The Right Prescription
Ruination From Obama-Baucus
How the Obama/Baucus health care takeover will ruin America’s health care.
(Page 2 of 3)
Even supposed moderate Democrats are now saying on TV that doctors and hospitals will just make up for these cuts in volume. What exactly does that mean for patients? It means precisely less time, fewer resources, and less care for each patient, and longer delays and waiting time for what they can get.
The Baucus bill further provides for an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission with the power to adopt still more Medicare cuts. These cuts would be adopted by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, and Obama and the Democrats will say those cuts had nothing to do with them.
Eventually, these Medicare cuts would be expanded to all doctors and hospitals under Obamacare, resulting in rationing for everyone. Further rationing would be imposed under so-called “comparative effectiveness,” where the government, not your doctor, decides what health care works and what doesn’t, and under “cost-effectiveness” where the government decides whether your health care is worth the cost. These decisions will be again enforced under the payment system for doctors and hospitals.
Literal clowns like Michael Moore and Wanda Sykes ridicule the notion that any such rationing and death panels are included in Obamacare. Glenn Beck already wrote a book responding to such uneducated foolishness, Arguing with Idiots. The whole Baucus bill is a death panel, as explained above.
Higher Costs
The Baucus bill will cause health insurance premiums to soar, as a new Price Waterhouse study confirmed on Monday. The study shows that an average family health insurance policy costing $12,300 today will explode under the bill to $17,200 by 2013, $21,300 by 2016, and $25,900 by 2019.
This will result in part because the bill forces everyone to purchase a health insurance plan specified by the government, with all the expensive, politically correct benefits like coverage for abortion. The Baucus bill will also add a new tax on health insurance that will be passed along to consumers. The bill further adds costly new regulations on health insurance, such as guaranteed issue, which requires coverage for all new applicants regardless of how sick they already are, and community rating, which requires the same premiums for new applicants regardless of health condition. This regulation is like requiring fire insurance companies to insure new applicants whose houses are already on fire, charging them no more than anyone else. Such regulations cause health insurance premiums to soar even in the context of broader health reform, as we have seen in Massachusetts.
But health insurance premiums will also rise because the Obama/Baucus health overhaul would radically increase incentives to demand more health care, with the government paying for everything or paying for health insurance to pay for everything. At the same time, it would radically reduce the incentives to supply health care by clamping down more and more on payments to doctors, hospitals and other health providers for health care services. Increasing demand while reducing supply will produce skyrocketing health costs, which will further increase health insurance premiums.
AARP’s John Rother shamefully attacked the Price Waterhouse study as not worth the paper it is printed on. But he has nothing to base that on. AARP has never responded to the arguments presented above, because it is a liberal/left front group specializing not in representing seniors but in political propaganda promoting socialized medicine, big government, and other left-wing causes. Average citizens wonder what they can do to fight back against President Obama’s left-wing tide. One thing you can do is quit any membership you have in AARP, and urge all of your friends, neighbors, and relatives to do the same. Seriously, the decline in AARP membership because of its mindless support for Obama’s government health care takeover is being monitored in Washington as a measure of public opinion.
The Price Waterhouse study did not even take into account all of the above factors that would increase health insurance premiums. But we can see the impact that would result in Massachusetts where Obama/Baucus-style reforms have already been adopted. Health insurance premiums for families in Massachusetts are already approaching $20,000 a year, the highest in the country. In Iowa, you can get adequate coverage for less than $2,000 per year. As one commentator has said, we have already conducted an experiment in the states as to what works in health reform, and Obama and the Washington Democrats are choosing to adopt what has failed.
New Entitlement Spending
America already faces a looming entitlement crisis. Costs for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are already projected to explode, causing federal spending as a percentage of GDP to almost double in the next couple of decades as the baby boom retires. We already can’t pay for all of the entitlement promises we have made.
Yet, instead of addressing these serious problems, the Baucus bill increases entitlement spending further. It expands Medicaid to cover millions more people, increasing government spending for the states as well in the process. And it provides new federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance for families earning as much as $88,000 per year! CBO projects these new subsidies will cost close to $500 billion to start. Remember in 1965 the government projected that Medicare would cost $12 billion by 1990. When we actually got to 1990, it cost $110 billion.
How could this be more irresponsible? It is an outright abuse of public office.
