The same week he was hawking competition, choice and less government, Obama backed a new Health Insurance Rate Authority that would do even more to cement big health insurance firms into their new role as government-run utilities.
This latest gambit is of a piece with the White House's demonization of the health-insurance industry. I have no love for that industry myself, but let's get some perspective. As of August, the health-insurance industry ranked 86th in terms of profit margins - behind anemic industries such as book publishing (38th) specialty eateries (71st) and home furnishing stores (84th), according to data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute.
Insurance firms account for less than 5 percent of U.S. health-care spending - less than hospitals (31 percent), doctors (21 percent) and medicine (10 percent). But because health-insurance firms are unpopular, Democrats are beating up on them, even though if Democrats are serious about containing costs, the cuts will have to come from those other slices of the pie.
the Democrats have resorted to a real shell game in order to try and slip this through.
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, Democrats released a 2,309 page health care bill that will start the process of reconciliation -- but don't let that fool you, it's not the actual reconciliation bill with all the changes you've been reading about. Instead, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee, explained to me last week, this is just the "shell" bill -- the vehicle that Democrats need to get moving on health care. Once the bill gets approved (likely Monday), Democrats will send this phantom bill over to the Rules Committee, where it will be stripped, and then they'll insert in all of the actual changes that they've negotiated.
Why all of the theatrics?
Well, under the reconciliation rules in last year's budget, any reconciliation bill would have to have been submitted to the Budget Committee by October 15, 2009. It just so happens that earlier versions of health care legislation cleared the Ways and Means and Education and Labor Committees last year. So Democrats just dusted that legislation off, and are using that as the vehicle to begin the reconciliation process. That's why, for instance, if you look through the 2,309 page bill that was released Sunday night, you'll find a public option, which leadership has indicated would not actually be in the final bill. (Interestingly, the student loan bill is also tacked on at the end.)
And don't buy all their claims that they are reducing the costs of health care. Those claims are laughable as Paul Ryan explained yesterday. And on top of that, it will cost jobs.
Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families' premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers' options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.
Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin. When you strip away the double-counting, expose the hidden costs that must be funded and look at the price tag when the legislation is fully implemented, the claims of deficit reduction are as hollow as claims of cost containment.
This legislation includes a range of job-killing tax hikes and controls on all Americans -- to fund this new entitlement and to penalize employers and individuals who don't play by Washington's new rules. The CBO said last July that "requiring employers to offer health insurance, or pay a fee if they do not, is likely to reduce employment." The mix of mandates and higher costs will drive Americans into government exchanges, with an ever-enlarging number reliant upon taxpayer subsidies for their care. The architecture is designed to give the government greater control over what kind of insurance is available, how much health care is enough and which treatments are worth paying for.
The Democrats hope that people are so dumb that they won't realize that they're pushing through an expensive plan that piles one new entitlement on top of the other entitlements that we can't pay for. And that people won't mind all the gimmicks that the Democrats are using to squeeze this through.
Replies (7)
And those Republicans are so much smarter than the Democrats!
-- Posted by Hugh M Bean on Mon, Mar 15, 2010, at 4:46 PM
Thank you, blogbudsman.
-- Posted by gurusmom on Mon, Mar 15, 2010, at 8:50 PM
And what are the drivers of health inflation? How to address them?
-- Posted by Ike on Mon, Mar 15, 2010, at 11:32 AM
Though it seems compelling, covering the uninsured is not the health-care system's major problem. The big problem is uncontrolled spending, which prices people out of the market and burdens government budgets. Obama claims his proposal checks spending. Just the opposite. When people get insurance, they use more health services. Spending rises. By the government's latest forecast, health spending goes from 17 percent of the economy in 2009 to 19 percent in 2019. Health "reform" would probably increase that.
Unless we change the fee-for-service system, costs will remain hard to control because providers are paid more for doing more. Obama might have attempted that by proposing health-care vouchers (limited amounts to be spent on insurance), which would force a restructuring of delivery systems to compete on quality and cost. Doctors, hospitals and drug companies would have to reorganize care. Obama refrained from that fight and instead cast insurance companies as the villains.
He's telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to know. Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest 14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4 percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion. This hardly explains high health costs. What people need to know is that Obama's plan evades health care's major problems and would worsen the budget outlook. It's a big new spending program when government hasn't paid for the spending programs it already has.
"If not now, when? If not us, who?" Obama asks. The answer is: It's not now, and it's not "us." Pass or not, Obama's proposal is the illusion of "reform," not the real thing.
Illusions. Sort of like "Change you can believe in." Just yet another illusion of the Obama phenomenon.
-- Posted by blogbudsman on Tue, Mar 16, 2010, at 6:45 AM
Here is one of Obama's oxymoron's.....He met with the lady that has cancer and could no longer afford health insurance. He claims that she is one of the Americans that he is pushing this healthcare reform for. Ok..there is no public option in this bill anymore...so how exactly does this 2000+ page monster help this woman? She has no insurance because she dropped her insurance policy. Does Obama think that insurance will suddenly become affordable enough for her to buy it and get treatment? Not a chance. Studies show (and the C O B agrees) that this reform will cause rates to go up because all of a sudden insurance companies will have to cover anyone who wants insurance. If anything this woman shows what is wrong with the system and why it is so costly....because people like her CHOSE to drop their insurance and when they get ill they suddenly want the government to bail them out.
Besides the fact that if this woman has cancer then she is probably on disability and ow is elgible for Medicare.
-- Posted by Skeptic1 on Tue, Mar 16, 2010, at 7:12 AM
He met with the lady that has cancer and could no longer afford health insurance. He claims that she is one of the Americans that he is pushing this healthcare reform for. If anything this woman shows what is wrong with the system and why it is so costly....because people like her CHOSE to drop their insurance and when they get ill they suddenly want the government to bail them out.
