From The Galen Institute

President Obama will be visiting the St. Louis area Wednesday to garner support for his health reform plan.  As Washington prepares for a final bare-knuckled battle this month, the stakes could not be higher.  With Republicans united in opposition, Democratic leaders are planning to enact a sweeping health overhaul that the American people continue to say in the every way possible that they don’t want.

While the president can make a compelling case for action, his assertions about his plan are not backed by facts.  Based upon his most recent health reform statements, the president will continue to make arguments refuted by the facts and independent analyses when he visits Wednesday.  Here are just a few examples:

President Obama said at the White House on March 3 that his plan will “bring down the cost of health care for millions – families, businesses, and the federal government.”

But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says health insurance premiums will continue their steady upward climb under the Senate bill.  Families purchasing insurance in the individual market would see an increase of $2,100 in the year 2016, over and above increases they already will be facing.  That means those families would be paying $15,200 in 2016 for health insurance if the Senate bill passes, and $13,100 if it doesn’t.

His legislation will do nothing to slow the steady climb of health costs.  Families who get health insurance through small businesses will be paying $19,200 in six years, and those working for large firms, $20,100, according to CBO.

And the Obama administration’s own Chief Medicare Actuary estimates that, under the Senate bill, “Federal expenditures would increase by a net total of $279 billion” between 2010 and 2019.

So it would cost families, businesses, and taxpayers more, not less, if his plan passes.

President Obama: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

He claims no one will have to change plans, but at the health reform summit, the president acknowledged that the Senate bill could take away the current health insurance coverage for eight to nine million Americans.

The steep cuts in Medicare Advantage that President Obama supports would mean at least one-third of seniors in Missouri, Illinois and 45 other states likely could lose their comprehensive Medicare Advantage coverage as their plans are forced to withdraw from the program, cut their benefits, or raise premiums (three states received sweetheart deals to protect their seniors from the cuts).  In addition, about 10 million people with employer-sponsored insurance could lose their current coverage, according to the CBO.

President Obama says his plan “brings down our deficit.”

No one believes this to be true and for good reason.  The president and congressional leaders employed trillion-dollar budget gimmicks to make this assertion.  CBO, the budget scorekeeper, was cynically given a bill with ten years of tax hikes and Medicare cuts to pay for only six years of new entitlement subsidies.  The IRS would throw ordinary Americans in jail if they used this type of accounting.

In reality, the ten-year cost of the Senate bill is estimated at $2.4 trillion.  The Senate legislation would significantly expand, not shrink, the deficit.

So just on these three examples – keeping your current coverage, lowering costs, and reducing the deficit – the president’s assertions are wrong.  One hopes his St. Louis speech will not employ what we’ve seen from President Obama throughout this debate: using the same arguments that have been proven as inaccurate by independent studies and analyses, and hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time the speech will work.

From One News Now

A conservative congresswoman is calling for an independent investigation to determine whether President Obama is attempting to trade a federal judgeship for a vote in favor of his healthcare reform plan.

President Obama hosted a closed reception at the White House Wednesday that included ten House Democrats who voted “no” on the healthcare reform bill. One of the ten was Congressman John Matheson (D-Utah), whose brother Scott Matheson, Jr., was nominated Wednesday by President Obama to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Representative Matheson contends that the president did not nominate his brother in exchange for a “yes” vote on healthcare reform. But some Republicans are not buying that claim. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) told CNN’s Larry King that there needs to be an independent investigation into the Matheson matter.
 
“We’ve seen the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the union loophole, and now the big question is: Is the White House trading healthcare votes for judgeships?” she argued. “This is a pretty serious issue, Larry.”
 
White House officials label as “absurd” the notion that the Matheson judgeship would be tied to a healthcare vote.

From the Washington Examiner

President Obama declared the health care debate over on Wednesday and urged congressional Democrats to take the politically risky step of pushing his newly written compromise reform bill through using a controversial tactic to circumvent a Republican filibuster.

Calling for an “up-or-down” vote, Mr. Obama offered to add a few Republican ideas to the $1 trillion bill, but made clear that the time for talk was over.

“Every idea has been put on the table; every argument has been made,” Mr. Obama said in a speech before an audience of health care professionals in the East Room of the White House. “So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America’s families and businesses.”

