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 …
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s timely piece in The Washington Post, lays out his elements of a serious health care reform package. Even in the face of clear and growing opposition from the majority of the American people, the White House and the Congressional leadership continue to ignore any of the common sense ideas put forth by serious health care analysts who do not tow a left wing policy agenda. There are numerous bills in Congress that would have positive impact on the health care system, and would sharply reduce the …
Senator Baucus’ latest attempt to reach a bi-partisan agreement still misses the mark. While there may be a few elements that may be worth discussing, the vast majority of the proposal continues to take the discussion over reform in the wrong direction. Many of the same fundamental problems plague this proposal as the other proposals in Congress. Centralizes power in Washington and adds new layers of federal bureaucracy. The entire bill is based on creating new federal authority over the regulation and delivery of health care. This not only pre-empts …
This weekend President Obama dedicated his weekly address to defending Congress’s plans for an overhaul of the nation’s health care system. He argued, “Once you’ve seen enough ads and heard enough people yelling on TV you might begin to wonder whether there’s a grain of truth to what they are saying.” Here’s the truth, brand-new analysis(pdf) from The Heritage Foundation — conducted by The Lewin Group— shows that the public plan component within the House Democrats’ health reform bill is in conflict with how the Congress and the President are …
Republicans in Congress are making yet another major attempt to reform the health care system, going in a very different direction from the expensive health reform bills proposed by Democrats. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) is set to introduce his Improving Health Care for All Americans Act, which seeks to control costs while promoting greater health insurance portability and choice. The bill offers three main provisions: offer tax relief for those who don’t have employer-sponsored insurance or don’t like their current work place coverage, establish new pooling arrangements for individuals, and facilitate …
In his testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee on the Tri-Committee Health Care Reform bill, Dr. Jacob Hacker (the architect of the now famous “public plan option”) continues to suggest that a public plan has the benefit of lower administrative costs compared to private coverage: Perhaps the most pressing of these problems is skyrocketing costs. Public health insurance has much lower administrative expenses than private plans, it obtains larger volume discounts because of its broad reach, and it does not have to earn profits as many private plans …
Efforts in Congress to fast-track passage of an economic stimulus package and expansion of the children’s health care program, if successful, would give liberals a big down payment on nationalizing health care. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) has stated as much. America already was on a fast track toward the tipping point in health care — that point where the federal government will control more spending on personal health than the private sector does. Today, as this chart shows, government controls 46 percent of such spending; its share is …
