Obama outlines health care plan for all - Page 42 - Big Big Forums

Jolie Rouge · 10-08-2009, 01:09 AM

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The internet is alive with the sound of people analyzing the CBO's "scoring" of the Max Baucus aka Senate Finance Committee Health Care Bill. Before everyone gets too deeply into their thoughts, please keep in mind the following (get ready, all CAPS, bold, indented signifies a really important concept):

THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL

The CBO scored the concepts described by the Baucus Committee.

There is no legislative text.

None.

Baucus and his Democratic colleagues refused to reduce their concepts to actual legislation prior to a vote.

Here is the CBO's disclaimer:

Quote:

CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.

The Baucus Concepts are disasterous, but that's for another post. For this post, let me get across a simple concept: THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

Your esteemed Senators on the Senate Finance Committee will not be voting on legislation because THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

Your esteemed Senators have so little respect for you that some of them are willing to vote in favor of legislation which does not exist because THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

The actual legislation will be drafted in secret by Harry Reid and a few other people, including staffers whose names and political connections you never will know, and the resulting legislation will be rammed through the Senate and House before anyone gets to read and analyze it.

Months of debate mean nothing. It's all smoke and mirrors by people who think you are too stupid to realize what is going on.

Have I made myself clear on this? THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL.

Update: Fausta Wertz understands that There is no Baucus bill. http://faustasblog.com/?p=16052

And so do Pundette http://faustasblog.com/?p=16052 and Pat in Shreveport who felt my post warranted a News Flash. http://soitgoesinshreveport.blogspot...ews-flash.html

An overview of the stinkiness of the Concepts (it's not a Bill) starts at Dan Riehl's place. http://www.riehlworldview.com/carniv...bo-report.html

--------------------

There is a House Bill HR3200 and a Senate HELP Committe Bill, and they stink beyond belief, so take a look at some of these posts to find out why:

The Health Care Bills Still Stink http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...ill-stink.html

Bureaucracy Expansion Act of 2009 http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...t-of-2009.html

IRS The New Health Care Enforcer http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...-enforcer.html

Taxing Your Mere Existence http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...existence.html

Health Care Tax Insanity Chronicles, Part 3 (IRS To Decide Amount of Taxation) http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...hronicles.html

Get Rid of the Mandate http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...f-mandate.html

http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.co...ucus-bill.html

Jolie Rouge · 10-08-2009, 12:44 PM

Senate committee health care vote planned Tuesday
Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer
29 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Senate leaders on Thursday announced a climactic Finance Committee vote next week on health care legislation, even as Democrats and Republicans kept feuding over its cost and breadth of coverage.

Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on a 10-year, $829-billion proposal that would expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans_while reducing the federal deficit. A positive cost report on the legislation Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office marked a turning point for its main author, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Immediately after announcing plans for the vote, Reid, D-Nev., tore into Republicans Thursday, saying they have no health plan of their own to offer and are only trying to obstruct.

"There are still those who consider this a zero-sum game, and will only declare victory if President Obama concedes defeat," Reid said. "Let me be clear: Just as Democrats believe in ensuring quality, affordable care for every American citizens, we believe equally as strongly that this country has no place for those who wish for it or its leaders to fail."

He accused Republicans of following a strategy of "distortion, distractions and deception," and challenged them to be "productive partners rather than partisan protesters"

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wasted no time in responding.

He dismissed the good news on costs and coverage as "irrelevant," saying Democrats would pump up the Baucus bill as it proceeds through Congress. "The bill ... will never see the light of day," McConnell promised.

"What matters is that the final bill will cost about $1 trillion, vastly expand the role of government in people's health care decisions_and limit choice," he added.

McConnell said Republicans have offered plenty of ideas, but they have been ignored by Democrats infatuated with the notion that they are about to make history.

"Listening to the proponents of the administration's health care plan, you get the sense that they're more concerned about their legacies than what the American people actually want," McConnell said. "Here's an idea: how about asking the American people what they want instead?"

Democrats are breathing a sigh of relief over the positive news on the Baucus plan, but that doesn't mean the proposal has no problems.

The middle-of-the-road plan still leaves about 25 million people uninsured when fully phased in, in 2019. Of those, nearly 17 million would be U.S. citizens or legal residents. Nearly 50 million U.S. residents now lack coverage. Absent any change, the budget office projected that would grow to 54 million in 2019.

Republicans — with the exception of Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe — panned the Finance effort. In recent days prominent Republicans in and out of government have spoken out in favor of the overall goal of a health care overhaul along the lines of the Finance plan, but without specifically endorsing it. That may provide some cover for Snowe, if she decides to vote for the bill Tuesday.

Finance is the fifth and last of the congressional panels to debate health care. The Baucus plan has a decided centrist flavor, shunning any provision for the government to sell insurance in competition with private industry. That provision, strongly favored by many Democrats and just as strongly opposed by Republicans, is still alive in proposed House versions of the legislation.

The Finance bill does not require businesses to offer coverage to their workers, either, although large firms that do not would be required to offset the cost of any government subsidies going to those employees.