Republicans scoffed at Mr. Obama’s tough talk, vowing to fight the effort at every turn and to tap the American public’s distaste for the measure in the midterm elections.

“They’re making a vigorous effort to try to jam this down the throats of the American people, who don’t want it,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

“We think that’s a policy mistake, and we think resorting to these kinds of tactics, to thumb your nose at the American people, is something that ought to be resisted,” Mr. McConnell added.

At stake is the biggest policy initiative of the year-old Obama presidency, a rewrite of the nation’s health care system that would trim hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, expand Medicaid, mandate that every American join a plan and rewrite rules telling insurance companies how they can operate.

The House and Senate have passed their own versions of bills, but the debate has been stalled for nearly two months after Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in January.

Now, Democrats are looking to turn to a complex budget procedure known as “reconciliation,” under which legislation can pass the Senate with 51 votes rather than 60.

Read the rest of the column.

From The National Center

President Obama’s new health care plan will all but guarantee the elimination of private insurance and lead to a single payer government-run health care system, says a new report, “White House Health Care Plan Contains Back Door to a Public Option” by policy analyst Matt Patterson of the National Center For Public Policy Research. 

Among the findings:

* The President’s plan would create a new federal agency charged with monitoring health insurers to make sure that proposed premium increases are not “unreasonable” or “unjustified.”  This agency could compel private insurers to lower premiums, offer rebates or “take other actions to make premiums affordable.”

* The President’s plan would also dictate that health insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions and saddle them with billion in new taxes and fees.

* Health insurance is one of the least profitable industries America.  In terms of profit margin, in 2009 it ranked a dismal 87th out of 215 industries; their overall profit margin was a mere 3.4 percent.

* The President’s proposed combination of new taxes and price controls would cause a wave of health insurer bankruptcies, devastating the industry and reducing health insurance options for consumers.

* Eventually, the shrinking pool of private insurers would force the government to enact a single payer system to provide the insurance that Congress mandates that all Americans have.

Patterson calls Obama’s ploy “breathtakingly audacious,” noting, “Far from being able to keep the plan you like, the President’s health care plan seems designed to make sure you end up with only one option for your health care – the government.”

“White House Health Care Plan Contains Back Door to a Public Option,” by Matt Patterson is available on the National Center For Public Policy Research website at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA603.html.

The National Center For Public Policy Research is a conservative, Constitution-respecting, free-market non-profit think-tank established in 1982.  It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters, and receives less than one percent of its revenue from corporate sources.

From the Washington Examiner

By Brian York

From Washington Times

President Obama pledged to “listen” at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.

By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes – nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a “talk clock” kept by GOP aides.

From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans’ 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” he said.

But then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: “You’re right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because – I’m the president.” Half the room laughed. “I didn’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”

The two sides faced off in the Blair House’s Garden Room, with members of Congress, grouped by party, sitting across from one another in a large square. Throughout the six-hour bloviating blabfest, no fences appeared to be mended and no hatchets buried.

In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed so intractable that neither looked at Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as he delivered the opening statement for the Republicans. Every time the C-SPAN 3 camera panned to the pair, they were looking straight ahead, expressionless.

Throughout the event, Mr. Obama, a former professor, looked, well, professorial. He listened attentively, his head cocked, his chin raised. He narrowed his eyes in attentiveness at a point here or there, blinking often; he jotted notes in a small book as Republicans spoke; he rested his head on his hand, giving full attention to the speaker.

But each time a Republican sought to break in to rebut a point made by the president or a fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama looked a bit frustrated and made clear who was in charge of the bipartisan discussion.

“Let me just finish, Lamar,” he said during his rebuttal to the senator’s opening statement. “No, no, no, no. Let me – and this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight,” he said when Mr. Alexander sought to clarify a point.

Read the rest of the column

From Gary Bauer

Like a monster from a bad horror movie, no matter how many times the American people think the specter of socialized medicine is dead, Democrats keep bringing it back to life. Yesterday, under the pretense of beginning a genuine bi-partisan discussion of healthcare reform, President Obama released his own plan in advance of Thursday’s healthcare summit.

But this invitation to talk came with a threat. If Republicans don’t go along with what Obama has put on the table, Democrats will resort to the reconciliation process. Under that gimmick, they only need 51 votes in the Senate.

