FixHealthCarePolicy

Slaughter Rule Not Defended by President

Yesterday FOX News Special Report interviewed President Barack Obama about the process for passing the President’s controversial and unpopular health care proposal. Fox’s Bret Baier asked some pointed questions to see if the President supported or would even talk about the controversial “Slaughter Rule” being considered by the House to pass Obamacare. The President would not directly answer repeated questions about a potentially unconstitutional Deem and Pass rule, but he seemed to tacitly support the idea.

There is no precedent for legislation of this scale to be jammed through Congress by using a deeming resolution in concert with a reconciliation measure. Liberal leaders in the House argue that because Republicans used this potentially unconstitutional procedure in the past, they should be allowed to do so now on a much larger scale. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution states, “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.” This procedure, on it’s face, seems to violate the letter of the constitution.

The President was asked by Bret Baier about the Slaughter Rule: (more…)

Tags: becomes law, Bret Baier, deeming, Fox News Special Report, no precedent, President Barack Obama, Slaughter Rule

Six Ways the Senate Health Care Bill Raises Health Care Costs, Kills Jobs, and Weakens the Economy

On the eve of the House of Representatives push to jam through the misguided and highly unpopular Senate health care bill, the President continues to try and convince the American people that the health care bill would reduce cost while showing his commitment to creating jobs and improving the economy. The raw facts make it clear that he cannot keep either of these promises. For example:

– The President claims the health care proposals would reduce health care spending. The reality is health care spending would increase. According to the latest Congressional Budget Office report of the Senate bill, health care spending under the Senate bill would increase by $210 billion over the next 10 years. This is similar to the results found by the President’s chief actuary which estimated an increase of $222 billion. While CBO predicts spending would decrease in the second decade, history shows spending rarely, if ever, goes down on government health programs. Medicare is hurtling toward a financial crisis, and Medicaid is breaking state budgets. (more…)

Tags: Medicare "donut hole", President's chief actuary, President's health proposal, reconciliation, senate health care bill

Praising the Senate Health Bill: Worldly Wisdom or Nunsense?

As the beneficiary of 16 years of Catholic education, eight of them under the tutelage of the Sisters of Charity in Cincinnati, I am inclined by habit to nod in swift concurrence whenever the good sisters speak. Not today.

A letter released yesterday by 60 leaders of Catholic women’s religious orders argues that the Senate-passed version of health care reform does not provide for funding of elective abortion and is thus the “REAL [capitalization in original] pro-life” option. The Catholic bishops, the non-sectarian National Right to Life Committee and, this morning, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious strongly disagree.

The dispute has emerged with greater force after it became clear last week that any commitment by the Democratic leadership in Congress to “fix” the Senate bill’s defective abortion limitation language was unenforceable – a piecrust promise. Not only would the Senate’s traditionally stronger corps of anti-Hyde amendment votes ensure defeat of any abortion language fix, but 41 Republican senators signed a letter to oppose any policy-making on the reconciliation bill that would ferry the fix to enactment – a pledge that clearly would include the doomed abortion limitation. (more…)

Tags: catholic bishops, nuns, piecrust promise, Senate Health Bill, taxpayer-funded abortions, women's religious orders

Morning Bell: What the Senate Bill Would Do To America

Another day, another no-show for the Obamacare reconciliation bill. House Democrats were quick to shift blame to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) with Rep. Robert Andrews telling The Hill that the delay “has been much more technical than substantive. … It’s not like what tax has to go or what spending has to go.” Which is an interesting claim, since Politico reported that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was summoned to the White House yesterday afternoon “to discuss a higher-than-expected excise tax on some health care plans.” In fact, Politico added: “A labor source said Trumka’s meeting would focus on the entire bill, not just the excise tax question.” Sounds like more than just technical details are still in flux.

But in reality, none of these discussions really matter. The reconciliation bill being drafted is nothing more than thin political cover for House Democrats who believe the Senate bill is terrible public policy but want to please their leadership and the President by voting for it anyway. As we detailed yesterday, there is no bill but the Senate bill. Once the House passes the Senate bill, the President will sign it. Game over. It has been almost three months since the Senate passed their bill in the dead of night on Christmas Eve. A review of just how terrible it really is, is in order:

New Middle-Class Taxes: Throughout his campaign, President Barack Obama promised he would not raise taxes on American households making less than $250,000. The Senate bill shatters that promise. For starters, just look at the reason Trumka went to the White House yesterday: the excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. This tax would overwhelmingly hit middle-class taxpayers. Taxes on prescription drugs, wheel chairs and other medical devices would also be passed on to all consumers, hitting the lower- and middle- classes the hardest. (more…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, deficits, excise tax, higher health costs, higher health premiums, middle class taxes, ObamaCare, reconciliation bill, unemployment

The Senate Health Bill: Ordinary Americans Have Been Warned

As the House of Representatives prepares for a final round of debate on the health care legislation, ordinary Americans must grasp the huge impact on the future of the country. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pulling out all the stops to get the 216 votes needed to pass the Senate health bill, H.R. 3590 (PDF). The Speaker is also promising to fix the Senate bill’s many objectionable components later through the budget reconciliation process, parliamentary rules normally used to reconcile tax and spending provisions with the annual congressional budget resolution.

Meanwhile, the House leadership is also reportedly pursuing the controversial “Slaughter Rule,” in which the entire Senate bill be “deemed” to have passed the House without an “up or down” vote on the Senate language.