Tax Increases on the Middle Class
About the Author
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Heartland Institute, General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and Senior Policy Advisor on Entitlements and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (37) | Leave a comment
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Jim O'Brien| 10.14.09 @ 7:32AM
The medical plan passed by the Senate Finance Committee yesterday will not improve medical care. It will make medical insurance premiums skyrocket. It will reduce Medicare for millions of seniors by $400 to 500 billion. It will drive more people into Medicaid, and increase government subsidies. It will cost $1.5 trillion or more over ten years and result in huge tax increases and/or increasingly unsustainable levels of public debt.
1) It will increase the threshold for deducting medical expenses on your tax return to 10% of adjusted gross income, from 7.5%. In other words, you can only deduct medical expenses that exceed 10% of AGI, instead of 7.5% of AGI.
2) By limiting co-pays and deductibles, it will increase insurance premiums paid by consumers.
3) By requiring insurance companies to take "all comers" regardless of pre-existing conditions, it will increase premiums paid by consumers. It will also limit our choices of insurance companies, since some will exit the business altogether.
4) New taxes on insurance companies, drug companies, and medical providers will result in higher medical expenses for consumers, since the taxes will be passed along in the prices charged.
5) $400 to $500 billion in cuts to Medicare will result in reduced availability of medical care, and lower quality care, for millions of senior citizens --- those who are most likely to need medical care. These cuts include over $100 billion in cuts to the very beneficial Medicare Advantage plans currently offered to seniors in coordination with private insurance companies. Obama does not like Medicare Advantage plans.
6) A 40% excise tax on employer-sponsored medical insurance plans will cause more companies to drop or reduce coverage for their employees.
7) A fine of $750 per person will be imposed for those who don't buy medical insurance. This provision violates the U.S. Constitution.
8) The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate Finance Committee's plan, passed today, would result in "savings" of $81 billion over ten years. This is a gross distortion of the truth. According to independent sources, the cost over the first ten years is more likely to be $1.5 trillion, requiring massive new tax increases and/or massive new government debt. The existing level of debt has already been labeled unsustainable by well-known "experts".
The Finance Committee plan is insane, unless of course one considers the real objective of the perpetrators, which is to kill private insurance and ultimately drive everyone into the so-called "public option", socialized medicine.
Melvin| 10.14.09 @ 7:53AM
Like I said many time before. How long are we going to put up with this crap? Oh sure, we blotivate here on American Spectator, we discuss, we rant, but nothing changes.
Life will get harder for us and even harder for our children, but yet we do nothing but rant and rave.
People, everything we know and love about this country is falling apart around us. The politicians are turning us into lab rats to test their social re-engineering schemes and the expense of our lives.
But we still talk and rant and do nothing. What the sam hell are we afraid of? There are many things that we can do, but everyone is waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting. Is it that government has struck such fear into us, that all we do is rant and then crawl back to the safety of our rocks and hide under them?
Have we turned into such cowards to defend this Country that we allow government to beat us into submission like red headed step-children.
Government knows that we are a bunch of scared rabbits that scatter when Obama goes boo, and that is why he and the rest of his czarist fascists that he surrounds himself with are laughing themselves silly, "Oh, looook Mr. President, the dumb masses are protesting and tea-bagging again, ooh, ohh, ohh."
There is only one solution to the problem with government. For those that remember history and what the Italians did to Benito Mussolini when they caught up with him during World War Two. This is the only way that we can deal with fascists.
People we need to understand one thing, it is us or them, and there is nothing in between.
Alan Brooks| 10.14.09 @ 7:17PM
I think the opposite; health care WILL improve, but life is becoming empty.
Live longer, but the life becomes animalistic, tawdy, devoid of dignity.
The utter banality of evil.
Alan Brooks| 10.14.09 @ 7:21PM
(pardon, tawdry, not tawdy-- but 'tawdy' sounds right)
You're not looking ahead... health care iS slowly improving; but taste, dignity? going South.
However, to each his own,
whatever floats your boat and turns your crank.
Stephanie| 10.14.09 @ 8:50AM
Careful Melvin, you know they are watching.
But I do agree with you. What can we do? Using the ballot box seems to me, too little too late.
what's the answer?
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.14.09 @ 8:55AM
Melvin
Well stated. Please email me and tell me about great conservative (repealers) in your area.