How many of you liked the legislation Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi came up with? Well, if you liked the Reid/Pelosi plan then you’ll love Obama’s prescription for socialism. Obama took the Senate’s bill as his starting point and made it worse! One White House spokesman called it “an opening bid.” The White House isn’t likely to find many buyers.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 58% of likely voters opposed the Reid/Pelosi legislation, and 61% wanted Congress and the president to scrap it and start from scratch. The American people demanded a genuine bi-partisan reboot of the entire process. Instead, we’re getting more of what we didn’t want.

House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement yesterday blasting the president’s approach: “The president has crippled the credibility of this week’s summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits.”

Here are some of the details of the president’s proposal.

• It will cost approximately $1 trillion, but no one knows its real cost. The Congressional Budget Office stated that while the plan includes much of what the House and Senate have proposed, “it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones.” But the White House draft was too vague to provide an official cost estimate.

  Think about that for a moment. The president recently used his executive authority to create a new commission to tackle the federal debt. It is widely expected that this commission will propose major tax hikes along with entitlement reform. But at the same time, President Obama is proposing yet another trillion-dollar entitlement program. He insists his healthcare plan won’t add to the deficit. If that’s true, that means he’s taxing one trillion dollars out of the economy, in addition to whatever the debt commission might recommend. How much sense does it make to pile on to the federal government’s already out-of-control entitlement obligations?

• One of the ways Obama purports to pay for his plan is by raising the Medicare payroll tax and applying it to so-called “unearned” income. So if you’re a senior citizen living off investment income, dividends or other savings (which have already been reduced by low interest rates), Barack Obama wants to hit you with another tax that is expected to raise at least $120 billion.
• Remember the “Cornhusker kickback” that Senator Ben Nelson (D) got to help his state of Nebraska offset increased costs? Well, it’s still there, but Obama expands it to every state. In other words, every senator is being offered a bribe in order to expand the government’s role in your life.
• The individual insurance mandate, which many senators and legal experts believe is unconstitutional, is part of Obama’s plan. If the government can compel you to buy health insurance, what else can it force you to do or not do? As George Will recently argued, “Would it be constitutional for the government to legislate compulsory calisthenics for all Americans?” That may seem like a laughable suggestion, but the Japanese government is measuring waistlines.
• In his proposal, Obama more than doubled the penalty on employers who do not provide health insurance – raising the fine from $750 per employee to $2,000.
• A new element of the president’s plan is price controls – giving the government the authority to set insurance rates – meaning more Big Government control and manipulation of industry. The problem with price controls is that they never work and lead to rationing and shortages.
• The president’s plan not only makes abortion a taxpayer-funded healthcare right, but it expands the tax dollars available to pay for the destruction of innocent life. According to Douglas Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, “If all of the president’s changes were made, the resulting legislation would allow direct federal funding of abortion on demand through Community Health Centers, would institute federal subsidies for private health plans that cover abortion on demand (including some federally administered plans), and would authorize federal mandates that would even require non-subsidized private plans to cover elective abortion.”

  The American people overwhelmingly oppose the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions, but Obama demanded it. In doing so, he completely ignored the concerns of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and dozens of pro-life members of Congress who supported the Stupak amendment.

From Who Runs Gov

The game of chicken commenceth — right now.

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.

“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama’s proposal is designed to have “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”

Translation: If the GOP doesn’t cooperate with us in any meaningful sense, we’re moving forward on our own.

Also on the call, White House advisers detailed Obama’s new proposal, which was just posted on the White House web site, and discussed the ways it seeks a compromise between the Senate and House proposals. Among the details:

* As expected, the plan has no public option — but this does not preclude a reconciliation vote on the public option later.

* The proposal boosts the threshold for the “Cadillac” tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500. That’s actually a better deal than some labor officials were expecting, though some House Dems will still be angry that the tax is being included at all.

* The proposal also preserves the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges, and does not have a national exchange, as the House bill did.

* However, House Dems will be cheered by the fact that Obama’s compromise closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.

* Also, the bill nixes Ben Nelson’s Nebraska deal and boosts Federal financing for Medicaid expansion in all states.

* And finally, as expected, Obama’s proposal creates a Federal panel to monitor and block exorbitant rate hikes and other unfair practices by the insurance industry.