While generally positive about the legislation's effects, the budget office report contained important caveats.

One noted that the estimate does not include the costs of proposed payment increases for doctors serving Medicare patients, roughly $200 billion through 2019. Additionally, a so-called fail-safe mechanism to hold spending in line could result in cuts as large as 15 percent in federal subsidies designed to help the poor afford insurance, CBO said.

Beginning in 2013, Americans would be required to get health insurance, through an employer or a government program or by buying it themselves. Failure to obey the requirement would result in penalties of up to $750 per family.

The plan would set up a new insurance marketplace for consumers to compare and shop for a plan. Federal subsidies would be provided to millions of individuals and families to help defray the cost of coverage that would otherwise be out of their reach. The alternative to government-sold health care, a proposal for nonprofit co-ops that would compete with private companies, was judged largely ineffective by budget officials. Such arrangements "seem unlikely to establish a significant medical presence in many areas of the country," they wrote.

The legislation also would ban current insurance industry practices that deny coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and restrict companies' ability to charge vastly higher premiums on the basis of age, gender or other factors.

The measure would be paid for through a variety of tax increases and spending cuts, including savings of hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, the federal health care program for seniors.

Democratic leaders are hoping to hold votes on health care on the floor of the House and Senate within a few weeks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/...F0ZWNvbW1pdA--

Jolie Rouge · 10-09-2009, 12:43 AM

For ObamaCare advocates, Massachusetts is the Nirvana of government-managed health insurance. The state adopted everything they have pushed on a national level: individual mandates, guaranteed issue, universal coverage, and more. Unfortunately, former Obama and John Edwards speechwriter Wendy Button has discovered that all of this government intervention comes at a cost — one that directly hits her pocketbook:

Quote:

In the past, I paid attention to the health care debate as a speechwriter who prepared speeches, talking points, op-eds, and debate prep material on the topic at different times for John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others. Now, I’m paying attention because I’m a citizen up the creek without a paddle.

In D.C., I had a policy with a national company, an HMO, and surprisingly I was very happy with it. I had a fantastic primary care doctor at Georgetown University Hospital. As a self-employed writer, my premium was $225 a month, plus $10 for a dental discount.

In Massachusetts, the cost for a similar plan is around $550, give or take a few dollars. My risk factors haven’t changed. I didn’t stop writing and become a stunt double. I don’t smoke. I drink a little and every once in a while a little more than I should. I have a Newfoundland dog. I am only 41. There has been no change in the way I live my life except my zip code — to a state with universal health care.

Massachusetts has enacted many of the necessary reforms being talked about in Washington. There is a mandate for all residents to get insurance, a law to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition, an automatic enrollment requirement, and insurance companies are no longer allowed to cap coverage or drop people when they get sick because they forgot to include a sprained ankle back in 1989 on their application.

And what did that do to premiums? Button has to pay a whopping 144% increase in premiums over her costs in DC, not exactly a city known for its low cost of living in the first place. In order to provide coverage with all of the mandates Massachusetts imposes, health insurers had to more than double premiums to meet the costs.

Nor is this the only such example of economic disaster that government-mandated coverage generates. Earlier this summer, we looked at Maine’s DirigoChoice, an Orwellian term for a program full of mandates on individuals and insurers. The combination resulted in premiums over 300% more expensive than in neighboring New Hampshire, and in an operating deficit so large that it no longer can accept all of the applications by uninsured Maine residents.

Button still hasn’t quite figured out the problem, although she’s coming close:

Quote:

If Washington won’t go for a simple clean move to a system like Medicare for All, then it needs to do one reform, one new law, at a time — not with a 1,000 page bill where strange things can hide. Line up the 80 percent of things we agree on and vote one at a time to change pre-existing conditions, cut that $500 billion in Medicare’s “waste, fraud, and abuse,” create meaningful lawsuit reform, and add some real competition to insurance companies whether it’s a public option or a pilot exchange program. Show the country that this is possible with lower premiums and more efficiency and then go for the tough stuff. Critics like me want something done right because we actually are up the creek without a paddle.

She’s nibbling at it. The only part she doesn’t quite understand is that costs don’t go away just because we shove everyone into a single-payer system. She may not have to pay premiums any longer, but all of those costs get paid in higher taxes and rationing of care. Button still wants a public option and mandated coverage, even though that’s what has made insurance so expensive for her in Massachusetts and for everyone in Maine as well. Did that government “competition” make private insurance less expensive, or more expensive?

Oh, let’s not always see the same hands.

If we want more competition between insurers, then remove the barriers to interstate sales. Start working on tort reform, and dismantle the tax incentives that keep the third-party payers from interfering with the rational market force of pricing on supply and demand. Move insurance to its proper place, indemnifying against serious loss, and allow expanded use of HSAs to promote a retail model for normal care that encourages competition and the growth of supply.

Button almost has this figured out. Too bad she didn’t start getting a clue while she was writing speeches for Edwards and Obama.

Update: 144% increase, not 244%.