Team America will get behind them right the heck now.
Sometimes, even good guys need an "attaboy"
In my district we are fortunate to have a splendid Rep. and a pretty good pair of Senators. I don't have to work locally except for those attaboys, so I can help with other critter districts.
Melvin| 10.14.09 @ 9:36AM
Good morning Ken, In my area we have Rep. Walter Jones, and the Senators are Richard Burr, and Kay Hagan.
Kay Hagan is a died in the wool Obamaite who already declared that she will vote for government run health care even before it had made it past the first committee.
Burr is going to vote against it, but I guess we were spoiled by Senator Jessie Helms and no one to date has been able to fill his shoes.
We have many good people in our area and
organizations like Americans for Prosperity, and others.
I have joned T.E.A.M America, haven't had the chance yet to digest the information that is
available.
Pingback| 10.14.09 @ 10:07AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Ruination From Obama-Baucus [spectat links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Houston Rao| 10.14.09 @ 10:49AM
The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (another congressional research body) concluded that tax payments would indeed rise. And it found that the middle class would be stuck with the tab.
The report projected that the excise tax would raise about $52 billion in 2019. Of that, about $8.9 billion would come from taxpayers with incomes of less than $50,000; about $19.4 billion from taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000; and about $17.4 billion from taxpayers with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000.
Add those up, and you see that about 87 percent of the revenue in the original Baucus proposal to finance Obamacare would come from individuals with incomes of less than $200,000.
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid!!
Jon| 10.14.09 @ 11:07AM
Hussein Obama is promised to "fundamentally change the United State of America", the "greatest country in country in the world". We now see that his campaign rhetoric was no idle promise. By taking control of the basic necessity of health care and negatively impacting those in most need of that care (the oldest among us), the "progresseives" will set the stage for the the further erosion of our liberties through Marxist government policies and mandated programs. Tax hikes and premium increases that further erode our spending power. Requirements and associated penalties that frighten us into complaince. Loss of exisitng health insurance as "Big Brother" imposes its will. Where is the problem solving and incremental apporach to fixing those problems. As Rohm Emmanuel has stated, you should not let a crisis go to waste when you can use it to impose a Marxist governing ideology, beginning with helath care. Our president has said that he believes the Constitution to be an "imperfect document" and should be interpreted differently by later generations as time changes. This effecitvely means that, in his mind, we do not have a solid foundation of beliefs and values as our founding fathers had established.
It is a scary time in America. We need to exercise our voting rights and next fall, remove from office all of those that are complicit in this treachery. Vote them all out of office and elect conservatives with a spine to begin to undo the damamge. Wake up America.
Grzmlyk| 10.14.09 @ 12:38PM
I wonder where Liberal Reader and his ilk are on this post?
Perhaps he's busily amassing ersatz stats on liberal Web sites to prove to us pagan non-believers that Universal Health Care will be wall-to-wall sunshine and lollipops, the apotheosis of Social Justice and government beneficence, a paragon of idyllic health care and vastly reduced costs, with plenty of doctors and spotless healthcare facilities furnished with only the finest equipment and the latest medications.
Why, once we confiscate the ill-gotten lucre residing in the bottomless pockets of this country's odious capitalists and coerce those evil, greedy insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, equipment companies and Big Pharma to provide everything for free, life in America will be just as peachy, just as wonderul, just as sweet as it is in the UK or Canada.
And, be still my liberal heart, all of this will reduce the deficit, praise be to Obama (may He live and rule forever).
Why, once we redistribute the wealth and toss evil conservatives into gulags, rainbow-colored unicorns and pixie dust will punctuate the beautifully verdant, immaculately-manicured landscape that is Sweet Government Control, a technicolor wonderland that will be utterly devoid of the blight of corruption.
What's sad is that if Liberal Reader becomes a victim of Obama's Brave New World of enforced serfdom and an ever-more expensive, ever shabbier national health care - and he will - he STILL won't get it.
Because liberalism comprises exactly two groups: Those who believe in fairy tales and the scum who exploit them.
And still Liberal Reader wonders why nobody on this site takes him seriously. Which proves that he belongs to the former group.
