Smoke & Mirrors - ObamaCare style

The so-called Baucus plan and its CBO scoring is a complete farce; it will cost $800 Billion at least, and raise taxes and ration care. The spinning due to the tricks they played to game it to how CBO would score it is pathetic. It is what it is ... a bad idea.

Redefining 'Saving' [Yuval Levin]

Judging from today's papers and the left-leaning blogosphere, the Democratic line on yesterday’s CBO report is that it shows the bill “saves money.” Saves money? Let's be clear: The Baucus bill proposes to spend more than $800 billion in the midst of an explosion of federal spending and debt to create a new entitlement program, the cost of which CBO says will grow at more than 8 percent a year (faster than health care costs grow now), and to raise taxes by almost $200 billion in the midst of a recession. It then proposes to make up the difference by massive cuts in Medicare which, as CBO notes, are unlikely to actually materialize.


Grassley: The 'Untold Story' of the CBO Report [Robert Costa]

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R., Iowa), the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, tells NRO that the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) score of the health-care bill sponsored by committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) has “a huge, untold story.”
As the Baucus bill heads for a vote next Tuesday, Grassley cautions that the CBO report is based only upon “conceptual language” and “the plain English of what the bill hopes to accomplish.”
“The conceptual language is the big caveat of the CBO report,” says Grassley. “When we get the stated legal language, things may vary quite a bit. The CBO analysis is preliminary, and just makes the Baucus bill, with all of its warts, seem a little better than the bills coming from Speaker Pelosi in the House and HELP,” the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

“The huge, untold story of this CBO report is that for the 85 percent of the people that have health insurance, their premiums will still go up because there will be a new tax on insurance policies,” says Grassley. “People may say, ‘What’s wrong with taxing insurance companies?’ but remember, corporations don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes. The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation says that these premiums will be passed on.”

“Even though the CBO says the bill will cost $829 billion, a lot of its savings come from Medicare, which I don’t think is right,“ says Grassley. “We could also end up spending all of this money only to see taxes increase, and premiums increase, and still have 25 million people uninsured.”

“I don’t like [the Baucus bill], and I won’t for vote it,” says Grassley. “The Democrats think it looks so much better, but it still has got a lot of things in it that concern me. It has this federal mandate, which gives the federal government a massive new role in health care. It has an individual mandate, where if you don’t buy insurance, you end up paying a ‘penalty’ to the IRS. They don’t call it a tax increase, but don’t we pay taxes to the IRS?”

For now, Grassley says that he is working to convince centrist Democrats about the flaws in the Baucus bill and other plans. “Eight or nine Democrats seem to have some questions, for different reasons, that relate to the public option or trillion-dollar costs,” says Grassley. “When we already have a great deal of debt, if [centrist Democrats] really want to make changes, and don’t vote for cloture, then they have a real opportunity to force changes in this bill, to get rid of the radical elements.”

Neither raising taxes nor spending $800 billion constitutes saving money. Creating a huge new entitlement doesn't either. Each of the elements of the proposal is a bad idea in itself, and the combination — carefully calibrated with staggered start-dates and assorted gimmicks to look roughly deficit neutral in the ten-year window CBO has to look at — is a colossally expensive step toward a colossally inefficient health-care system.


Krauthammer on the CBO scoring of the Baucus health-care bill:

Look, the CBO scoring, the numbers that came in, the blessing it gave — is because of smoke and mirrors in the bill. For the people of Wichita, somebody has to wade into the weeds. I did it at great health risk.

Two items here. One of them is the $120 billion assumed of income from what are called "fees" of the big players in health care — the health insurers, the drug companies, the guys who do diagnostics and who produce the medical equipment.

The fee is a tax, and the tax, $120 billion, is going to end up out of your pocket and mine, because every penny of it will be in higher insurance, higher costs for drugs, for stents — any kind of medical devices — and for diagnostics. Everybody will pay.

But it's hidden. It is a cowardly way to do a tax. You do it on the industry and it is passed on.

Secondly, there are individual mandates. People are going to be shelling out a huge amount every year on insurance, and those who don't are going to have to pay a fine, also a tax, but under another name.

There are huge costs in here, which are all hidden, and that's why it looks OK.

And secondly, there is a $400 billion assumption of cuts in Medicare. That is not going to happen. It is an illusion. It is a fantasy. And that's why the numbers end up OK.

So if you really look behind all of these numbers, [the Baucus bill ] is a disaster.



Fmr. Obama Speechwriter: 'I Lost My Health Insurance' [NRO Staff]

Wendy Button, a former health-care speechwriter for Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Mayor Tom Menino of Boston, says that she no longer has health insurance.

In a Politics Daily essay, Button details her struggle:

For the first time in my life, I am without health insurance and it is a terrible feeling.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.Since I care more about my country than my personal pride, here's how I lost my insurance: I moved. That's right, I moved from Washington, D.C., back to Massachusetts, a state with universal health care.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.

More here.