By Ed Morrissey

How desperate has the White House become to get anything passed under the name of health-care reform?  According to Michael Goldfarb’s source on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration has targeted the last remaining Democratic holdout, at least among moderates — and they’re willing to damage national security to extort his support.  The White House has threatened Ben Nelson (D-NE) with the closure of Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska if he opposes Reid’s latest version, despite its status as the headquarters of US Strategic Command:

According to a Senate aide, the White House is now threatening to put Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base on the BRAC list if Nelson doesn’t fall into line.

Offutt Air Force Base employs some 10,000 military and federal employees in Southeastern Nebraska. As our source put it, this is a “naked effort by Rahm Emanuel and the White House to extort Nelson’s vote.” They are “threatening to close a base vital to national security for what?” asked the Senate staffer.

Indeed, Offutt is the headquarters for US Strategic Command, the successor to Strategic Air Command, and not by accident. STRATCOM was located in the middle of the country for strategic reasons. Its closure would be a massive blow to the economy of the state of Nebraska, but it would also be another example of this administration playing politics with our national security.

The Obama administration has little left to use for leverage.  Why not national security?  After all, if we’re going to bring terrorists into Illinois, what does it matter if we put the US Strategic Command on wheels for a few years?

Read the rest of this story at Hot Air.

From Rassmusen Reports

Fifty-six percent (56%) of U.S. voters now oppose the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the highest level of opposition found – reached three times before – in six months of polling.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 40% of voters favor the health care plan.

Perhaps more significantly, 46% now Strongly Oppose the plan, compared to 19% who Strongly Favor it.

Overall support for the health care plan fell to 38%, its lowest point ever, just before Thanksgiving. This is the fourth straight week with support at 41% or less. With the exception of a few days following nationally televised presidential appeals for the legislation, the number of voters opposed to the plan has always exceeded the number who favor it.

Read the rest of the report.

From National Review Online

The public option isn’t the worst thing about the Senate health-care bill.

By Paul Howard — Joseph Lieberman’s words, “I’m going to be stubborn on this,” must be giving Harry Reid heartburn.

Lieberman may caucus with the Democrats, but he’s more than willing to go his own way — especially when it comes to his staunch opposition to the “public option,” a proposed government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. “Once the government creates an insurance company or plan, the government or the taxpayers are liable for any deficit that government plan runs, really without limit,” Lieberman told the Wall Street Journal.

Other moderate Democrats in the Senate, like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, have made similar criticisms — but none as unequivocally as the junior senator from Connecticut.

So let’s all cheer Senator Lieberman on. There’s a legitimate concern that a public option could eventually use Medicare payment rates to undercut private-insurance premiums, gradually taking over the market. (Democrats insist that the public plan now in play could not work that way — but once it’s in operation, all bets are off. Medicare, after all, was never supposed to set hospital and physician payments — but it didn’t take long before that’s just what it was doing.)

But we should also be wary of a pyrrhic victory. Even if the public option dies, the Senate bill is riddled with fiscal gimmicks and heavy-handed regulations that will increase health-care costs, explode the deficit, and drive up insurance premiums for many people who have private insurance today.

STRIKE ONE
President Obama has promised that he will not sign a health-care bill that would cost more than $900 billion for ten years, and the CBO has scored the Senate bill under that price tag. But according to Jeffrey Anderson, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, just 1 percent of the ten-year costs of the Senate’s health bill falls in the first four years (2010–2013). Costs escalate rapidly starting in 2014. The minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee estimates the fully implemented cost of the Senate bill for the ten years 2014–2023 at close to $2.5 trillion.

STRIKE TWO
Over the summer, President Obama made a bold promise: “I won’t sign a bill that doesn’t reduce health-care inflation so that families as well as government are saving money.” In that case, the president should tell Harry Reid to head back to the drawing board.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that, under the Senate bill, coverage costs for individual-insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion, and tax credits to small businesses will rise at about 8 percent annually. Expansion of eligibility for Medicaid and SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) under the Senate bill would thrust 15 million more Americans into a program that already costs over $300 billion annually.

To add insult to injury, the Senate bill would create another entitlement program on top of Medicaid and Medicare: the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, which will offer long-term-care insurance.

CLASS is supposed to be supported entirely through premiums, with no federal subsidies. However, the program is apt to attract sicker enrollees, because their premiums would be higher in the private market than premiums for healthy enrollees. But since these sicker enrollees will cost more to care for, there will eventually be intense political pressure for federal subsidies to keep the program going. The structure of the program would also allow Congress to use premium funds in the early years ($72 billion) to offset coverage costs for the uninsured — making the bill seem deficit-neutral.

