Ron Bachman

Over the next 10 years, if left unchanged, Obamacare will take $500 billion from Medicare.  Medicare beneficiaries will see higher premiums. Doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medical suppliers will get lower payments.  Under Obamacare, Medicare reductions will be used to subsidize expanded Medicaid to low-income recipients and to fund insurance for the uninsured.  This redistribution of funding from Medicare to other programs is the most controversial part of health reform. (more)

If ObamaCare is upheld as constitutional, we will spend the rest of our lives trying to understand its complexities and contradictions.  We will likely all be in violation of some part of the law. (more)

Republicans talk about repealing and replacing ObamaCare.  The president counters that we should go forward with policies that are beginning to work.  Democrats say we should not return to the failed policies of the past. (more)

ObamaCare restrictions on the use of over-the-counter (OTC) medications will begin on January 1, 2011.  The new OTC regulations will make the convenient inconvenient, eliminate cost-effective treatments and increase costs, change tax advantages to tax penalties, and decrease choice.  Patients with Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), or Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) who purchase OTC medicines with their account debit cards will find denial, confusion, and disappointment at the pharmacy checkout counter. (more)

In most families, moms are the caregivers. They know the right cough medicine, the right dosages, the difference between aspirin and Tylenol, and what to do for their child’s allergies. Most moms have a box or tray with all kinds of cures for their children. Mom’s “medicine box” is there to fix middle-of-the-night pains and fevers. God bless moms. (more)

Few have read the 2,700 page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).  Even if you have, it is difficult to absorb the full implications of the health reform bill.  Each week the Department of Labor (DOL), the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), and Treasury produce new regulations.  With so much happening so fast how can employers, insurance agents, consultants, lawyers, or insurance companies keep up with decisions to set strategies, make rational choices, and be legally compliant? (more)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) damages both American health care and its human capital. For employers, health care is a maintenance contract for supporting optimal physical and mental functioning of their employees – their human capital. (more)

At the invitation of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a dozen American “policy-wonks” from differing perspectives travelled to Germany in December 2009. The Foundation was interested in our observations of the German social health system. My interest was how consumerism and individual choice worked in Germany. (more)

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The costs of ObamaCare were to be paid by reductions to Medicare ($500 billion) and taxes on those with high incomes and investments ($500 billion). However, the actuarial and economic analyses don’t take into account the ultimate 100 percent tax on one’s income—the loss of your job. (more)

The great frustration for many Americans during the debate on ObamaCare was tone-deaf politicians. No one seemed willing to listen to their concerns. Federal deficits, pork-barrel spending, and the cost of health care got lost in the push to pass partisan legislation. As we move into the regulatory phase of writing the critical implementation rules, the concern is that Obama-bureaucrats will also ignore the people. (more)

Many Americans said “No!” to ObamaCare in polls and recent elections from Virginia to New Jersey to Massachusetts. But, now it has passed. The majority of citizens still want it repealed. The anger and frustrations are unlikely to subside as some politicians are hoping. ObamaCare is now the law of the land. That may change with the pending constitutional challenges, but the time has come to plan ahead and prepare for a very different future. While lawyers and politicians consider “repeal and replace” reform initiatives, employers and benefit managers must move to implement. (more)

From its early beginnings the Tea Party was dismissed as irrelevant and then derided by the national media. In the summer of 2009 health reform was the hot topic of concern across the nation and to the Tea Party movement. The media, the Obama administration, and Democrats described opposition and questioning Tea Partiers as “mobsters, anti-American, and Nazis.” President Obama referred to them dismissively as “tea baggers.” The New York Times attempted to link Tea Partiers to militia extremists. (more)

Megatrends represent major movements so powerful that the direction of change cannot be stopped. Federal laws can speed up or slow down megatrend forces. But, like dammed rivers megatrends will redirect themselves to achieve the inevitable result. Health care consumerism is such a force. (more)

Gov. Sonny Perdue is showing the way on how states can implement cross-state selling of individual health insurance. States can voluntarily enter into reciprocity agreements with like-minded states. Together they can create a multi-state market attractive to insurers selling new lower cost comprehensive products. (more)

Dueling polls are worded to asked and cast favor on one side or the other of our national debate on health reform. Public opinion polls and recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts tell us that the American public does not want massive national health reform. They are worried about the current costs, future deficits and government intrusion. (more)