... Obamacare's relentless march to full-fledged introduction in 2014 demonstrates that, for all its good intentions, it will make the health care system more confusing (see above), costly and contentious. It won't control health spending -- the system's main problem -- and will weaken job creation.
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The argument about Obamacare is often framed as a moral issue. It's the caring and compassionate against the cruel and heartless. That's the rhetoric; the reality is different. Many of us who oppose Obamacare don't do so because we enjoy seeing people suffer. We believe that, in an ideal world, everyone would have insurance. But we also think that Obamacare has huge drawbacks that outweigh its plausible benefits.

It creates powerful pressures against companies hiring full-time workers -- precisely the wrong approach after the worst economic slump since the Depression. There will be more bewildering regulations, more regulatory uncertainties, more unintended side effects and more disappointments. A costly and opaque system will become more so.

Obamacare was supposed to be the capstone in the arch of a new progressive era. The Dems were going to show us all that government really does work. Smart government by smart people, using modern methods and the latest up to the minute research from carefully peer reviewed articles in well regarded social science journals can solve big social problems. Obamacare was going to be such a big hit that even the bitter clingers would have to put down their guns and their Bibles long enough to thank the Democrats for this wonderful new benefaction.
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It is a perverse but very real fact of life that the more complex and rich the system to be regulated, the less the "experts" and the goo-goos have the political power to impose their vision on the regulatory process. The more carefully crafted a law needs to be, the more it is going to be full of lobby lollipops and sweetheart deals. A legislative body trying to write a health care law for a country like ours is like a neurosurgeon operating, drunk, with one hand holding a chainsaw and the other in a boxing glove.

Senate Republican staffers continue to look though the 2010 health care reform law to see what's in it, and their latest discovery is a massive $17 trillion funding gap.
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The $17 trillion in extra promises was revealed by an analysis of the law's long-term requirements. The additional obligations, when combined with existing Medicare and Medicaid funding shortfalls, leave taxpayers on the hook for an extra $82 trillion in health care obligations over the next 75 years.

The federal government has an additional $17 trillion unfunded gap in other obligations, including Social Security, bringing the total shortfall to $99 trillion.

It will be interesting to see if Obama budget officials can explain why their estimates are so different today than they were a year ago, or if they will simply shrug their shoulders and say, "What's $111 billion among friends?"

For every approved drug, pharma spent between $4 billion and $11 billion on R&D. Yes, there's probably some wiggle room on the accounting, but not that much--your auditor is not going to let you reclassify your new delivery trucks, or a Human Resources SVP, as a research expense.

Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.

While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will "definitely or probably" stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey Quarterly.