Besides the fact that if this woman has cancer then she is probably on disability and now is elgible for Medicare.
-- Posted by adidas on Tue, Mar 16, 2010, at 7:12 AM
Bingo! She has no job - no insurance. Yet, she is receiving treatment in one of the best cancer treatment centers and does not have to worry about losing her home. Of course the system is not perfect - mostly due to political meddling. This 'health care' bill does not provide health care, only adds to the political meddling and will bankrupt our country. Obama's "prop" is actually an argument for dropping this horrible legislation.
-- Posted by blogbudsman on Tue, Mar 16, 2010, at 7:50 AM
phony health care argument: The government can solve the health care problems.
-- Posted by FreedomFadingFast on Wed, Mar 17, 2010, at 8:49 AM
The Congressional Budget Office can only deal with the numbers that Congress supplies. Those numbers may well be consistent with each other, even if they are wholly inconsistent with anything that is likely to happen in the real world.
The Obama health care plan can be financed without increasing the federal deficit-- if the administration takes hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare. But Medicare itself does not have enough money to pay its own way over time.
However money is juggled in the short run, the government's financial liabilities are increased by adding this huge new entitlement of government-provided insurance. The fact that these new financial liabilities can be kept out of the official federal deficit projection, by claiming that they will be paid for with money taken from Medicare, changes nothing in the real world.
An even more transparent gimmick is collecting money for the new Obama health care program for the first ten years but delaying the payments of its benefits for four years. By collecting money for 10 years and spending it for only 6 years, you can make the program look self-supporting, but only on paper and only in the short run.
This is a game you can play just once, during the first decade. After that, you are going to be collecting money for 10 years and paying out money for 10 years.
Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized-- or even recognized-- before it becomes a fait accompli and "the law of the land."
-- Posted by blogbudsman on Wed, Mar 17, 2010, at 10:00 AM
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http://article.nationalreview.com/427723/health-care-hell/jonah-goldberg
The same week he was hawking competition, choice and less government, Obama backed a new Health Insurance Rate Authority that would do even more to cement big health insurance firms into their new role as government-run utilities.
This latest gambit is of a piece with the White House's demonization of the health-insurance industry. I have no love for that industry myself, but let's get some perspective. As of August, the health-insurance industry ranked 86th in terms of profit margins - behind anemic industries such as book publishing (38th) specialty eateries (71st) and home furnishing stores (84th), according to data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute.
Insurance firms account for less than 5 percent of U.S. health-care spending - less than hospitals (31 percent), doctors (21 percent) and medicine (10 percent). But because health-insurance firms are unpopular, Democrats are beating up on them, even though if Democrats are serious about containing costs, the cuts will have to come from those other slices of the pie.
And: http://spectator.org/blog/2010/03/15/the-health-care-shell-game-beg
the Democrats have resorted to a real shell game in order to try and slip this through.
Shortly before midnight on Sunday, Democrats released a 2,309 page health care bill that will start the process of reconciliation -- but don't let that fool you, it's not the actual reconciliation bill with all the changes you've been reading about. Instead, as Rep. Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee, explained to me last week, this is just the "shell" bill -- the vehicle that Democrats need to get moving on health care. Once the bill gets approved (likely Monday), Democrats will send this phantom bill over to the Rules Committee, where it will be stripped, and then they'll insert in all of the actual changes that they've negotiated.
Why all of the theatrics?
Well, under the reconciliation rules in last year's budget, any reconciliation bill would have to have been submitted to the Budget Committee by October 15, 2009. It just so happens that earlier versions of health care legislation cleared the Ways and Means and Education and Labor Committees last year. So Democrats just dusted that legislation off, and are using that as the vehicle to begin the reconciliation process. That's why, for instance, if you look through the 2,309 page bill that was released Sunday night, you'll find a public option, which leadership has indicated would not actually be in the final bill. (Interestingly, the student loan bill is also tacked on at the end.)
Just a "simple up or down vote," remember?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/14/AR2010031401388_...
And don't buy all their claims that they are reducing the costs of health care. Those claims are laughable as Paul Ryan explained yesterday. And on top of that, it will cost jobs.
Through any analytical lens, the legislation will not address the central problem of skyrocketing health-care costs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that families' premiums could rise 10 to 13 percent; private-sector actuarial estimates top these already high numbers. The higher costs are driven by federalizing the regulation of insurance, narrowing consumers' options and reducing competition among providers. The health-care market would be dominated by government programs and the largest insurance companies, operating as de facto government utilities.
Rather than tackle the drivers of health inflation, the legislation chases the ever-increasing premiums with huge new subsidies. Already, Washington has no idea how to pay for the unfunded promises in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- and creating this new entitlement would accelerate our path to fiscal ruin. When you strip away the double-counting, expose the hidden costs that must be funded and look at the price tag when the legislation is fully implemented, the claims of deficit reduction are as hollow as claims of cost containment.
This legislation includes a range of job-killing tax hikes and controls on all Americans -- to fund this new entitlement and to penalize employers and individuals who don't play by Washington's new rules. The CBO said last July that "requiring employers to offer health insurance, or pay a fee if they do not, is likely to reduce employment." The mix of mandates and higher costs will drive Americans into government exchanges, with an ever-enlarging number reliant upon taxpayer subsidies for their care. The architecture is designed to give the government greater control over what kind of insurance is available, how much health care is enough and which treatments are worth paying for.
The Democrats hope that people are so dumb that they won't realize that they're pushing through an expensive plan that piles one new entitlement on top of the other entitlements that we can't pay for. And that people won't mind all the gimmicks that the Democrats are using to squeeze this through.
Replies (7)