver disease.

[. . .]

The benefits of these new drugs are undeniable. They can essentially cure the infection in eight to 24 weeks. Older medications are not nearly as effective and often produce disabling side effects. Curing the patient decreases by more than 80 percent the risk of liver cancer, liver failure and the need for a liver transplant, thus saving money in the long run.

The Times also reports that most state Medicaid programs, in an effort to control costs, have placed restrictions on making the drugs widely available:

These include requiring that patients have advanced liver disease before they can get the drug, requiring patients to abstain from alcohol or illicit drugs for at least a year before treatment, and requiring that the drugs be prescribed only by specialists like infectious disease experts or gastroenterologists.

According to the Times' editorial the restrictions run counter to guidelines published by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.

One doesn’t need to be an MIT economist – indeed one could just be a stupid American voter – to see that Gruber and the HCCI are trying to "control costs" by effectively denying treatment. Don't forget that Gruber admitted in 2009 that this is the only way to control health care costs.

It’s definitely wise to be suspicious when Jonathan Gruber is involved in health care policy.

Cross Posted from RedState.

At Netroots Sen. Murphy says ObamaCare is being implemented incredibly well

Image Credit Dan Spencer

At the Netroots Nation, in Detroit, Connecticut Democrat and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said ObamaCare "is being implemented incredibly well."

Perhaps Sen. Murphy forgets all the criticism about President Obama's incompetent implementation of ObamaCare that came from leading Democrats: 

• The Democrats' majority leader, Sen. Harry Reid, said last week that he agreed with Democrat Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat architect of the law, who said about the ObamaCare implementation, "I just see a huge train wreck coming down."
• Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden expressed concern about what's going to happen with young people if their insurance premiums shoot up.
• Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin told White House officials that he was concerned about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state.
• New Hampshire Sen Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire complained, "We are hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do not know how to comply with the law."

Or perhaps he does not recall that Healthcare.gov was riddled with site crashes, slow processing and other issues as the defective website was rolled out last October.

As if his declaration about ObamaCare implementation wasn’t enough, Murphy also said he "thinks that President Obama has done a credible job of managing a pretty messed up world." He and Secretary of State Kerry must be the only ones who believe that.

Obama's foreign policy is failing across the globe. With Putin trying to restore the Evil Empire one piece at a time, practically the entire Middle East at war, losing Iraq, Obama's indecision which he likes to call thoughtfulness, and leading from behind - otherwise known as following. No wonder Americans seem to be turning isolationist. 

Both of Murphy's statements occurred at the Netroots "Iran: Diplomacy or War" panel held on o July 18, 2014

ObamaCare will cost America more than two million jobs

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report this morning that finds ObamaCare will cost America roughly 2.5 million jobs through 2024.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta, the "rolling impact of the law will lead to 2 million fewer workers in 2017, 2.3 million in 2021 and 2.5 million through 2024." That will  represent a 1.5% to 2.0% reduction in the numbers of hours worked.

At the Washington Times, Stephen Dinan reports that this is "a major jump" in the CBO's projections and suggests ObamaCare's incentives are "driving businesses and people to choose government-sponsored benefits rather than work." In other words, businesses are cutting jobs due to ObamaCare regulations, and the fact that the Obama-economy, thanks in part to ObamaCare, will force millions of Americans to leave the workforce.

According to Dinan, the CBO also said that the inept ObamaCare roll out will result in only six million people signing up through the state-based exchanges, rather than the seven million the CBO originally projected.

I wonder how the Obamacrats are going to spin this one? Trying to convince everyone there is a difference between "people leaving the workforce" and "costing jobs" isn't going to cut it. It's desperate.

Majority believe Obama policies will fail

A new CNN/ORC poll released Monday, found that a majority of Americans -- 56 percent, now think Obama's policies are likely to fail in coming years. According to the new CNN poll, only 37 percent think Obama's policies will succeed will succeed.

The finding is a reversal from a year ago when CNN polling found 54 percent that President Obama's policies would succeed, while 39 percent thought they would fail. 

This is the result of Obama's governing incompetence being so clearly highlighted by the continuing ObamaCare implementation train wreck. 

This terrible news for Obama follows the recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that only 37 percent of Americans are confident that President Obama will make the right decisions for the country’s future, while 63 percent are not. And the CNN/ORC poll that found 53 percent of Americans believe that President Obama is "not honest and trustworthy." And another CNN poll that found that even the Obama base is turning against ObamaCare.

These awful poll results are also influenced by Obama's "broken ObamaCare promises," one of which earned him a lie of the year award. You can watch a compilation of Obama's broken ObamaCare promises in the following video:

New numbers from Gallup pour cold water all over one of the Democrats' remaining defenses of ObamaCare

According to Gallup, which has been measuring the percentage of uninsured Americans monthly since 2008, the current rate of uninsured Americans is stuck at 16.1%.

A quick look at the trends will show you that percentage is almost the same as what it was when President Obama took office in January 2009, and nearly identical to the rate of uninsured in March 2010, when the Democrats jammed ObamaCare through Congress on a strictly party line vote. 

Oh the problematic irony. The Democrat Party, from President Obama on down, repeatedly lectured us that passing their big government health care law was the only way to reduce the number of uninsured.  With the enrollment deadline for ObamaCare rapidly approaching, its looking like that was another lie. 