One final note: On the call, Pfeiffer was careful to note that the proposal is not the product of an agreement between the House and Senate, but rather is “the President’s bill.” This is meant to preclude GOP efforts to cast the proposal as the product of a backroom deal. The lines are drawn.

**************************************

Update: Eric Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring emails a response:

The Obama plan costs a trillion dollars, puts government in control of personal health decisions, and allows the government to set prices in the private market. That mirrors the Pelosi/Reid plans that have already been soundly rejected by the bipartisan majority of Americans.

From DickMorris.com

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.

This plan, of course, is a total subversion of the legislative process.

Typically, the Senate and House pass their own unique legislation and then both bills go to a conference committee. In conference, the leadership of both Democrat-dominated houses wheels and deals and irons out differences.

The final compromise bill is then sent back to the full Senate and full House for a vote and has to pass both to go to the president.

In the House, a simple majority passes the legislation. But under Senate rules, major legislation requires 60 votes to end a filibuster.

As it stands, the House bill and Senate bill have major discrepancies. Reid does not have 60 votes to pass a compromise bill that would no doubt include some of the radical provisions House members have been demanding.

But if the House passes the exact Senate bill that passed by a 60-39 Senate vote last month, there is no need for a conference on the bill. It will go directly to the president’s desk.

There is a rub to all of this.

This secret plan being hatched by Pelosi and Reid requires not only a pledge by 52 Democratic senators to vote later for the House modifications. House liberals must actually believe these Senators will live up to their pledge and pass the fixes at some future date.

Read the rest of the column

From the New York Post

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY — The health bills in Congress rob you of your constitutional rights. Here are five provisions (of many) that fail the constitutionality test and reveal Congress’s disrespect for the public:

From the Wall Street Journal

And tidings of comfort and joy from Harry Reid too. The Senate Majority Leader has decided that the last few days before Christmas are the opportune moment for a narrow majority of Democrats to stuff ObamaCare through the Senate to meet an arbitrary White House deadline. Barring some extraordinary reversal, it now seems as if they have the 60 votes they need to jump off this cliff, with one-seventh of the economy in tow.

Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday morning Mr. Reid threw out the 2,100-page bill that the world’s greatest deliberative body spent just 17 days debating and replaced it with a new “manager’s amendment” that was stapled together in covert partisan negotiations. Democrats are barely even bothering to pretend to care what’s in it, not that any Senator had the chance to digest it in the 38 hours before the first cloture vote at 1 a.m. this morning. After procedural motions that allow for no amendments, the final vote could come at 9 p.m. on December 24.

Even in World War I there was a Christmas truce.

The rushed, secretive way that a bill this destructive and unpopular is being forced on the country shows that “reform” has devolved into the raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

***

• Health costs. From the outset, the White House’s core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they’re sticking to that story. “Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills,” Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.

The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.

These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like “community rating” because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.

As for the White House’s line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed “waste,” even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. “The oft-heard promise ‘we will find out what works and what does not’ scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice,” the Stanford professor wrote.

• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.

Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so “substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance” that companies like WellPoint might need to “be considered part of the federal budget.”

With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington’s hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all,” as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.

“The Senate isn’t hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day,” Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they’re allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will “destroy over 200 of America’s best and safest hospitals.”

• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare’s unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost “only” $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.

Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid’s final machinations. Job creation, here we come.

Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn’t start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won’t happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association’s priority was eliminating this “sustainable growth rate” but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.

The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run “exchanges” that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses.

As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.

For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also “a new welfare and tax system” that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into “contractors” or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into “free” health care, taxpayer costs will explode.

• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as “ideologues” by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn’t be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration’s own Medicare actuaries.

Others got hush money, namely Nebraska’s Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare’s unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that “will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees,” as he put it in a letter to his state’s junior Senator.

So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don’t have a Senator who’s the 60th vote for ObamaCare?

Read the rest of the column.

From Human Events

Seven Contradictions Worth Considering

By Newt Gingrich – With the Senate Finance Committee poised to pass health care legislation, the final contours of the bill that could come out of Congress are starting to come into focus. The bill will contain new taxes on the middle class. It will add to the deficit. And it will put government bureaucrats between Americans and their doctors, among other things.

So it’s not too early to ask the obvious question: Will President Obama veto health care reform?