Senator Nelson has called CLASS “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”

STRIKE THREE
The Senate bill contains a version of insurance regulations currently in force in several states called community rating (charging everyone the same rate) and guaranteed issue (mandating that insurers sell to all applicants, regardless of health status). These policies have driven up insurance costs in every state they’ve been tried in, as younger, healthier applicants drop coverage rather than pay higher costs.

In a recent study for the Manhattan Institute on New York’s individual-insurance market, researchers Stephen Parente and Tarren Bragdon estimated that repealing these regulations could lower insurance premiums by 42 percent.

The Senate bill will drive up other insurance costs as well. Almost everyone would be required to buy expensive policies with limits on out-of-pocket spending, no caps on lifetime spending, and mandatory coverage for services that many consumers would not buy on their own, like orthotics. This is a recipe for health-care inflation.

Read the rest of the column.

From New York Post

By STEPHEN T. PARENTE & TARREN BRAGDON — New York’s individual health-insurance market is not often held up as a national model, and for good rea son. It’s the most regulated, most expensive and, as a result, one of the smallest in the country, with only a few costly health plans available.

Since New York policymakers inflicted costly regulations on insurers in 1994, enrollment in the individual insurance market has plummeted by 96 percent.

Current prices are staggering. In New York City, the cheapest individual plan costs $9,036 a year for a single person and $26,460 for a family. In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the average national family premium at $12,000 to $15,000 a year.

Yet both the House and the Senate health-reform bills would make the rest of America look more like New York’s dysfunctional market — and then force New Yorkers to foot a larger share of the trillion-dollar cost.

Only five states now have New York-style insurance regulations, but both bills force those rules on all 50 states and then force people to buy coverage or face tax penalties. Think about it: If 45 states don’t regulate insurance like New York does, there is probably a very good reason. And there is: These regulations drive up costs and limit choices.

Adding insult to expensive injury, Congress also plans to expand Medicaid coverage. Here, too, New York is an example of what not to do. The Empire State has the most expensive Medicaid program in the country — spending as much as Texas, Florida and Illinois combined.

New York’s Medicaid program is the fourth largest among all the states as a percentage of the population enrolled, yet the state’s rate of uninsured ranks 24th highest in the country. Of the 26 states with a lower rate of uninsured than New York, only two have a larger share of residents on Medicaid.

Clearly, doubling down on Medicaid is not the right path to universal coverage — yet Congress wants to push millions of Americans into Medicaid and thrust new costs onto the states.

The Senate bill (which is more likely to become law) envisions Medicaid coverage for adults with no children and no disabilities — many of whom don’t qualify for long-term welfare or food stamps. In fact, only five states now have a traditional Medicaid program that covers such individuals at all and only one state covers adults at income levels as high.

The Senate proposes to pay for this new health-care entitlement through new taxes on the middle class and wealthy, including a new Medicare payroll tax on individuals making more than $200,000 and family incomes over $250,000. Since government programs always cost more than advertised, expect those taxes to go up.

Read the rest of the column.

From LifeSiteNews

Take the recent amendment to the Senate health care plan by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). This language allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of your money toward “Personal Responsibility Education for Adulthood Training.”

What can this possibly mean? According to the amendment’s mostly vague language, $400 million from the years 2010 to 2015 will be spent on “evidence-based effective programs” that will supposedly teach kids “healthy life skills,” including things like “goal-setting, decision making, negotiation, communication and interpersonal skills, and stress management.” This looks like standard Washington-speak: a great pile of words that mean whatever they need to mean.

That is, it looks that way until we get to the part of the amendment that deals with sex. Here we find reference to very specific “activities to educate youth who are sexually active regarding responsible sexual behavior.” The amendment claims to implement “evidence-based effective programs … that have been proven on the basis of rigorous scientific research to change behavior, which means delaying sexual activity, increasing condom or contraceptive use for sexually active youth, or reducing pregnancy among youth.”

Here we come to the nub of the matter. The “personal responsibility education” referred to in the Baucus amendment is actually sex education. The Senate health care plan is going to teach kids about sex. Graphically, and early. With heaps of tax dollars.

The amendment includes the obligatory passing reference to abstinence, (and does reinstate Title V funding for abstinence programs), and claims to provide “age-appropriate information and activities.” However, history shows that these claims are misleading at best. What “age-appropriate information” can the bill possibly have in mind for an 11-year-old boy (included in the bill’s intended target group)? Probably not the same “age-appropriate information” the boy’s parents have in mind.

And what good is “abstinence education” if contraception and abortion are being pushed right alongside it? Kids receive a mixed message. They are told, with a wink and a nod, that maybe they should abstain from sex, but the chances are that they simply can’t – and that no one really can. The past teaches us that “evidence-based” or “comprehensive” sex education is simply code for sexual education that treats sex as unavoidable, rather than a human choice.

