FixHealthCarePolicy

Morning Bell: A Sham of a Summit for a Sham of a Bill

Today’s White House-sponsored health care summit is an insult to the intelligence of every honest American. President Barack Obama’s communications minions are still trying sell his plan as an “opening bid” in the health care debate. But as Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus asks: “With whom is he bidding? The public dance is with Republicans, but this is hardly serious. The White House does not enter Thursday’s summit expecting Republicans to make a deal.” In fact, the President’s recently-unveiled plan is specifically designed to be passed without a single Republican vote. That is why the Washington Post reports this morning:

Although Obama is billing the White House gathering as an opportunity for Republicans to air their ideas for reform, Democrats do not expect it to reveal much common ground and are showing little willingness to abandon the basic outline of legislation that the House and Senate have approved.

The real target of today’s summit are the 38 Democrats in the House who voted against Obamacare the first time. While Obamacare passed the House 220-215, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters yesterday she is not sure if she has the votes this time around. The passing of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the retirements of Reps. Robert Wexler (D-FL) and Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) have cost her three votes, and the inclusion of taxpayer-funded abortions in the Senate and White House plans will cost the vote of the only Republican to vote for the plan the first time around, Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), as well as Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and 15 to 20 additional pro-life Democrats. (more…)

Tags: Health Care Summit, health insurance, President's proposal, start over, taxes

A Taste of Health Care Reform

Anthem Blue Cross, the California subsidiary of Wellpoint, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, recently announced steep premium increases for its individual (i.e., not employment-based) insurance customers. The political response to these premium increases – of up to 39% for almost 700,000 customers – was swift and blunt. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ordered a federal investigation into how Anthem could “justify” the increases, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) scheduled a hearing, MoveOn.org launched a petition drive, and President Obama himself jumped at the opportunity to claim this as justification for the Democrat health reform effort, calling it “a portrait of the future if we don’t do something now.” Today, HHS released a report citing similar premium increases in several other states.

On the contrary – it’s a portrait of the future for the entire United States if either the House or Senate Democrats’ health bill becomes law. The Wall Street Journal points out that while Wellpoint as a whole is profitable, it has been losing money in this particular market, and these steep premium increases are the direct result of California’s state insurance regulations. Regulations require that insurance companies offer individual “conversion policies” to former employees who have exhausted their COBRA continuation coverage rights. This may be a good idea in principle, but California takes it a step further and sets the premiums to be charged for such coverage by statute. And, since those electing to take advantage of this option are disproportionately those with higher than average health care costs (often due to pre-existing conditions), the statutory rates aren’t sufficient to cover the costs of providing care for those patients. To stay in business – and indeed, to meet financial solvency regulations also imposed by the state – insurance companies have to get the money someplace, and the only place left is to increase premiums for customers not covered by the statute. Essentially, several of California’s regulations have combined to, in effect, require these steep premium increases. (more…)

Tags: Anthem Blue Cross, health insurance, ObamaCare, premiums, Wellpoint

Could Trillion Dollar Debt Kill Obama Health Care Reform?

It seems the President’s spending habits have finally caught up with him, threatening to kill a government overhaul of health care. Though President Obama and congressional Democrats continue to insist that health care reform is on the horizon, the increasing national concern over the rising public debt presents an undeniable obstacle.

James Capretta, a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, outlines why this is the case in a recent article for Kaiser Health News. First of all, President Obama is responsible for raising the debt to unprecedented levels. Capretta explains, “From 1789 through 2008, the U.S. government borrowed a total of $5.8 trillion. In 2009, the federal budget deficit exceeded $1.4 trillion. The administration now expects the 2010 deficit to break that record, topping $1.6 trillion. And in 2011, it would only fall to about $1.3 trillion. Thus, in just three years, the debt will have jumped an astonishing $4.2 trillion.”

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Tags: budget deficit, debt, health insurance, James Capretta, ObamaCare

What Obamacare and the NHS Have in Common

As US legislators continue to advance the largest expansion of government control over health care in the US, many Americans may need some comic relief. Although such massive consolidation of federal control over health care is by no means a laughing matter, the following 2-minute clip from a popular BBC Documentary Series “Yes, Minister” illustrates the ridiculousness of the efforts.

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Tags: British NHS, health insurance, ObamaCare

Michigan And Nebraska: The Senate Leadership Has Got A Deal For You!

