ObamaCare Updates ...

Many are saying ObamaCare is DOA ... let's hope so !

Jake Tapper:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/what-does-the-presidents-promise-youll-be-able-to-keep-your-health-care-plan-period-really-mean.html

What Does the President’s Promise "You'll Be Able to Keep Your Health Care Plan, Period," Really Mean?

"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people," President Obama told the American Medical Association on June 15. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

But today the president clarified that promise. It seems he wasn’t saying “no one” will take away any American’s health insurance – he was saying the government wouldn’t.

Which is not to say that the government wouldn’t create a situation where such a thing would happen.

ABC News asked how the president could make such a guarantee if the public run plan were cheaper, thus possibly enticing employers to enroll employees in that plan.

“When I say if you have your plan and you like it,…or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform,” the President said.

The president went on to say that, “Now, are there going to be employers right now, assuming we don't do anything -- let's say that we take the advice of some folks who are out there and say, ‘Oh, this is not the time to do health care. We can't afford it. It's too complicated. Let's take our time,’ et cetera. So let's assume that nothing happened. I can guarantee you that there's the possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they're not going to end up having the same health care they have. Because what's going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions. We've got to raise premiums on our employees. In some cases, we can't provide health insurance at all. And so there are going to be a whole set of changes out there. That's exactly why health reform is so important.”

Pressed on the question of whether a public plan is non-negotiable, that he won’t sign a health care reform bill that does not include it, the president said that it was not, at least not yet.

“We have not drawn lines in the sand, other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don't have health insurance or are under-insured,” the president said. “You know, those are the broad parameters that we've discussed. There are a whole host of other issues where ultimately I may have a strong opinion, and I will express those to members of Congress as this is shaping up. It's too early to say that. Right now, I will say that our position is that a public plan makes sense.”


The President Tries to Change His Health-Care Tune [James C. Capretta]

At his press conference today, President Obama scrambled to “clarify” his promise to Americans on health care. It won’t work.

For months now, going all the way back to the early days of the 2008 campaign, President Obama has been promising Americans that, if they like the insurance plan they have, they will get to keep it. He didn’t just mention this once or twice. It was a staple of his pitch, repeated over and over again.

Of course, he made the promise for sound political reasons. His strategists are listening carefully to what their focus groups have to say, and they are hearing the same message Americans have been delivering on health care for years. Yes, many voters wouldn’t mind seeing health-care reform pass in Congress because they perceive problems of cost and coverage that they would like to see fixed. But they don’t want to trade in their good job-based insurance for an untested, government-heavy program.

The problem for President Obama is that he and his allies want to pass an untested, government-heavy program — but without saying so.

Keep reading this post . . .


Government Health Care: One State Resists [John R. Graham]

As the U.S. government rushes to pull us all into a government-run health-care system, one state is preparing to say "hands off my health care." The Arizona State Senate yesterday approved HCR 2014, a proposed constitutional amendment that forbids the government from forcing any citizen to participate in a government-run health-care system. The resolution will be on the ballot in November 2010. (I was privileged to have testified to the House Health & Human Services Committee on the resolution.)

A previous version of this amendment (Prop 101) was on the ballot in November 2008, but was very narrowly defeated, thanks largely to former governor Napolitano and her allies. With Ms. Napolitano now in D.C., the opposition to health freedom will not be so effective in 2010.

— John R. Graham is director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.


Will the President Get to Keep His Health-Reform Pitch? [John R. Graham]

As James Capretta notes, President Obama is realizing that his message — namely, that his reform will not result in you losing your health plan or doctor, is losing credibility and he is scrambling to find a new one. The new one seems to be that “if we do nothing” you will lose your health coverage anyway, because rising costs will make it increasingly unaffordable to employers.

But this is an incredibly self-important statement. If by “we,” the president means himself and Congress, their “doing nothing” by refraining from a complete government take-over of health care doesn’t mean that every American is “doing nothing” about health costs.

In fact, many of us are doing a heck of a lot. According to the American Academy of Actuaries, the millions of us with “consumer-driven” health plans have experienced annual cost growth 3% to 5% less than traditional plans, for five years. Entrepreneurs have been opening up retail clinics for cash-paying patients. And medical brokers are facilitating patients’ travel to hospitals in Asia for surgery at much lower cost than in over-regulated U.S. hospitals.

“If we do nothing”? Speak for yourself, Mr. President.


Health-Care Polling Update [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Republican strategists Ed Gillespie and Whit Ayres write:

Asked whether they would prefer a system where most Americans get their health care coverage through the federal government or a private insurance company, voters favored a predominantly private insurance system by almost exactly two-to-one, 60-31. The Republican margin was almost exactly 8:1 (87-11), and Independents 2½:1 (61-24). Democrats diverged, favoring a system where most Americans get their coverage through the federal government by 15 points (37-52).