In this bleak fantasy, kids are nothing more than farm animals, inevitably and indiscriminately sexual. All that the rest of us can do is simply pick up the pieces.

Read the rest of the column.

From LifeSiteNews

Following the defeat of the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment Tuesday evening,  pro-life leaders are calling on senators to oppose the Senate health care bill as it heads towards a final vote, which lawmakers expect will happen before the end of the year.

The Senate voted 54-45 Tuesday evening to table the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment, effectively killing the language that would have applied Hyde-amendment restrictions on federal funding of abortion to the health care overhaul.  The “tabling” vote allowed Democrats to do away with the Nelson amendment without the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster of cloture for the amendment.

The vote came after hours of debate on the Senate floor, with alternating Democrat and Republican speeches at loggerheads as to whether the bill’s original abortion language represented adequate protections, as pro-abortion lawmakers claimed, or a vast expansion of abortion, as pro-life lawmakers claimed. Pro-abortion senators also argued that the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment was discriminatory against women, and violated women’s right to privacy. 

Yet pro-life senators maintained earlier Tuesday that the bill’s phony “compromise” language on abortion masked a fundamental shift on federal policy regarding elective abortion funding, and called on their compatriots to oppose the bill should the Nelson amendment fail.

“For pro-life senators, this is the vote, but it doesn’t stop here,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.).  “Even if this amendment doesn’t pass, I want to make the case that this bill should not go forward, because it literally will create a system … to finance abortions.  And I don’t believe that’s what this country wants.”

In a letter to Senators dated December 7, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that, if the Nelson amendment is rejected, “the current legislation should be opposed.”  Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said last month that the senate bill was “actually the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.”

Read the rest of the column.

From the Washington Examiner

The newest bargain being proposed on health care in the Senate would give liberals a major expansion of Medicare by making more than 30 million Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 eligible for the financially exhausted program, previously just for senior citizens.

But by expanding an existing government-run insurance program (while cutting it by $500 billion?) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to avoid defeat of his bill because of moderate member’s concerns over his plan to create a whole new health entitlement.

Writers Greg Hitt and Janet Adamy tell us that what’s being offered as the alternative to the government plan approved in the House is a non-profit, national private plan regulated by the federal government.

Liberals in the Senate are trying hard not to look too happy. The bill would ultimately make the government responsible for the new health plan and would create a genuine public option if the non-profit/private/public lash-up goes bust.

Reid was crowing again last night, but as Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio points out, there is still no certainty that a bill will pass.

Read the rest of the column.

During a debate on the amendment to ban taxpayer funding of abortion from the Senate version of the health care ‘reform’ bill on December 8, 2009, California Senator Barbara Boxer compared a woman’s right to kill a child to a man’s right to purchase Viagra.

From OneNewsNow

An immigration reform organization says a glaring loophole in the proposed Senate healthcare legislation (H.R. 3590) will potentially allow millions of illegal immigrants to be eligible for insurance, effectively tripling the financial burden on American taxpayers. 

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said Monday that the end is in sight on passage of a sweeping healthcare overhaul. The Democratic leader said the 10-year, nearly one-trillion-dollar Senate bill (would expand coverage to some 30 million uninsured and bar insurance company practices of denying coverage to those with a medical history. The Senate began its eighth day of debate on Monday.
 
Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform says technically the bill states that it does not cover illegal aliens. But there is a glitch, he says.
 
“The problem is that the verification procedures for proving eligibility are very lax,” says Mehlman. “And in fact, all somebody has to do is make a claim to citizenship and that pretty much gets them into the system. It doesn’t require the more stringent verification procedures that are already in place and being used successfully in many other government programs.”
 
Mehlman adds that according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office, the tab would grow substantially if those who are in the country illegally are granted taxpayer-funded medical coverage.
 
“Providing the full range of healthcare benefits to illegal aliens in the United States would raise the cost from about $11-billion a year now that the taxpayers have to pay, to more than $30-billion. So it would triple the cost burden on the American taxpayer,” he explains.
 
Democrats hope to finish the legislation by Christmas. Republicans are nearly unanimous in opposition.

By Allen Quist

“There is a huge middle class marriage penalty hidden in the House and Senate health care bills. The penalty becomes evident by evaluating questions like the following:

How much would two single people, each making $30,000 per year, pay for private health insurance if the Pelosi bill was in effect now? The answer is $1,320 per year for both individuals combined (based on the premium limits and subsidies outlined on the charts below).

But how much would they pay for the same level of insurance under the Pelosi bill if they were to marry? Their combined cost would then be about $12,000 a year (the estimated cost for private insurance).

