FixHealthCarePolicy

Morning Bell: A Health Bill Nobody Believes In

As Congress prepares for another Saturday night vote on health care reform, Americans are slowly unpeeling the layers of the Reid Bill and discovering the details:

Kills Jobs: All told, the Reid Bill raises taxes by $370.2 billion over the next ten years with many of those taxes starting to be collected this year while unemployment is at 10.2% and rising. Worse, the bill includes a job killing employer mandate which taxes companies for hiring people. Specifically, companies with more than 50 employees that do not offer a health plan approved by federal bureaucrats will be forced to pay a $750 per employee job tax.

Hurts Small Businesses: The Reid Bill acknowledges it is terrible public policy for small businesses and tries to address this problem by including a “small business tax credit” to minimize the impact of the job killing employer mandates and regulation-caused rises in private health insurance premiums. But the tax credit only lasts two years and largely excludes small business owners, small businesses with high-average payrolls, and firms with 25 or more workers. After all exclusions, essentially the only eligible firms are those firms with 10 or fewer workers as well as those with low-income workers—the least likely to offer coverage even with a significant price reduction. (more…)

Tags: morning bell, Obama Health Care Plan

Morning Bell: Doc Fix Digs Debt Deeper

Yesterday at 3:00 p.m. ET, the Treasury Department updated its calculation of the U.S. National Debt to: $12,031,299,186,290.07. That $12 trillion record high comes just eight months after it hit $11 trillion and is only expected to rise faster considering the federal deficit for 2009 was over $1.4 trillion. And what is the leftist majority of Congress going to do tomorrow about these skyrocketing deficits? They are going to pile on the spending faster.

The issue at hand is the congressionally created formula for annually updating the payments doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. The centrally planned price fixing formula was designed to control health care costs by tying doctor payments to the overall growth rate of the economy. Problem is the realities of supply and demand in the health care sector have pushed doctor’s fees higher than the formula allows for. So instead of going back and fixing the formula (or heaven for bid introducing some market based reforms into Medicare), every year Congress passes short-term fixes rescinding the scheduled rate cuts. (more…)

Tags: doc fix, morning bell, trillion dollar deficits

Morning Bell: A Deathblow for Obamacare

Standing in the Rose Garden on November 7th, President Barack Obama celebrated the passage of the House health care bill claiming: “The Affordable Health Care for America Act is a piece of legislation that will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don’t; and bring down the cost of health care for families, businesses, and our government, while strengthening the financial health of Medicare.” Quite a bold statement if true. But a report released Friday by the non-partisan and independent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, blows the lid off of every one of Obama’s claims. All of the following quotes are from the report itself:

Health Care Costs Increase: “In aggregate, we estimate that for calendar years 2010 through 2019 [national health expenditures (NHE)] would increase by $289 billion, or 0.8 percent, over the updates baseline projection that was released on June 29, 2009.” In other words, Obamacare bends the cost curve up, not down.

Millions Lose Existing Private Coverage: “However, a number of workers who currently have employer coverage would likely become enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program or receive subsidized coverage through the Exchange. For example, some smaller employers would be inclined to terminate their existing coverage, and companies with low average salaries might find it to their – and their employees’ – advantage to end their plans … We estimate that such actions would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 12 million.” In other words, Obamacare will cause millions of Americans to lose their existing private coverage. (more…)

Tags: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, morning bell, Obama Health Care Plan

Morning Bell: The Public Option Is Neither Public, Nor An Option

When Mike Myers’ Linda Richman character would get a “little faklempt” on the Saturday Night Live skit Coffee Talk, she would give the audience a topic to discuss while she composed herself, like: “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Discuss.” If Linda were still hosting her show today, she could as accurately say about today’s health care debate: “The public option is neither public, nor an option.” Let’s discuss.

For the leftist base of the Congressional majority, the creation of a government-run health insurance company has been the defining issue of the health care debate. So, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has explained numerous times that: “The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps keep the private sector honest because there’s some competition out there.” But is this true? Would the public have more choices if a government run health insurance company was created?

Five different organizations and offices have made predictions of how many Americans could end up enrolled in the public option, including: The Lewin Group, the Congressional Budget Office, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Urban Institute, and Health Systems Innovations Network. They all tell a similar story: the number of Americans that end up in the government run plan will greatly depend on who is allowed to buy into it, and how much they have to pay. (more…)

Tags: government-run health care, morning bell, public option

Morning Bell: Obamacare Sends Deficits Off Cliff

This Morning Bell is the second in a five-part week-long series (read Monday’s on out-of-pocket costs) on how Obamacare will affect you.

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period.” President Barack Obama promised this to the American people in his health care address before a Joint Session of Congress on September 9th. Problem is, no one believes him.

The Congressional Budget Office has issued reports on the Senate Health Committee bill (HELP), the House Tri-Committee Bill (HR 3200), and the Senate Finance Committee bill (Baucus bill). According to the CBO, the HELP bill would add $600 billion to the deficit in just the first ten years, HR 3200 would add $239 billion to the deficit in just the first ten years, and the Baucus bill claims to reduce the deficit by $81 billion. (more…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, HR 3200, morning bell