Punch line: Buried in the $38.5 billion (or, was it $526 million) budget reduction compromise were provisions for the GAO to start looking at ObamaCare’s waivers, effect on insurance premiums, and “comparative effectiveness” panels.
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According to Michael Barone writing in RealClearPolitics …
The Continuing Resolution (i.e. budget) covering the rest of fiscal year 2011 … contains some details that threaten ObamaCare
Most important, the CR requires the General Accounting Office to conduct an audit of the waivers from the Democrats’ health care bill that are being issued in large numbers by the secretary of health and human services.
This will raise an uncomfortable question. If Obamacare is so great, why are so many trying to get out from under it? And, more specifically, why are so many Democratic groups trying to get out from under it?
The fact is that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has granted more than 1,000 waivers from Obamacare. Many have been granted to labor unions. One was granted to the entire state of Maine.
The GAO has also been ordered to produce audits on the effect of Obamacare on health insurance premiums. This is likely to reveal that the president did not keep his promise that you could keep your current health insurance if you want to.
And there will be an audit of the comparative effectiveness bureaucracy established in the 2009 stimulus package. Comparative effectiveness is supposedly an objective study of which medical techniques are most effective. But anyone who looks closely finds that the experts are constantly changing their minds, which suggests that this is more alchemy than science — and maybe political favoritism, as well.
All of which tends to undercut the thrust of Obama’s obviously-aimed-at-the-2012-campaign message: We can continue to fund Medicare and Medicaid indefinitely if we just tax rich people a little more.
RCP, President Whatever Finds Things Not Going His Way, April 18, 3011
The Homa Files 