The Incidental Economist has done some fantastic blogging explaining why the super committee should reject a proposal to raise the Medicare age from 65 to 67. The policy shifts costs to employers, beneficiaries, young people, and state governments, but most importantly the savings it generates are minuscule — $5.7 billion. Doesn’t sound all that small? Well, as Austin Frakt explains, “the Trustees of Medicare have estimated that the total spending by Medicare in that year will be $643.4 billion. Thus, the savings we might obtain by delaying eligibility until 67 is a mere 0.9% of total program spending”:

The point is that we can probably get much better savings — and actually reduce the rate of growth in health care — if we really step up the system modernization provisions in the health law.

Byron York is out with a new column touting an employer survey which found that some businesses will stop offering health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act. He argues that this so-called employer “dumping” of employees into the new exchanges is all part of a Democratic conspiracy to move the nation towards a single-payer health care system:

So when it takes effect in 2014, the law will give employers a choice: Continue to offer increasingly expensive health coverage, or pay a relatively small fine, save a lot of money, and let employees buy their own subsidized coverage on the exchange. The incentive seems pretty clear.

Now, it should surprise no one that more and more companies are exploring the possibility of dropping their employee health coverage in 2014. A new study from the benefits-consulting firm Towers Watson finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized to large companies are seriously considering doing just that, and another 20 percent are thinking about it. Still others don’t know. “Many are uncertain how they will respond to the looming impact of state-based insurance exchanges in 2014,” says Towers Watson.

How many companies will actually drop their employee coverage? It’s impossible to say. But from the latest surveys — the Towers Watson report is just one of several that have found employers contemplating the move — it’s safe to say that some will, and more could follow….He couldn’t pass a single-payer system, or even a public-option system, even when he had filibuster-proof majorities in Congress. But he could enact a system that will take a slower route in that direction.

Employers have been dropping coverage since before the ACA became law and will continue to make changes after. What’s important is that academic studies and real world experiences with mandate policies have shown that health reform will have very little impact on coverage rates. For instance, when Massachusetts employers were working to comply with Romneycare in 2006, they were given a choice between paying a very low penalty or continuing to offer coverage. The majority of businesses decided that health benefits made up an important part of their compensation package and continued to provide the service, so much so that the number of employers with coverage increased since the law passed. Massachusetts ESI (employer sponsored insurance) rates are higher than the national average.

This is because employers aren’t only looking at the cost-benefit of offering coverage or paying a penalty. They’re considering the long history of using benefits to attract top-tier employees, the burden of increasing employees’ wages to make-up for the benefit loss and a whole host of other factors. As the Urban Institute has concluded, “[T]here is little scope for firms being able to save money from dropping ESI coverage except perhaps in firms where most workers have low wages as well as low family incomes, and these types of firms are the least likely to offer ESI today.”

But what’s particularly rich about York’s argument is his new found love for employer based insurance. Remember that this critique is emanating from the very people who just two years ago rallied around proposals to eliminate the employer based system entirely by converting the federal tax subsidy for employer-sponsored benefits into a tax credit for individuals and families to go out and buy coverage on the individual market. Now, they’re using the prospect of that erosion to stroke fears of yet another government-takeover.

Inside Health Policy’s Rachana Dixit reports that Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) opposition to establishing a state-based exchange may have more to do with partisan politics than the policy included in the Affordable Care Act. As it turns out, Florida is “slowly moving ahead to provide small group coverage to Florida’s small businesses,” but it’s doing so through 2008′s Florida Health Choices Act rather than the federal health care law.

Florida has refused to integrate the measure — which was spearheaded by then-state House Speaker Marco Rubio and expanded by Scott — into the requirements of the ACA, claiming that it is unconstitutional and does not “fit in with what we’re trying to do“:

An exchange consultant said Florida Health Choices, though created in 2008, has taken some time to get up and running. Rose Naff, Florida Health Choices’ CEO, told Inside Health Policy that the program is moving forward on planning a small group market pilot program that would test offering health insurance to small businesses for at least six months, and expects to have an estimated launch date soon. Participation in the choices program by employers is voluntary. [...]

But the exchange consultant said that the $1 million planning grant Florida denied likely would have been spent on things the state has already done in planning for Florida Health Choices. Florida Health Choices is not the Florida exchange but the consultant said it appears that nothing would preclude it from becoming that.

While Florida will likely have to adapt to the federal law’s more stringent requirements, the exchange does compliment (and could even benefit from) the provisions in the Affordable Care Act. So far, Rubio’s law to allow employers to offer employees access to health insurance plans has not sold any policies, despite receiving a $1.5 million appropriation from the state. In 2008, Rubio championed the plan in the rhetoric of health reform advocates, saying “it’s about competition, it’s about choice, and it’s about the marketplace.”

During a town hall in South Carolina yesterday, Michele Bachmann warned that maintaining the Affordable Care Act would prevent the country from electing a Republican president since the law would eliminate limited government and conservative principles. From Politico’s Marin Cogan:

The Minnesota congresswoman struck an urgent tone, issuing dire warnings to voters over the consequences not electing a Republican who will repeal Obama’s health care law in 2012.

“I have wept in Washington DC watching what’s happening to our country,” Bachmann said.

Speaking in hushed and sometimes pleading tones, she warned that the implementation of Obama’s health care law would be a death knell to conservatism in America. “You can’t put socialized medicine into a country and think that ever again you can elect as president a Republican or conservative or a even or tea partier and think somehow we’re going to get back to limited government, it won’t happen, because socialized medicine is the definition of big government,” she said.

“That’s why this is it. 2012 is it,” she added, calling it a “last chance election” for the country.

It’s a strange claim, particularly since the law is grounded in two “Republican or conservative” principles — the individual mandate and health insurance exchanges — which were developed by the Heritage Foundation.