It’s worth asking because so many of the costs to taxpayers the President has repeatedly promised won’t be in the legislation are, and so many of the benefits are not.

What follows is a list, in no particular order, of the contradictions between the President’s promises and the reality of Democratic health care reform. Add them up and it’s hard to see how President Obama doesn’t reject the bill Congress seems likely to send him.

Contradiction #1: From a Promise Not to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class to $2 Billion in “Penalties”

As far back as the campaign, President Obama promised he wouldn’t raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000.

But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that at least 71 percent of the individual mandate penalties in Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-MT) bill would be paid by Americans earning less than $250,000. In fact, the nonpartisan analysis found that, of the $2.8 billion in penalties the bill imposes on those who do not purchase health insurance, a full $2 billion will be paid by taxpayers earning less than $120,000 for a family of four.

The Senate Finance bill also levies $215 billion in new taxes on employers and health insurers for offering high-value insurance benefits, which will surely be passed onto all consumers.

Republicans tried to ensure that President Obama’s words would not ring hollow by offering an amendment that said: “This amendment provides that no tax, fee or penalty imposed by this legislation shall be applied to any individual earning less than $200,000 per year or any couple earning less than $250,000 per year.” Democrats defeated it.

Contradiction #2: From a Promise to Reject a Bill That “Adds One Dime to the Deficit” to $239 Billion Added to the Deficit

In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress, the President was adamant: “I will not sign [a bill] if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”

And yet House bill H.R. 3200 will increase the deficit by an amazing $239 billion over the next decade.

The Baucus bill pretends to be deficit neutral but it’s an accounting gimmick. “It pays for itself” by forcing a new $250-300 billion unfunded mandate on the states. And it doesn’t include nearly $300 billion that will be spent to adjust physician payments in Medicare.

Contradiction #3: From a Promise That “If You Like Your Current Plan You Can Keep It” to Half of Medicare Advantage Benefits Being Cut

In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress last month and elsewhere, the President has reassured nervous Americans that if they like their current coverage, his reform will let them keep it.

Unless you happen to have Medicare Advantage, that is.

Or employer provided insurance.

The director of the nonpartisan CBO testified before the Senate that, under the Senate bill, the benefits of seniors under Medicare Advantage would be cut in half.

And an analysis of the House bill found that 88 million people will lose their current insurance under government health care.

What’s more, both bills would disrupt vision care for more than 100 million Americans.

Read about the other four contridictions

Posted from Judicial Watch

Disregarding the First Amendment’s right to free speech, the Obama Administration has issued a threatening gag order forbidding health insurance companies from disclosing information to their customers about Medicare cuts under its healthcare overhaul.

Ordered by a powerful Senate Democrat, the government agency that oversees Medicare, the Department of Health and Human Services, warned insurance companies this week that they face legal action for informing seniors about the potential for lost benefits under the legislation being considered by Congress.

The administration’s threat was a response to a letter sent out by one of the nation’s largest insurance companies (Kentucky-based Humana) informing supplemental Medicare insurance customers that their benefits will be reduced under the Democrat’s plan. “Millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,” according to the letter, which also urged customers to contact their representative in Congress.

Obama has indeed proposed a $500 billion slash in Medicare benefits over the next few years in order to pay for his plan, which he says will shift health spending from senior adults to those not currently covered. Additionally, the non-partisan and independent Congressional Budget Office has determined that the administration’s proposed Medicare cuts will significantly reduce seniors’ benefits.

Yet the president and Democratic leaders want to keep citizens in the dark, bullying a government agency that’s supposed to protect the health of all Americans to instead threaten the free flow of valuable information that could compromise that mission. The agency’s stern notice orders insurance companies to “immediately discontinue” mailings or web site postings mentioning the Medicare cuts. 

Outraged that the government is muzzling free speech as well as the truth about the health bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (Humana’s headquarters) ordered that the Obama Administration gag order be immediately lifted. “First and foremost, this episode should be of serious concern to millions of seniors on Medicare who deserve to know what the government has in mind for their health care,” McConnell said, “but it should also frighten anyone who cherishes their First Amendment right to free speech — whether in Louisville, Helena, San Francisco, or anywhere else.”

From the Politico

In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase. 

But he could look it up — in the bill.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.” 

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”

The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family. 

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