Rmm| 10.14.09 @ 12:45PM
To what do we owe this latest slap in the face, this farce of alot of human energy and time to produce this " health-care reform" legislation that does nadda to improve the "system". Not one paragraph about malpractice tort reform, which is a huge pay-off to money grubbing lawyers, to the tune of an estimated 10% surcharge on the "system". But the most scary aspect in all of this is the big gorilla in the room i.e., the federal debt. Current numbers show that this year debt will climb to 90% of GDP and hit the 100% mark in 2011.
Like Melvin above says, a whole bunch of ranting & raving, but we have to change the direction these tax& spend Dems are trying to take us.
Oldefarte| 10.14.09 @ 1:10PM
Beautifully written, Peter---your factual commentary is detailed TRUTH! It's obvious however that Obama/Democrats simply """""LIE"""""" about all aspects of this [and everything else]. Anyone who believes this excrement is a FOOL, and stupid besides. The question is WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT? Peter correctly recommended that AARP members cancel their membership, which will make a big impact. I'm asking Peter [and all other writers of AS,etc] to publish any/all websites, email addresses,etc of senators/representatives,etc so that us readers can sned email-protests to same. All of these DC congressmen become insolated from their state constituents and become influenced by Pilosi, Reid, the DNC, Obama, etc and end up shoving this garbage down the throats of the American taxpayers [who do not want or need this welfare healthcare excrement]. The nationwide protests are all fine and good to vent one's anger, but are largely ineffective, as congressmen can ignore same. What is needed is to VOTE THESE CONGRESSMEN OUT OF OFFICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Old Guy | 10.14.09 @ 1:34PM
Two suggestions:
Stop referring to a "bill" when no such thing yet exists. Call for a printed version to be available prior to any vote.
Stop using the terms "liberal" and "progressive." Call them what they are - STATISTS - to whom government, the state, is the be-all and end-all.
Robert Rosencrans| 10.14.09 @ 4:33PM
Here's the truth on the alleged CBO scoring. They admit they have no idea what it will cost.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10.....ealth.html
But Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said his agency had not estimated the impact of the bill on overall national health spending, public and private, and could not say whether it would “bend the cost curve,” as Mr. Obama and lawmakers want.
Likewise, Mr. Elmendorf said he did not know for sure how the bill would affect premiums.
Several senators said they would fight for changes on the Senate floor.
Jeff| 10.14.09 @ 6:46PM
"People, everything we know and love about this country is falling apart around us. The politicians are turning us into lab rats to test their social re-engineering schemes and the expense of our lives."
I agree Melvin, your doing more than enough ranting for everyone. When you guys want to come back to reality everyone who isn't losing their minds will welcome you back with open arms.
Pingback| 10.14.09 @ 5:31PM
terryfrank.net » Good Info on Health Legislation links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tim| 10.14.09 @ 7:37PM
A brilliant chess move by Obama today announcing that he wants to give Seniors a $250.00 rebate in 2010 because SS will not be giving a cost of living raise.
It's a brilliant diabolical political move because while the Seniors are bought off with these 30 pieces of silver the hope is that enough will be duped into looking the other way while the Health Care proposal cuts their medicare in half.
These guys may be socialist new world order one world government types but they ain't stupid.
but then neither were Stalin, Hitler, Lennin, Chavez, Mao, and Castro to name just a few.
Pingback| 10.15.09 @ 10:13AM
terryfrank.net » Today On the Radio (Thursday) links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
MFay| 10.15.09 @ 11:18AM
Good article as always from a good citizen-sentinel keeping both eyes on the "enemy within". Further to Peter's mention in this article of the Baucus plan's effect on Medicaid and for those of you interested, see if you can access an article in today's National Law Journal entitled: "Pharmacy groups sue over Medicaid cuts in three states." by their reporter Tresa Balda. That article provides another example of how the "Law of Unintended Consequences" simply cannot be ignored or fooled with. Maybe the federal government will Constitutionally abrogate private property and compel doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to provide services at a loss or at 1950s profit levels... The infuriating degree of ignorant tampering with the dynamic structure of the American economy by highly educated thugs and emotionally insecure hacks now brazenly showing their faces promises to indeed bring ruination...
arlene | 10.17.09 @ 12:14AM
lida daidaihua
daidaihua
GringoBob | 10.18.09 @ 4:20PM
my comments are here =
http://Group912.org/shadow/912a.html