Even the nonpartisan Gallup poll, while not explicitly pointing it out, hinted that this number is not welcome news for the White House:

"Still, with only 2.1 million Americans newly enrolled in plans through the exchanges as of Dec. 28, 2013, the Obama administration and other proponents of the new healthcare law have a long way to go in hopes of reaching the goal of increasing the number of Americans who have health coverage."

During the final months of the Bush Administration and the 2008 presidential campaign, the rate of uninsured was 13.9%. Back then, Democrats insisted that rate was unacceptably high. Now they're silent. If Democrats choose to acknowledge this poll at all (which they won't), they'll point to the fact that the rate of uninsured has dropped from the all-time high of 18.6% in the middle of 2013. But much of that can be contributed to the mass confusion of cancelled plans and changing providers that millions of Americans experienced last year as a result of the ObamaCare train wreck. 

The truth is that ObamaCare was never going to reduce the number of uninsured. Even the CBO warned that the law would still leave the number of uninsured Americans unacceptably high, yet Democrats charged full speed ahead anyway. It's not hard to see why voter anger with Democrats is once again boiling over. It's another broken promise, the Democrats knew they couldn't keep. 

In Obama's America, its looking like even with ObamaCare, 16% uninsured is the new normal. The White House will no doubt choose to ignore this inconvenient fact, and deny that reducing the rate of uninsured was ever a crucial benchmark. The problem is that the White House can keep jumping, but at some point they'll be running out of talking points to land on.  

Say Merry Christmas and annoy a Liberal

ObamaCare is smoldering in rubble, and we should expect the Democrats to jump onto something - anything - that will give them a chance to stop talking about it. That's why it was unsurprising to watch the Democrat Party launch themselves into a complete meltdown yesterday over a tee shirt sold in the National Republican Congressional Committee online store. The GOP committee, though, isn't backing down.

"Happy Holidays is what liberals say," the tee shirt reads on the front, with "Merry Christmas" on the back. It's conservative, it's funny, and it's hardly controversial - one poll last year found that the vast majority of Americans prefer store signs that read "Merry Christmas" over "Happy Holidays."

BuzzFeed broke the "story" yesterday that the shirt had been removed from the NRCC store. This was due to the fact that the shirt was sold out, as the NRCC confirmed to BuzzFeed - but that didn't stop the DCCC and the DNC from foaming at the mouth in ginned up outrage (anything to stop talking about ObamaCare!) "NRCC thinks there are no holidays but Christmas," wrote one Democrat operative.

This type of faux outrage over conservative "intolerance" is a worn-out maneuver in the Democrats playbook, and the NRCC is fighting back. The committee sent out an email Monday night from "NRCC HQ" letting conservatives know that they aren't backing down from the Democrats' attacks - and they're even selling a new mug with the same slogan:

Want to really annoy a liberal? Say “Merry Christmas.”

On Friday, we unveiled a new Christmas t-shirt at our NRCC Store – “Happy Holidays is What Liberals Say.”

You loved the shirt so much, it sold out!

But Liberals all across the internet flipped out and said we were being politically incorrect.

We’re working to get more shirts and products up ASAP.In the meantime we've got a “Happy Holidays is What Liberals Say" MUG for you.

"Liberals just don’t get it. We don’t celebrate Christmas to offend people. Saying 'Merry Christmas' isn’t an attack on any religion or belief," the email continues, before ending with "Merry Christmas! Just don't tell Nancy Pelosi we said so."

The Democrats are so desperate to stop talking about ObamaCare that they thought waging a fight over "Happy Holidays" would be more popular. Unfortunately, this looks like another swing and a miss for the left. According to a source at the NRCC, the mugs are selling "like hotcakes." Meanwhile, ObamaCare is still a disaster, Merry Christmas is still more popular than Happy Holidays, and the Democrats find themselves on Santa’s naughty list.

A majority of Americans now believe that Obama is not honest and trustworthy

A new CNN/ORC poll finds that 53% of Americans now believe that President Obama is "not honest and trustworthy."

This is the first time that CNN polling has found that a clear majority feels that Obama is not honest and trustworthy. The CNN poll confirms what we reported last week.

Now that it is obvious that Obama lied when he promised over and over again that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan," Americans' view of Obama's honesty has also taken a hit:

The new CNN poll also found that only 40% believe Obama can effectively manage the federal government. That is a down 12%. The ObamaCare train-wreck is so bad it has led some to start referring to the president as "Obama the Incompetent."

The brutal poll numbers go beyond Obama's record low approval numbers, his  honesty and his managerial skills. According to CNN's Political Ticker, 56% now say Obama is not a person they admire, that he does not agree with them on important issues, and that  he does not inspire confidence.

You can watch CNN's John Avalon discuss these brutal poll numbers on Political Gut Check in the following video:

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland says that the mishandled ObamaCare roll out has had a big impact on his perception as an effective manager and that may be what is driving the drop in Obama's approval rating.

Holland points to President Bill Clinton to make the point that perceived competency is more important than honesty. Clinton's whose overall approval ratings remained high during and after the Monica Lewinsky scandal because Americans thought he could get things done, even though only about 20% thought Clinton was honest.