Tag Archives: Socialized

News

CRISIS! Evaluating the leaked Democrat health care bill

3 Comments

Keith Hennessey is the go-to guy for analyzing economic policies. He takes a look at the leaked draft of the health care bill that I blogged about before. He lists 15 things you need to know about the draft bill.

Below I’ve listed a few of the scariest parts.

Mandatory coverage

The Kennedy-Dodd bill would create an individual mandate requiring you to buy a “qualified” health insurance plan, as defined by the government.  If you don’t have “qualified” health insurance for a given month, you will pay a new Federal tax.  Incredibly, the amount and structure of this new tax is left to the discretion of the Secretaries of Treasury and Health and Human Services (HHS), whose only guidance is “to establish the minimum practicable amount that can accomplish the goal of enhancing participation in qualifying coverage (as so defined).”  The new Medical Advisory Council (see #3D) could exempt classes of people from this new tax.  To avoid this tax, you would have to report your health insurance information for each month of the prior year to the Secretary of HHS, along with “any such other information as the Secretary may prescribe.”

Employer mandate

The bill would also create an employer mandate.  Employers would have to offer insurance to their employees.  Employers would have to pay at least a certain percentage (TBD) of the premium, and at least a certain dollar amount (TBD).  Any employer that did not would pay a new tax.  Again, the amount and structure of the tax is left to the discretion of the Secretaries of Treasury and HHS.

Mandatory services that I don’t use

A qualified plan would have to cover “essential health benefits,” as defined by a new Medical Advisory Council (MAC), appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services… The MAC would have to include items and services in at least the following categories:  ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and new born care, medical and surgical, mental health, prescription drugs, rehab and lab services, preventive/wellness services, pediatric services, and anything else the MAC thought appropriate.

That’s just redistribution of wealth for elective services, right there. I wonder whether support for contraceptives and abortion would also be required.

Premiums not related to lifestyle risks

Health insurance plans could not charge higher premiums for risky behaviors:  “Such rate shall not vary by health status-related factors, … or any other factor not described in paragraph (1).”  Smokers, drinkers, drug users, and those in terrible physical shape would all have their premiums subsidized by the healthy.

Guaranteed issue and renewal

All health insurance would be required to have guaranteed issue and renewal, modified community rating, no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime or annual limits on benefits, and family policies would have to cover “children” up to age 26.

…Guaranteed issue and renewal combined with modified community rating would dramatically increase premiums for the overwhelming majority of those Americans who now have private health insurance.  New Jersey is the best example of health insurance mandates gone wild.  In the name of protecting their citizens, premiums are extremely high to cover the cross-subsidization of those who are uninsurable.

Massive wealth redistribution, especially to Democrats

People from 150% of poverty up to 500% (!!) would get their health insurance subsidized (on a sliding scale).  If this were in effect in 2009, a family of four with income of $110,000 would get a small subsidy.  The bill does not indicate the source of funds to finance these subsidies.

…People in high cost areas (e.g., New York City, Boston, South Florida, Chicago, Los Angeles) would get much bigger subsidies than those in low cost areas (e.g., much of the rest of the country, especially in rural areas).  The subsidies are calculated as a percentage of the “reference premium,” which is determined based on the cost of plans sold in that particular geographic area.

Hennessey then goes on to explain all of the implications of his 15 points. READ IT ALL.

BONUS

Verum Serum has 2 posts up where they examine:

Comparing patient outcomes for cancer treatment in the USA vs Europe

Related chart:

Cancer mortality rates
Cancer mortality rates

AND:

Obama’s plan to pass the health care bill unilaterally, under a bi-partisan smokescreen

They have a plan to bypass the likely Republican filibuster. It’s a done deal.

News

Patients United gets advanced copy of Obama’s health care plan

Leave a comment

And the news so far is not good…

Hot Air has the story, along with a video of Amy Menefee from Patients United Now. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

The bill is HUGE, so right now conservative bloggers are scouring it to find out what’s in it.

Here’s what Ed Morrissey found so far in the bill, on pages 39-40:

(1) IN GENERAL – A State shall keep an accurate accounting of all activities, receipts, and expenditures of any Gateway operating in such State and annually submit to the Secretary a report concerning such accountings.