It has been widely reported that various “sweeteners” are tucked away in the Manager’s Amendment to the Senate health care bill (H.R. 3950). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) worked out provisions designed to secure the votes of Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Carl Levin (D-MI) by exempting the biggest insurers in their states from the new health insurance premium taxes embodied in the bill.

Sure enough, the Manager’s Amendment adds under Section 9010(c)(2) a new subsection (C) tailored to exempt Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and a new subsection (E) tailored to exempt Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska from paying the new health insurance premium taxes.

Now, those Senators are reportedly pleased with themselves for doing such a fine job of looking out for the folks back home. The only problem is that they shielded just some of their constituents — which should surprise many of their other constituents.

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Tags: health insurance, Michigan, Nebraska, ObamaCare, Sen. Ben Nelson, Sen. Carl Levin, senate health care bill

Reid 2.0: Even Higher Premium Taxes

As part of Senator Harry Reid’s indefatigable effort to make each new version of the Senate health care legislation worse than the previous one, his Manager’s Amendment restructures and expands the health insurance premium tax included in the earlier versions of the Senate bill.

The earlier versions would have imposed a flat, $6.7 billion per year, health insurance premium tax (disguised as a “fee” imposed on private health insurers), starting in 2010.

The new version uses the same mechanism, but the tax doesn’t start until 2011 and is only $2 billion that first year — but then it increases to $4 billion in 2012, $7 billion in 2013, $9 billion in the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, and eventually $10 billion for 2017 and every year thereafter.

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Tags: health insurance, ObamaCare, premium taxes, Sen. Harry Reid, taxpayers

New Senate Health Bill: Exacerbating Federal Fiscal Insanity

Senator Reid seems comfortable with clandestine negotiations in order to ensure passage of any type of health reform. This course, aside from being politically dubious and whimsical, is fiscally reckless, and with its passage, will continue to add to the debt that will straddle future generations with a significant amount of fiscal stress.

As with the previous health reform bills, the assumptions and parameters the Congressional Budget Office must use will likely score this new bill as deficit neutral. Yet, the price tag for the overall bill will not changed, and will include massive expansions of Medicare and Medicaid making the long-term fiscal outlook in the US dismal at best.

Now, Congress wants to also raise the debt limit to finance more spending—including any type of health reform. Existing healthcare entitlement spending is already on an unsustainable course, however, and the intergenerational fiscal imbalance will only worsen, where future generations will face substantially higher net lifetime tax rates, permanently lower federal government purchases and transfers, or some combination of the two policy changes.

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Tags: debt, economy, health insurance, new taxes, ObamaCare, Sen. Harry Reid, spending

Video: Sen. Hatch Says Congress Is Boldly Going Where It Has Never Gone Before

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) addressed The Heritage Foundation yesterday on the unconstitutionality of congressional action that forces Americans to buy health insurance under Obamacare.

In Sen. Hatch’s opinion, that mandate would not pass muster under the Constitution, and it would be an entirely unprecedented action that is beyond the scope of Congress’ powers:

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Tags: health care, health insurance, Individual Mandate, ObamaCare, Sen. Orrin Hatch, unconstitutional

Will Obamacare Be Run from the West Wing?

The latest Senate leadership health care compromise is a “Bumper Sticker.” There are no details yet, but the Bumper Sticker tells us enough about where this compromise is heading: a massive concentration of political control over the health care system.

While the Senate leadership has decided to turn the outlines of their latest “breakthrough”- perhaps even the legislative text- to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate, we know something about what they have in mind. The broad outlines tell taxpayers a great detail about where the congressional liberals are going with this scheme. Curiously, with the right tweaks, it could do something quite unusual: end up concentrating control over the nation’s health insurance markets, literally, in the West Wing of the White House.

Here’s how. Part One of this scheme would empower the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that runs the federal civil service, to enter into a contract with two large health insurers (probably the Blues and Kaiser) to sell health plans in the state- based health insurance exchanges set up in every state of the Union, under the Senate bill. According to the press reports, these giants will be “non-profits,” reflecting the Left’s ideological hostility to profit-making insurance, regardless of its performance or patient satisfaction. That probably means that the Blues or Kaiser will have the inside track on any contract and stipend from the government.

