Looking beyond the media hype, taxpayers should remember a few crucial facts about the recent CBO/JCT analysis of the Finance Committee’s provisions for the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. As former CBO Director Donald Marron has pointed out, there is more to CBO’s analysis than short term budget estimates.
- The analysis is preliminary. As the letter points out, the analysis is still not based on legislative language. Moreover, Senate Leaders have to merge the bill with the HELP Committee bill before the bill comes to the floor. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the current analysis will be relevant to the debate much past the upcoming Finance Committee vote.
- Cost. The projected $829 billion ten year cost is no guarantee of anything. Virtually all cost estimates of government programs underestimate the true cost. Take for example Medicare. In 1965, it was projected to cost $12 billion in 1990, but its actual cost in 1990 was over $100 billion. Just recently, the SCHIP program with a fixed 10 year budget of $40 billion was reauthorized for five years at a new price tag of close to $70 billion. A long term cost projection is a missing, but important component to understanding the true cost of a proposal.
- Taxes. The proposed offsets in the bill fall in two categories – taxes and cuts. On the tax side, CBO estimates $4 billion will be raised by imposing a tax on individuals who don’t buy government qualified coverage. $23 billion will be raised by imposing a tax on employers who don’t offer government qualified coverage, a cost that will be borne by workers in lower wages and fewer jobs. Over $200 billion is raised by adopting a new tax on health insurance plans. While this tax sounds like it will hit insurers, the reality is taxes on goods will ultimately be passed on the consumers. Hiding new taxes through fees and penalties don’t fool anyone.
- Cuts. The Finance proposal also depends heavily on Medicare to fund its new entitlement program. Besides cuts to Medicare Advantage plans, which put benefits of millions of seniors at risk, there are billions of dollars in provider payment cuts. Traditionally, such cuts rarely come to fruition. Special interests lobby to stop any real cuts from occurring after the bill is passed. Therefore, before spending one dime on coverage expansions, Congress should have to “show us the money”. If Congress were to be fiscally responsible, it would bank the savings first before spending the taxpayers money.
- Impact. Today, 85 percent of Americans have health coverage. After spending over $800 billion dollars to cover the uninsured, the Finance proposal still leave 26 million without health care coverage. And of the ones the bill reaches, the majority will be enrolled in Medicaid – a program sorely in need of reform itself.
The Washington Post front page blares today: “Prospects for Public Option Dim in Senate.” Don’t believe it. Yes, the Senate Finance Committee did vote down two amendments that each would have added a government-run insurance plan to the committee’s health care bill. But two key Democrats who voted against Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-WV) public plan, Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Tom Carper (D-DE), voted for Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) version.
According to an independent analysis of Senate Democrat public statements on the public option, that raises the number of Democrats on record supporting a public option from 47 to 49. Moreover, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairmen of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, told the liberal “Bill Press Radio Show” yesterday that Democrats “comfortably” have the remaining votes to reach 51 and pass a public plan once the debate moves to the House floor.
But what about Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’ (D-MT) claim yesterday that, “No one has been able to show me how we can count up to 60 votes with a public option.” That may be true, but it is also irrelevant. The question is not whether Democrats can muster 60 votes to pass Obamacare; they only need 51 votes to do that. The only time the number 60 will be relevant is when the Senate votes on whether to end debate and vote on the final bill. This is a separate question. We can see Senators from red states like Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanch Lincoln (D-AR), and Kent Conrad (D-ND) voting against an amendment creating a public option. But voting with Republicans against their party and against their President to support a Republican filibuster? That would take a lot of courage. It would guarantee that these Democrats would face fierce opposition from their leftist bases back home. Just ask the left’s new whip for the public option, Michael Moore. Speaking to women’s groups and unions in Washington, DC, yesterday, Moore warned:
To the Democrats in Congress who don’t quite get it: I want to offer a personal pledge. I – and a lot of other people – have every intention of removing you from Congress in the next election if you stand in the way of health care legislation that the people want. That is not a hollow or idle threat. We will come to your district and we will work against you, first in the primary and, if we have to, in the general election.
Moore is, of course, the perfect spokesman for the public option. He is in Washington promoting his new film “Capitalism: A Love Story” in which Moore argues that “Capitalism is an evil, and you can’t regulate evil.” A more succinct summation of theory behind the public option does not exist. While supporters of the plan, including the White House, insist that the purpose of the public option is to bring “choice and competition” to the health care, nothing could be further from the truth. As Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Anthony Weiner (D-NY) Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein, and Noble Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have all candidly admitted, the public option is nothing more than a Trojan horse for a single-payer, government-run health care system. Moore even told Rolling Stone magazine this summer:
If a true public option is enacted — and Obama knows this — it will eventually bring about a single payer system, because the profit-making insurance companies won’t be able to compete with a government run plan and make the profits they want to make.
So just how close are we to being inflicted with the Obama/Moore dream of anti-capitalist, competition-free, government-run health care? Closer than many realize. Multiple sources on the Hill have told The Foundry that as early as next week, the Senate could be debating Obamacare. Senate Majority Leader Reid has stated an intention to take the HELP Committee product and merge it with the Senate Finance Committee markup that is expected to be over by this Thursday or Friday. Their plan is to proceed to a House passed non-health care bill to provide a shell of legislation to give Obamacare a ride to the House and then straight to the President’s desk.
Quick Hits:
- According to a Government Accountability Office, state and federal officials failed to detect $65 million in Medicaid prescription drug fraud, including thousands of prescriptions written for dead patients or by people posing as doctors during 2006 and 2007.
- A historic bridge at Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library is slated to get $2.5 million of federal stimulus money.
- The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to President Barack Obama, is releasing a report calling on Obama to further break his ‘no tax increase on middle-class families’ pledge.
- A former ACORN field director testified in court yesterday about extra payments to Las Vegas canvassers for bringing in 21 new registration cards in a day.
- In 2008, the median household income in the United States plummeted 3.6% from the year before, and the percentage of people living in poverty soared to an 11-year high, according to U.S. Census data.