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HSIEH: Best health care political pull can buy
...As a result of Obamacare, fewer physicians will work in the familiar two- to five-person small-group practices most Americans prefer. Instead, doctors will be increasingly driven into large, impersonal "accountable care organizations" - not to take better care of their patients, but simply to survive economically. This consolidation is not some "unintended consequence," but rather an explicit goal, as White House health adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle acknowledged when praising Obamacare for encouraging "vertical organization of providers" and "physician employment by hospitals and aggregation into larger physician groups."

According to the New York Times, many consumer advocates thus fear Obamacare will have the perverse effect of reducing competition and driving up costs.

Yet while Obamacare is suppressing genuine marketplace competition for medical services, it is also spurring a more sinister facsimile of competition - for political favors. Employers and insurers with sufficient political clout can save money by obtaining a much-coveted "waiver," exempting them from onerous new insurance regulations. The 222 current recipients of such waivers include popular employers such as McDonald's and Universal Orlando as well as the Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures members of the Service Employees International Union (a major political supporter of the Obama administration). Because these waivers are granted at the discretion of the secretary of health and human services, they create easy opportunities for political favoritism and corruption....