Health insurance premium costs for two adults with equal incomes if the Pelosi bill was in effect now

Sources:  The numbers on the chart are based on (a) a chart provided by The Committees on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor, October 29, 2009, see next chart; (b) the current Federal Poverty Levels; see final chart below; and (c) the estimate that two adults would pay $12,000 annually for individual health insurance with average benefits if their income exceeds 400% of the Federal Poverty Level.

“Once the income of Americans exceeds 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, there are no limits on the premiums they can be charged, and their premiums are no longer subsidized. The poverty level is much higher for two people living unmarried as compared to the same two people being married. That is why citizens in many cases will pay far more for insurance if they are married. Why should married people be subjected to financial discrimination?  

“This extraordinary penalty people will pay, should they marry, extends all the way from a two-person combined income of $58,280 to $86,640, a spread of $28,360. A large number of people fall within this spread. As premiums for private insurance escalate, as expected, the marriage penalty will become substantially larger.

“The Senate bill also creates a marriage penalty, in this case by imposing a new tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but it also applies to married couples making $250,000 each year. This marriage tax on the affluent, however, is just the tip of the marriage penalty iceberg in the Senate bill.

“The Senate bill stipulates that two unmarried people, 52 years of age, with private insurance and a combined income of $60,000, $30,000 each, will pay a combined cost of $2,483 for medical insurance. Should they marry, however, they will pay a combined cost of $11,666 for insurance—a penalty of $9,183 for getting married (based on tables available here).

“This substantial marriage penalty applies to persons on individual insurance, but, as the Heritage Foundation’s Bob Moffit said: ‘if an employer has a health care benefits package that is 12 to 13 percent of payroll, and they can solve their problem by paying an 8 percent payroll tax [into the Exchange], I think they’re going to do it,’ (New York Times, 9-30-09). And Howard Dean said that, ‘small business won’t need to buy health care for its employees any more’ (Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, 11-29-09).

“Businesses will shed their employees and health care dollars into the Exchange, but the dollars that are paid back out will be directed only to those who make less than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. Those above the Poverty Level will receive none of their previous insurance benefits from businesses. For that reason the new system is income redistribution on steroids.
 
“ ‘Household’ is defined in both bills as including those who can be claimed as dependents for federal income tax purposes thereby clarifying that adults can avoid the marriage penalty by living together unmarried. The new system provides a huge incentive for doing so.

“The bills additionally contain De Facto salary caps. How much would a married couple pay for private insurance under the House bill if their income was $58,000 per year?  The answer is $2,088. But what if their income increased by $1,000? Their annual premium would then be about $12,000. The economic penalty for going off the subsidized system is so severe that it will be difficult for people to increase their earnings beyond 400% of Poverty Level. The Senate bill works essentially the same way.

“Senior citizens and small businesses have already been identified as big losers in the health care bills. Married citizens in the middle class need to be added to the list.”

Official summary of premium limits and subsidy levels in the House bill*

Federal Poverty Levels now in use:

• Single person = $10,830
• Two person household = $14,570
• Three person household = $18,310
• Family of four = $22,050

400% of Federal Poverty Level:

• Single person = $43,320
• Two person household = $58,280
• Three person household = $73,240
• Family of four = $88,200

*  Chart provided by The House Committees on Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor, October 29, 2009.

From Obama.com

By Michael F. Cannon: The writer, of Washington, D.C., is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is co-author of “Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.”

Amid double-digit unemployment, a record $1.6 trillion federal deficit and a national debt projected to double in 10 years, U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., voted to bring to the floor of the Senate a health care overhaul with so many job-killing tax increases that it’s hard to fit them all into one column. But let’s give it a shot.

For starters, consider the $500 billion in explicit tax increases.

One levy would take $15 billion from sick patients with high out-of-pocket medical expenses, including elderly and low-income patients.

If you have a health savings account or flexible spending arrangement, there are taxes specific to those health plans, plus a third tax that would apply to all “consumer-directed” plans.

Another levy would tax medical devices, and another would tax prescription drugs. Those two taxes would increase health insurance premiums by about 1 percent, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. There’s another $60 billion tax that would drive health premiums higher still.

If your premiums climb high enough, you’ll become subject to a $149 billion tax on those with high health insurance premiums. Yet many face high premiums simply because they have expensive medical needs, making this yet another tax on the sick.

The legislation would increase the Medicare tax on wages above $200,000, yet divert the revenue toward new entitlement spending.

And lest any corner of the health care sector go untaxed, the bill would even impose a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgeries.

Yet those are just the explicit tax increases. There are trillions of dollars in hidden tax increases, too.

Read the rest of the column