These two giants would then compete against private health plans everywhere in the country. Now the key issue is how the OPM will administer this process. (Precious details, details, details.) Presumably, OPM will determine the health benefits, medical treatments and procedures to be offered on the national scale – the federal government would set benefits in any case, whether the exact determination will be made by OPM or the Secretary of Health and Human Services. So, these two giant “private plans” will administer the federal government’s benefits package. Be sure of that. Even more important is how the OPM will set premiums. This again, is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Will the premiums simply reflect free market rates, or would the premiums reflect the White House’s policy agenda. Why the White House? Simple. The Director of OPM reports to one person: The President of the United States.

Free markets are not in vogue on Capitol Hill right now, and surely not in the West Wing. It’s a good guess that the premiums will reflect some form of administered pricing scheme, enabling OPM to secure below-market rates for its contractors and drive private sector competitors out of the markets, consolidating federal control over the insurance markets in the same way that a “robust” public option was designed to do at the beginning of this process. Same end, different means.

There is a third consideration. The health plans are to be “non-profits” and serve a public agenda, as defined by the Senate liberal leadership. But will these non-profits also be “non-loss” plans? Will they be eligible for federal bailouts if they lose money? Good question. It’s hard to imagine that the congressional liberals would allow their latest scheme of “non-profit” health plans to fail. When this is finally unveiled in the light of day, read that fine print closely. They hope you won’t do that. So annoy them.

A government sponsored oligopoly is not anything like real competition – real competition is open markets and a level playing field, anybody can play – and the so-called private plans are “private” in name only, and they are simply hired guns to serve as the vehicles of Washington’s political agenda.

Part II of the compromise consists of an expansion of Medicare (including people as young as 55). And it’s big entitlement expansion. (That’s how the Congressional liberals now define “reform.”) Not surprisingly, Rep Anthony Weiner (D-NY) has applauded this part of the compromise as a big step toward the single payer option, and told the Los Angeles Times: “Expanding Medicare is an unvarnished, complete victory for people like me. It’s the mother of all public options.” Not to be outdone, the editors of The Washington Post said this morning: “ The irony of this late breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.”

The prescription: Massive erosion of private coverage from “crowd-out,” as employers with a large number of older employees have new incentive to dump them; higher Medicare costs, and even more debt, as millions more are added to the Medicare program, which already has a long-term debt of $38 trillion. Of course, Medicare expansion means more people covered under Medicare rates and artificially lower rates for doctors and hospitals. Even the K street crowd, desperate to be in with Capitol Hill’s current “In Crowd,” and so eager to get a pat on the head and that coveted “Seat at the Table,” is having second thoughts about this latest compromise. The AMA, which is obsessed about Medicare payment above all else, doesn’t like it. The American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals have urged their members to oppose the bill, as it would cut reimbursement rates to hospitals, which are already heavily burdened.

Already, the Senate bill provides for an expansion of Medicaid, a welfare program, up the income scales. Together, entitlement expansions can be expected to accelerate the erosion of the private health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. There is no reform here. Few politicians stop to look at the poor quality of care provided under Medicaid; fewer doctors take Medicaid patients, which is why so many Medicaid patients crowd into the emergency rooms. The politicians on the Hill with their Medicaid expansion will guarantee even more hospital emergency room over-crowding.

So much for the Big Compromise – Senator Harry Reid’s latest Breakthrough Moment. The end is pretty much the same: More government dependency, more poor quality care, combined with a staggering deficit. There is one thing that one could say may be new – depending how the Senators write the crucial details – more power to the President, who can guide and direct the shape of the health insurance markets through his Director of the Office of Personnel Management. That, at least, is a fresh approach to government control.

Audrey Jones co-authored this post.

Tags: health insurance, ObamaCare, President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid, single-payer system, White House

Video: On “This Week,” the Obamacare Rationing Debate Grows Heated

Earlier this week, The Foundry’s Conn Carroll wrote that under the Senate’s version of Obamacare, insurers and employers would have justification to refuse coverage for annual mammograms as a cost-cutting rationing measure, pursuant to the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

On Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the debate on mammogram rationing grew heated when Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explained that the Task Force’s guidelines on mammograms “become the law” under the Senate bill, meaning that rationing would occur. In response, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused Republicans of politicizing the issue of breast cancer.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) noted that while a “cost” argument for the guidelines could be made, “from a patient standpoint, they’re atrocious. And that’s the problem with a bureaucracy stepping between a physician and their patient.” (more…)

Tags: federal health insurance, health insurance, mammograms, Obama Health Care Plan