Regardless of whatever procedural shenanigans the House leadership tries to play, the end result would be enactment of the Senate health bill as the law of the land. That’s the end game. Period. (more…)

Tags: additional insurance costs, Congressional Budget Office, deem, Medicaid Expansion, reconciliation, Senate Health Bill, Slaugher Rule

Forget Doctors’ Support for the Health Care Bill

Earlier this month, President Obama held a press conference at the White House with white coated physicians in his push for a government overhaul of the nation’s health care system. Though the presence of physicians in support of the Democrats’ plans for health care “reform” created the illusion that the medical profession is in strong support of the legislation, it remained just that—an illusion. Recent reports show that the health care legislation does not have the broad support among physicians.

A poll by The Medicus Firm posted in the New England Journal of Medicine’s CareerCenter shows that, on virtually every count, physicians understand and don’t like the congressional legislation. 62.7 percent of physicians feel that health reform is needed but should be implemented in a more targeted, gradual way; just the opposite of the sweeping overhaul embodied in the massive congressional legislation. Indeed, 46.3 percent of primary care physicians feel that “the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine.” (more…)

Tags: doctors, health choices commissioner, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, President's proposal

Health Coverage for All Americans? Not Under the Senate Health Bill

As Congressional leaders continue to search for ways to pass the Senate health bill in the House later this week, Americans continue to be subjected to dubious rhetoric surrounding the bill’s provisions. The Senate bill’s supporters claim that their legislation must be made law, no matter the cost, in order to achieve universal coverage in the United States. However, even if the Senate bill does pass, this will not be the case. Despite the fact that the proposed legislation is exorbitantly expensive, it would still fail to achieve universal health coverage.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), by 2019, the legislation would cost (PDF) $196 billion annually and still leave 24 million Americans uninsured.

The fact that 24 million people remain would uninsured with enactment of the Senate health bill is remarkable. Under current law, there would be 55 million uninsured Americans in 2019. That means that over 43 percent of the projected uninsured would be unaffected by the legislation, continuing to go without coverage ten years from now. Yet according to research by Heritage expert James Capretta, the bill would cost well over $1 trillion over the next ten years. Capretta shows that the true ten year cost of the plan is more likely to be close to $1.2 trillion, but even this estimate significantly underestimates the true long term cost of the plan. Capretta further points out that this estimate includes ten years of new revenues, but only 6 or 7 years of new spending, skewing the Congressional Budget Office’s ten-year cost analysis to make the bill appear less expensive than it really is. He says that a true ten year estimate would put the price tag closer to $2.3 trillion. (more…)

Tags: $1 trillion, Congressional Budget Office, Medicaid Expansion, Senate Health Bill

Medicaid Expansion Neglects Program’s Current Failures

This week, the House is preparing to vote on the Senate-passed health care bill, which depends on a massive expansion of Medicaid to reduce the number of uninsured.

However, as has become apparent in the months of debate surrounding Democrats’ health care proposals, all that glitters is not gold—especially in the case of expanding Medicaid, a low-quality, poorly-functioning federal-state program which fails to meet the needs of its beneficiaries. Increasing the number of citizens dependent on this program fails to address its numerous shortcomings, and instead applies them to millions more.

A recent article in the New York Times portrays the plights of current Medicaid beneficiaries which are slowly becoming the norm. Since Medicaid reimburses doctors significantly below the cost of providing care, more and more doctors are being forced to turn patients away. According to Dr. Saed J. Sahouri, “…we’re really losing money on seeing those patients, not even breaking even. We were starting to lose more and more money, month after month.” (more…)

Tags: access to providers, losing money, Medicaid, ObamaCare, senate health care bill

Slaughter Solution: Still the Senate Bill

The House Rules Committee will meet this afternoon to discuss what has been dubbed the “Slaughter Solution” to passage of the Senate health care bill. The precedent cited by Rules Chairman Louise Slaughter to justify the proposed maneuver (to “deem” passage of the Senate health care bill when in fact the bill has never been actually “passed”) simply does not support the planned manipulation of the House rules and may well violate the U.S. Constitution.

As early as 1933 House rules were interpreted to permit House acceptance of Senate Amendments in a bill simultaneously with House passage of a Resolution on a separate matter. But that precedent clearly included House concurrence in (or “passage” of) the Senate Amendments. The new maneuver planned for this week’s health care bill is not designed to be an up or down vote on Senate Amendments to a bill or a bill itself. Instead the proposed Rule will “deem”, or pretend, that a Senate bill that will never have been in fact “passed”, was instead “deemed” to have been passed. (more…)

Tags: Constitution, deem, house rules committee, senate health care bill, Slaughter solution

Obamacare Increases Unemployment, Insurance Premiums, Deficit, and Debt

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders claim that the Senate health bill, which will likely face a vote in the House by the end of the week, will decrease the deficit and bend the cost curve related to health care spending. However, recent analysis by The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis (CDA) shows that this is far from true. Instead, the bill’s mandates and numerous new taxes will have tumultuous effects. Passing Obamacare will come at the expense of the American people as it would grow the federal debt, increase premiums, and stifle economic growth.

The Senate bill would have disastrous effects on the economy and federal spending. CDA shows that the bill:

– Increases the federal deficit and national debt. The Congressional Budget Office shows deficit neutrality for the Senate bill—however, this is based on static analysis which ignores the effects new taxes and an individual and employer mandate would have on economic growth. These provisions would decrease investment in the economy, resulting in lower wages and salaries. This means less taxable income, lowering federal revenues and growing the debt. Increased borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates causing some private sector productive investment opportunities to be foregone. This also increases the interest owed on the national debt, such that the government would pay, on average, $20 billion more in interest between 2010 and 2020. By the end of the decade, CDA estimates the publicly held debt would be $755 billion dollars more than under current law. (more…)

Tags: deficit, jobs, mandates, national debt, premiums, senate health care bill, taxes, unemployment