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/0...massachusetts/

janelle · 10-09-2009, 02:07 AM

Faced with a need to scrounge for revenue to fund his plan for health care, President Barack Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus have come up with a brilliant new idea: Tax the sick!

In a new amendment to the health care bill, they propose to limit the deductibility of medical expenses on income taxes.

Now, taxpayers may deduct any medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income. Obama and Baucus want to raise that threshold to 10% as long as the taxpayer is under 65.

Eight million Americans are sick enough and poor enough that they have to pay more than 7.5% of their income in medical expenses. And it is these folks that the liberals Obama and Baucus plan to tax! Six million of them earn less than $75,000 a year!

For a family earning $75,000 a year and facing out-of-pocket medical bills of $7, 500, this proposal would cost them about $600 a year in extra taxes.

And let’s remember who it is that they are taxing. This proposal affects people whose incomes are so limited and whose medical costs are so high that they exceed 7.5% of their pre-tax income.

Their proposal literally hopes to raise $20 billion over ten years by taxing sick people.

The Democrats defend their proposal by saying that it would discourage health care spending. But nobody deliberately spends 7.5% of their income on medical costs unless they are pretty sick and needy.

Obama and Baucus have singled out the sickest among the middle class for this heinous tax. (The poor will not have to pay it because they are eligible for Medicaid). Originally, the Democrats continued their war on the elderly by proposing to tax everyone who spends more than the 7.5% threshold on medical costs. But they retreated when it became clear that six million elderly would be hit with the tax. Now they just sock it to eight million sick, middle income Americans.

This tax, and their desire to cut Medicare and Medicaid by $500 billion, makes Obama and Baucus unlike any Democrats I have ever known. Democrats, at least when I worked for Clinton, defended the elderly and the sick rather than cut the former and tax the latter.

Jolie Rouge · 10-12-2009, 01:34 AM

Death Panels ? What Death Panels ??

http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/200...impossibility/

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/20...r-left-to.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/he...operation.html

Jolie Rouge · 10-12-2009, 01:39 AM

Senate to Vote on Health Bill Next Week
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091008/...F0ZWNvbW1pdA--

WASHINGTON – The Senate's top Democrat on Thursday accused Republicans of a strategy of "distortion, distractions and deception" on health care as he announced a pivotal committee will vote next week on a comprehensive bill. Republicans said the legislation still costs too much and expands the reach of government. Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on a 10-year, $829-billion proposal that would expand coverage to 94 percent of eligible Americans while reducing the federal deficit. A positive cost report on the legislation Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office marked a turning point for its main author, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.

Immediately after announcing plans for the vote, Reid, D-Nev., tore into Republicans Thursday, saying they have no health plan of their own to offer and are only trying to obstruct. "There are still those who consider this a zero-sum game, and will only declare victory if President Obama concedes defeat," Reid said. "Let me be clear: Just as Democrats believe in ensuring quality, affordable care for every American citizens, we believe equally as strongly that this country has no place for those who wish for it or its leaders to fail."

He challenged Republicans to be "productive partners rather than partisan protesters"

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wasted no time in responding. He dismissed the good news on costs and coverage as "irrelevant," saying Democrats would pump up the Baucus bill as it proceeds through Congress. "The bill ... will never see the light of day," McConnell promised. "What matters is that the final bill will cost about $1 trillion, vastly expand the role of government in people's health care decisions_and limit choice," he added.

McConnell said Republicans have offered plenty of ideas, but they have been ignored by Democrats infatuated with the notion that they are about to make history.

"Listening to the proponents of the administration's health care plan, you get the sense that they're more concerned about their legacies than what the American people actually want," McConnell said. "Here's an idea: how about asking the American people what they want instead?"

kelblend · 10-12-2009, 02:55 AM

The fact that this bill is being written conceptually and pushed through so there isn't proper time to analyze it sickens me. There is NO need to push it through like that. At this point, allowing time for everyone to review it shouldn't be a big deal. Of course, there would have to be actual language and figures in it to pass muster. No bill should get passed with the idea of it ironing out the real facts later. I call bs for the hundredth time.
If you pass it by people fast, well then I believe you are hiding a whole lot of things.
Smoke and mirrors once again. If they slowed it down

Quote:

Immediately after announcing plans for the vote, Reid, D-Nev., tore into Republicans Thursday, saying they have no health plan of their own to offer and are only trying to obstruct. "There are still those who consider this a zero-sum game, and will only declare victory if President Obama concedes defeat," Reid said. "Let me be clear: Just as Democrats believe in ensuring quality, affordable care for every American citizens, we believe equally as strongly that this country has no place for those who wish for it or its leaders to fail."

Wow, really? I guess if you don't like the idea of how they propose to fix healthcare then you must wish for all gov't and our president to fail.
So, is this guy saying that if we don't like the idea, we should be kicked out of the country?? I guess I could get all extreme and infer that from his statement. Just because you want to ensure something doesn't mean you are on the right path to doing it. Why can't all these politicians talk like adults (both sides)? No more one liners. No more inferring that you must be this because you looked sideways at someone and so on. The holier than thou needs to stop as well because no one has mastered perfection as far as I know.