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 …
Today’s Washington Post editorial page takes a critical look at Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) latest “compromise” health care bill, which it describes as 11th-hour “legislative sausage” that was “made on the fly” and includes ideas dating “at least to the Clinton administration.” Most significantly, though, the Washington Post sees Sen. Reid’s bill as a “dramatic step” toward a single-payer health care system, even if the public option is not on the table: [T]he last-minute introduction of this idea within the broader context of health reform raises numerous questions — …
For most of 2009, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have been obsessed with a “public option” for health care, which would create a government-run health care system that would eventually monopolize the industry and create the single-payer system liberals have long desired. Even when town hall protesters by the thousands jeered the concept; they stood by it. Even when poll numbers reflected a small minority of support; they stood by it. Even when study after study showed that millions of Americans would be forced out of their …
Political scientist Jacob Hacker claims in the Washington Post that the “Blue Dog” Democrats’ opposition to Obama’s “public plan” is not in the interests of their constituents – particularly farmers, ranchers, small business owners, and low- and middle-income workers, who would supposedly benefit from premium assistance and from the cost reductions he claims a Medicare-like public plan for the non-elderly would bring, as well as from the requirement that “all but the smallest of employers make a meaningful contribution to the cost of coverage.” On the contrary, it is precisely …
Earlier this week, in conjunction with The Lewin Group, we released an analysis of the House health bill showing that if the public plan component became law: Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and, as a consequence, about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage. About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan. Yearly …
A new study released today by the Lewin Group, one of the most well-respected health care consultancies in Washington, gives new estimates on “The Cost and Coverage Impacts of a Public Plan” like the one being considered by President Obama and the congressional leadership. The Lewin Group says that “If the public plan is opened to all employers…at Medicare payment levels we estimate that about 131.2 million people would enroll in the public plan. The number of people with private health insurance would decline by 119.1 million people. This would …
Yesterday in Albuquerque, N.M., Barack Obama told 1,800 adoring fans that, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” Obama was responding to a a voter who asked why he did not currently support single-payer health care. Obama explained: “Given that a lot of people work for insurance companies, a lot of people work for HMOs. You’ve got a whole system of institutions that have been set up. … So my attitude is let’s build up the system we got … …
