Now that the Baucus Plan has been introduced as actual legislative language, it is clear more time is necessary to have a full understanding of the massive 1,500 page bill. As members get the opportunity to read the bill, more problems are likely to emerge on a daily basis. For example, the Baucus Plan either puts states into fiscal jeopardy or provides another budget gimmick to avoid paying the full cost of the legislation through the treatment of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The SCHIP provisions have significant …
The Washington Post reports: Congressional budget analysts have given House leaders cost estimates for two competing versions of their plan to overhaul the health-care system … The report from the Congressional Budget Office, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, puts the cost of one plan at $859 billion over the next decade and the other at $905 billion. … The cheaper version would rely heavily on a more dramatic expansion of Medicaid, the government health plan for the poor that is funded partly by the states …
This Morning Bell is the final installment of a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you. Lost in all of last weeks headlines on how the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) finally delivered a health care product that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was willing to say would reduce the deficit, was how exactly they achieved it. At a price tag of $829 billion, the SFC ’framework’ will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million, moving the overall percentage of nonelderly Americans with health insurance from 83% in …
According to the Associated Press, at the direction of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senate Democrats are plotting to pass a bill, by as early as next week, that grants doctors a $247 billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade. This will no doubt add to the deficit. Why are the Democrats so intent on spending $247 billion in one week? To pave the way for the White House to claim that Obamacare is deficit neutral. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Democratic Leadership are meeting, …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nalRPJctQE4[/youtube] “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government…Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” Or so President Obama says on the White House website. But does he mean it? Of course not. President Obama is leading the most secretive and least transparent administration in legislative history. And today, we have more proof. The video above was taken as Senate and White House leadership met behind closed doors to cobble together a bill that will make yesterday’s Finance Committee vote …
Leaders in the House and Senate have a secret plan to pass President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care plan without a conference and without any participation by the American people … but that plan that has been pushed to Plan B. The primary plan is to use a secretive conference committee procedure to pass Obamacare by the end of the year. Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee passed the outline of a bill, The Vapor Bill, out of committee on a party line vote with the lone crossover Republican support of …
On August 12th, President Barack Obama promised the American people: “Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” But if you read the New York Times closely today you learn that the Baucus bill set for a vote today in the Senate Finance Committee breaks that promise. The NYT reports:
In response to yesterday’s PriceWaterhouseCooper’s study showing that the Senate Finance bill would raise, not lower, health insurance premiums for Americans, M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber told the New York Times that the opposite was true. But think about it for a minute. Imagine if the federal government announced that car insurers had to provide car insurance for any American that applied. Now imagine that the federal government also forced car insurers to charge everyone the same price for car insurance regardless of their driving history. So a texting teen with …
The House and Senate are clearly divided over how to pay for the massive new spending commitments the federal government is taking on. Right now, House and Senate Democrats are meeting behind closed doors to figure out who they will tax and how much they can cut Medicare to meet what will be at least a $1 trillion commitment in new spending. Assuming for just the moment that they can make them match, Congress should look to the example of what Medicaid has done to state budgets. Medicaid Mess. The …
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report today giving the Baucus health care bill the stamp of deficit-reduction approval, but this was earned only through steep increases in indirect taxes, such as the coverage mandate. The coverage mandate included in Senator Baucus’ health care plan has significant and disturbing implications for middle-class Americans. Individuals earning up to $45,520 and families earning up to $92,640 would need to cut corners to make ends meet, all in response to the indirect tax implicit in a health care mandate. For individuals making $34,140 …
