The pending health care legislation would cover the uninsured mainly by dumping most of them into the federal/state Medicaid program. Not surprisingly, many states have objected to the additional costs that such a Medicaid expansion would impose on their taxpayers. Indeed, that was the motivation behind the infamous “Cornhusker Kickback” in the Senate bill, under which the Federal government would pick up all of Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion costs in perpetuity. In response to complaints from governors and state lawmakers, coupled with public outrage over the “Cornhusker Kickback,” section 1201 of …
The White House has just issued an 11 page concept paper (PDF) for yet another health care bill that, among other items, includes a proposed new Federal “Health Insurance Rate Authority.” The Administration has yet to provide any legislative language on how this new Federal regulatory regime would operate, but based on statements by the President and other officials, as well as similar provisions included in the bills already passed by the House and Senate, there is good reason for concern as to whether the President and Congress really know …
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 …
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 …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) giant new health care bill contains the same provisions as the other House and Senate bills to establish Federal micromanagement of all private health insurance. Like the others, the Reid bill would subject all private health insurance — whether purchased from an insurance company by employer groups or individuals, or provided through an employer or union self-insured plan — to detailed Federal regulation. These so called “insurance reform” provisions amount to a de facto nationalization of health insurance and they would produce that effect …
Forget the President’s rhetoric about bending the health care cost curve. The House of Representatives will soon vote on legislation (H.R. 3961) that effectively repeals the cost control mechanism included in the Medicare physician payment update formula back in 1997. Passage of H.R. 3961 would add another $210 billion to the Federal government’s ballooning deficit — and even more importantly — it would demonstrate that Congress is not serious about actually enforcing any new Medicare spending cuts included in its pending health care bills. The result could be another half-a-trillion …
As critics have repeatedly point out, once Congress starts specifying minimum mandated coverage requirements for health insurance there will be no end to the lobbying to maximize the “minimum” that you will have to pay for in your health plan. Well, it turns out Congress is already behaving exactly as predicted — and they haven’t even passed a bill yet! The earlier House “Tri-Committee Bill” (H.R. 3200) lists in Section 122(b) the “Minimum Services to be Covered.” The new “Pelosi Bill” (H.R. 3962) includes the same language, only this time …
The House health bill (H.R. 3962) creates a new minimum federal standard benefit package that will eventually apply to nearly all health plans, and establishes a new “Health Benefits Advisory Committee”. The Committee, housed within HHS, will make detailed recommendations, which the Secretary of HHS would then impose on all private insurers and employers through regulation. HHS would have broad, permanent authority to continually update and expand the federal benefit requirements for all private health insurance and could regulate not only specific items and services than must be covered but …
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that he would bring to the Senate floor a bill that includes a new “public plan,” but with a provision allowing states to “opt-out.” In response to a reporter’s question, Reid said that states would have until 2014 to opt-out. Setting aside the debate over the merits of a “public option”,- a new government-run health plan to compete against private health plans- there are a number of additional questions about how such a state opt-out would work. Specifically: What process will a state …
On Monday the Senate Finance Committee unveiled the legislative text of S. 1796 — dubbed “America’s Healthy Future Act” — revealing to fans of legislative “bloatware” a new one for the record book! Not only does this latest entry in the Congress League’s 111th season “monster bill” competition outstrip all other current contenders in the Health Division, it even eclipses the previous all-time division titleholder. At a staggering 1,502 pages, the Finance Committee bill dwarfs the Senate HELP Committee’s 839 page bill (S.1679), and is nearly one-and-a-half times the size …
