Viewpoints: Insurance Merger Wave; The Cost Of Obamacare; Abortion Under Attack

The Wall Street Journal: ObamaCare’s Oligopoly Wave
The five largest commercial health insurers in the U.S. have contracted merger fever, or maybe typhoid. UnitedHealth is chasing Cigna and even Aetna; Humana has put itself on the block; and Anthem is trying to pair off with Cigna, which is thinking about buying Humana. If the logic of ObamaCare prevails, this exercise will conclude with all five fusing into one monster conglomerate. This multibillion-dollar M&A boom is notable even amid the current corporate-financial deal-making binge, yet insurance is only the latest health-care industry to be swept by consolidation. The danger is that ObamaCare is creating oligopolies, with the predictable results of higher costs, lower quality and less innovation. (6/19)

Bloomberg: Obamacare Narrows The Deficit. Let's Move On.
The Congressional Budget Office has released a report on the effects of repealing Obamacare. Bottom line: full repeal would blow up the long-term federal budget deficit -- and leave a lot of people without insurance. ... Does anyone expect supposedly deficit-obsessed Republicans to either drop repeal, or to find offsets to make repeal budget-neutral? Of course not. Although this estimate is new, the general finding that the Affordable Care Act reduces the deficit has been well-known, and denied or ignored by “repeal” Republicans. (Jonathan Bernstein, 6/19)

The New York Times: Obamacare And Labor Supply
I was critical of CBO yesterday — probably excessively — for giving what seemed like undue cover for deficit scolds in its long-run budget projection. So credit where credit is due: the new report on the consequences of repealing the ACA is definitely not what the Congressional majority wants to hear. Despite including “dynamic scoring”, the report finds, unambiguously, that Obamacare reduces the deficit and repealing it would enlarge the deficit. (Paul Krugman, 6/20)

The Richmond Times-Dispatch: Affordable Care Act: Who Pays For Obamacare?
Because the ACA is intended to make health-care coverage more affordable for some people — in general, people who are older and sicker, with below-average incomes — it must make coverage more expensive for others. Part of that burden, like so many burdens these days, is borne by American taxpayers — and by the Treasury bondholders who leverage today’s burden onto tomorrow’s taxpayers. (6/21)

The Huffington Post: Women In The Crosshairs Of ACA Repeal
There's an old saying "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it." That applies in spades to Republicans who have voted over 50 times to overturn Obamacare. It was a fool's errand, because even if they had been successful, President Obama would have vetoed any such bill. But now the GOP's fondest wish may be granted by the Supreme Court, set to rule by the end of the month in King v. Burwell, a case that experts say could gut the Affordable Care Act if the plaintiffs prevail. That has Republican lawmakers up for election next year in a bind. (Martha Burk, 6/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Facing The Political Fallout From A King V. Burwell Ruling
We are unlikely to know how this will play out until the court issues its ruling and Republicans in Congress and the states see how intense the political pressure is to fix the problem. That heat will not be one-sided: A ruling for the plaintiffs will be used by Republicans to validate their criticisms of the Affordable Care Act and what they view as the administration’s overreach in implementing it. If history is any guide, the public will view the arguments from each side through partisan prisms. ... Still, a failure to fix the problems resulting from a ruling for the plaintiffs would almost certainly result in a steady stream of media coverage of the personal stories of people who lost subsidies and their health insurance, and Republicans would feel the heat much like they did after the government shutdown. (Drew Altman, 6/19)

The Baltimore Sun: Obamacare's Big Day
It received surprisingly little fanfare, but last week three states demonstrated how to "fix" the Affordable Care Act, should the Supreme Court rule adversely against a key provision within it. Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Delaware all received permission to set up state health insurance exchanges should subsidies be eliminated for those who participate through the federal government's ACA website. (6/22)

Tampa Bay Times: A State Budget Built For Special Interests
Has the Florida Legislature's special session been a success? That depends on whom you ask. ... Where they failed to make the grade was in meeting the needs of 840,000 of their constituents who lack health care coverage. The most recent polling shows 68 percent of Floridians support the federally funded Medicaid expansion. ... the House took up and disposed of the Senate's health care plan, forgoing billions in federal dollars. That created the need for a significant infusion of state revenues to make up for federal money lost in a smaller Low Income Pool, a program to reimburse hospitals for uncompensated or charity care. The House and Senate agreed on $400 million. That's $400 million that is no longer available for other budget priorities. (Paula Dockery, 6/18)