(2) INVESTIGATIONS – The Secretary may investigate the affairs of a Gateway, may examine the properties and records of a Gateway, and may require periodical reports in relation to activities undertaken by a Gateway.  A Gateway shall fully cooperate in any investigation conducted under this paragraph.

Ed writes:

“Gateway” means “provider,” and this appears to do away with that pesky Fourth Amendment, which normally requires search warrants and probable cause to access the records of individuals and businesses.  Not under ObamaCare!  Now, everyone belongs to the government … rather than the other way around.  George Orwell, call your office!

Amy Menefee’s group is running this TV ad to help Americans to understand the perils of single-payer health care by learning from the Canadians, who are stuck in waiting so long that they die, or bite the bullet and come here to pay out of pocket. Patients United Now has the entire 167 page bill online and it is searchable, for those of you who would like to take a look at it.

My previous post on socialized medicine linked to even more horror stories from other countries with socialized medicine.

UPDATE: Commenter ECM sent me this story about how the CBO is not counting the costs of mandatory health care for the uninsured in their estimates, because they are charging it against private insurers!

Typically, the CBO scores legislation only after it has been finalized. But in a May 27 issue brief, the CBO took a proactive stance on budgetary treatment of proposals to change the nation’s health insurance system. A federal mandate requiring individuals to have a minimum amount of health insurance would not be counted as a government expense “because the federal government imposes a variety of mandates on private entities whose associated costs are not included in the budget,” said CBO director Douglas Elmendorf in a blog explaining the brief.

NOT GOOD!

Videos

Selling single-payer health care with lies

3 Comments

Holy Snark!

You will watch this 3 minute video about the Democrats’ plan for single-payer health care right now! (H/T Heritage Foundation)

This video is courtesy Verum Serum, the same guys who brought us that Jan Schakowsky video where she admits that Obama’s plan will destroy private medical insurance. They seem to be a Christian blog, so I blogrolled them, along with Bush White House economist Keith Hennessey, who I linked to twice.

Quick quote from Heritage Foundation’s post:

As Yale professor Jacob Hacker says in the video: “Someone once said to me this is a Trojan Horse for single payer and I said well its not a Trojan Horse, right? Its just right there.”

And then later:  “One of the virtues of it though is that you can at least make the claim that there is a competitve system between the public and private sectors.”

Don’t forget some other videos I posted on health care, (that post has a link to Laura’s amazing post on health care that was on Hot Air, which had more helpful videos!).

Michelle Malkin has some ideas about what the grassroots can do! We can fight this.

A comprehensive, point-by-point refutation of government-run health care is here, at the Heritage Foundation.

They cover:

  • the hidden costs of government-run health care, that are paid by the private sector
  • the low efficiency and low quality of existing government plans like Medicare and Medicaid
  • how government-run health care would lead to controls on your private life to reduce health costs
  • the real solution to the health care mess: competition, de-regulation and consumer choice

Some good news on health care

OK, Heritage Foundation had this story on a bill introduced by Republican senators Tom Coburn and Richard Burr. It’s called the “Patient’s Choice Act”.

Excerpt: (I bolded the stuff I liked)

As Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner and Joseph Antos with American Enterprise Institute note in The Wall Street Journal, the legislation “provides a path to universal coverage by redirecting current subsidies for health insurance to individuals. It also provides a new safety net that guarantees access to insurance for those with pre-existing conditions.”

By restructuring the tax treatment for health insurance, the plan would give every taxpayer direct assistance to buy private health insurance, and end the inequities that plague the current system. The bill would shift the $300 billion annual tax exclusion for employer-based health benefits toward refundable tax credits for families and individuals. Families would get $5,700 a year and individual consumers would get $2,300 a year to purchase private plans and invest in health savings accounts (HSAs).

Low-income families would receive a supplemental debit card worth up to $5,000 that would help them pay for health coverage and out-of-pocket medical bills. They’d also be incentivized to make the most of their health care dollars since the remaining balance on their card would roll over to the next year. The expected expansion of private health plans would reduce the dependence of many uninsured Americans on the hospital emergency rooms for routine care, saving American taxpayers billions of dollars.

“The combination of the refundable tax credit and debit card gives lower-income Americans a way out of the Medicaid ghetto so they can have the dignity of private insurance,” Turner and Antos add.

This is what Republicans would do if we could elect enough of them.