This explains important splits in two subsequent policy-related questions. Forty-seven percent (47%) agreed with the statement “Americans need a public health insurance plan administered by the Federal Government to expand choices and control costs by competing with private insurance companies” versus 45% who agreed with the statement “a government-run health insurance plan will use taxpayer subsidies to undercut private insurance rates, and force private companies out of business, resulting in everyone going into a government-run plan.” But when you break this essential tie into partisan IDs, a majority of Independents (51%) agree with the undercutting argument, more in line with the vast majority of Republicans (67%) than the mere 23% of Democrats.

While a plurality in the survey (49%) agreed that “to increase the number of people with health insurance coverage, the federal government should require all employers to provide health insurance for their employees, or pay to support a public plan that would cover their employees” versus the 43% who agreed “if the federal government requires all employers to provide health insurance for their employees or pay to support a public plan, employers will likely drop their coverage and shift their employees into a public plan.” That plurality, however, is driven by the overwhelming agreement of Democrats (66-27). Independents (39-50) and Republicans (36-55) were more likely to agree with the private-to-public shift argument.

There is an inconsistent gap between the strong preference for a system where most Americans get their health coverage through private insurance and the pluralities favoring the employer mandate/tax and the public insurance plan. If the public better understood the privateto- public shift that would result from these two policies, support for them would likely drop significantly.
Also worth noting is a recent Kaiser poll that suggests how malleable public opinion on health care is (see especially charts 21-26). So, for example, respondents split 71-26 percent in favor of a mandate for employers to pay for their employees' health costs — but 65 percent of the majority switches sides upon hearing that a mandate might cause layoffs, and 78 percent of the minority switches sides upon hearing that a mandate would make life easier for companies that already provide insurance.

Both polls via Gary Andres.


Mark Steyn's Obamacare Rallying Call [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

From his guest-host appearance on Rush's show today: "The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That's why Republicans need to resist this in Congress, because if we cross this line we can never go back."


Another Incoherent Health-Care Poll in the New York Times [John R. Graham]

I can’t blame the New York Times reporters for spinning their latest poll on health care in favor of a federal government take-over. After all, they had to back up a Sunday editorial endorsing the idea, and feed Paul Krugman’s column today as well. But even so, blaring the headline “Wide Support for Government Run Health” goes beyond the pale.

The New York Times poll reported that 72% of a sample of “randomly” chosen respondents (of whom 48% had voted for Obama and only 25% for McCain last November, question #100), said they’d approve of the federal government giving everyone the option of enrolling in a Medicare-like program. Case closed? Not at all.

Keep reading this post . . .


That Times Poll on Health Care [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Following up on John Graham's post: The question about support for a public option included three words that would tend to make people react positively: "offer," "Medicare," and "compete." I'd be much more interested in a poll that presented a case for and against the public option and then asked respondents which side they found more convincing.


We Don’t Need Obama’s Big-Bang Health-Care Plan [Larry Kudlow]

It looks like President Obama’s big-bang health-care reform is going down to defeat. This is good. But my question is why do we need it at all? According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?

There’s more. According the U.S. Census Bureau, we don’t have 47 million folks who are truly uninsured. When you take college kids plus those earning $75,000 or more who chose not to sign up, that removes roughly 20 million people. Then take out about 10 million more who are not U.S. citizens, and 11 million who are eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but have not signed up for some reason.So that really leaves only 10 million to 15 million people who are truly long-term uninsured.

Keep reading this post . . .


Krugman on Health Care [Tevi Troy]

Paul Krugman seems to be trying to expand his circle of enemies today by going after Democratic senators such as Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad for questioning the wisdom of a government-run health insurance plan. He's particularly critical of Senator Nelson for suggesting that the so-called public option would harm private insurance plans, saying that the role of government is to protect Americans and not insurance companies. Krugman is supposed to be smart, so I'll take the more charitable interpretation of his comment, which is that he's deliberately misunderstanding the argument rather than being obtuse. People worried about the public plan forcing private companies out of business are concerned that Americans will lose private insurance options, and that the only choice remaining would be to use the government-run program. Even if you're not worried that government plans will restrict access, you should be worried about the cost to the country of everyone being on the public plan should private insurance go away. On the other hand, maybe Krugman is not worried about this because that's what he is hoping for.

— Tevi Troy, deputy secretary of health and human services from 2007 to 2009, is a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.


Public- vs. Private-sector Health Spending [Tevi Troy]

My friend and former HHS colleague Jeff Anderson just published the results of a very interesting study he conducted for the Pacific Research Institute on public- vs. private-sector health spending. The study showed that Medicare spending grows much more quickly than private-sector health care spending, which has to make one wonder how a public plan modeled on Medicare could reduce costs.

As Jeff puts it:
Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare's costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.
Read the whole article here.