Raleigh News & Observer: Must-Have Medicaid Expansion In North Carolina
Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion has become a prolonged and frightening attack on the working poor, job creation and the health of the hospital system in North Carolina. ... The long lens of history may eventually recognize that Obamacare is mostly a Republican idea or at least an effective bipartisan initiative. We are a progressive, moderate state. It is time for the Republicans to honor and reflect that tradition. It is also time for them to remember that it is their sworn constitutional duty to uphold the law even when they don’t agree with it. (William C. Crawford, 6/19)

Albuquerque Journal: Medicaid Expansion Could Boost Economy
Legislative Finance Committee Director David Abbey, who probably knows more about state finances than anyone else alive, said last week that more than 216,000 people have joined the state’s Medicaid rolls under the expansion of Medicaid (authorized and funded by the Affordable Care Act) to able-bodied working-age adults. That puts total enrollment in New Mexico at almost 800,000 people. By 2020, he said, the LFC expects enrollment to reach 895,000, of whom 257,000 will have been added as a result of the expansion of Medicaid. Those are much bigger numbers than experts were expecting a year or two ago. ... A healthier population, along with an infusion of federal dollars, could help the state’s economy in a number of ways. (Winthrop Quigley, 6/21)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Abortion Under Attack: The Case In Texas Calls For High Court Attention
In a landmark decision more than 40 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that women have a constitutional right to end an unwanted pregnancy. In recent years, irresponsible state lawmakers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have ignored that ruling, passing medically unsupported restrictions on abortion at the behest of anti-choice activists. Abortion opponents won a big victory June 9, after a federal appeals court delivered a misguided ruling that upheld one of the most repressive abortion laws in the country: a 2013 Texas law that threatens to shut down more than half of the state’s remaining abortion clinics. (6/22)

The New York Times: Republicans Take Aim At Poor Women
One would imagine that congressional Republicans, almost all of whom are on record as adamantly opposing abortion, would be eager to fund programs that help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. That would be the common sense approach, anyway. And yet since they took over the House in 2011, Republicans have been trying to obliterate the highly effective federal family-planning program known as Title X, which gives millions of lower-income and rural women access to contraception, counseling, lifesaving cancer screenings, and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. (6/22)

Los Angeles Times: Birth Control Pills Should Not Be Prescription-Only
In a surprising moment of bipartisan unity, Republicans and Democrats seem to be in agreement that it's time to remove the prescription requirement for oral contraceptives. Right before Memorial Day, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) introduced legislation aimed at making birth control pills available over the counter, and now Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) has introduced a Democratic bill that also would add insurance coverage for a future OTC pill. Though the politics of these moves tend to get the disproportionate share of attention, it's worth exploring what the impact of either bill would be for women. (Daniel Grossman, 6/19)

The Washington Post: A Humane Way To End Life
Less than a month before she died, Brittany Maynard posted a video explaining her decision to move to Oregon to take advantage of the state’s law allowing terminally ill people to end their own lives. Maynard, 29, had been diagnosed with an aggressive and terminal brain cancer and said she wanted to die on her own terms. ... Death with dignity laws need to be carefully thought out, written and monitored. Oregon and the states that followed its example show that such care is possible. We hope the rest of the nation catches up with this humane option for life’s end. (6/21)

Los Angeles Times: High Cost Of Hepatitis Drug Reflects A Broken Pricing System
Jane Blumenfeld isn't sure when or how she contracted hepatitis C. All she knows is that back in 2000, when she tried to donate blood, the lab told her she had it. After that she shared the nightmare of millions of hepatitis C victims. ... So Blumenfeld, 64, a retired aide to state and Los Angeles city officials, was relieved when a new drug, Harvoni, appeared on the scene last year. Its side effects are minimal, and its cure rate has been measured as high as 99%. Here's the problem: The list price of the one-pill-a-day, 12-week treatment is nearly $100,000 and Blumenfeld's health insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, refuses to pay it.(Michael Hiltzik, 6/19)

The New York Times: Coping With Outbreaks Of MERS
A highly lethal contagious disease that has been detected in camels and humans in the Middle East is slowly spreading around the world and is causing havoc in South Korea. Known as the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, it has killed 35 percent of those it has infected. There have been 1,333 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS in more than two dozen countries; at least 471 people have died. Officials at the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have expressed confidence that the disease is not yet a global emergency. But a series of medical errors in South Korea shows what can happen to any country that lets its guard down. (6/20)