House Passage of Health Care Reform Now Appears Imminent by Gregory Hilton

The American people are the clear losers tonight. There were excellent alternatives to improve health care but the Democrats were not interested in compromise. Democrats admit the bill costs at least $1.3 trillion but they still say this will reduce health care costs. Speaker Pelosi and her allies are creating a bureaucratic beast that will end the American health care system as we know it. It will kill millions of small business jobs at a time when our nation’s unemployment rate has exceeded 10%. It will also cut Medicare, pile massive debt on future generations, and increase costs.
Our health care system does need revamping, but we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The House bill ignores tort reform and insurance companies will not have the ability to provide coverage across the United States.
If the Pelosi plan is so good then why doesn’t the Congress adopt it for themselves rather than keeping their Cadillac Plan?
This bill will cut reimbursements to physicians and hospitals, and the backlash will be fewer primary physicians or, those who take Medicare/Medicaid will cease to do so. If reimbursements to hospitals decrease, the far reaching effect will be lay offs for nurses. There are already nursing shortages, nurse patient ratios are now unacceptable to the point of being dangerous.
Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the House health reform bill.
Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.
“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense – we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit.
“If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.”

If The Public Option is Dead, Democrats Killed It by Gregory Hilton

Democrats have a veto proof majority in the U.S. Senate but the health care public option still went down to defeat yesterday in the Finance Committee. The demise was due to the opposition of Democrats Max Baucus (MT), Kent Conrad (ND), Blanche Lambert (AR), Tom Carper (DE) and Ben Nelson (NE). Liberal organizations ran powerful TV ads in Montana against Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, but it was not enough. A major reason for the defeat is the shift in public opinion. Lambert emphasized health care in her two previous Senate campaigns. She is up for reelection in 2010 and does not face a well known GOP foe. Nevertheless, she is losing to all four Republicans. Lambert will not vote for cloture on any bill that has a public option. Conrad and Baucus obviously do not want it, and Nelson is telling Senate Democrats not to pass health through the reconciliation process. The public option can survive in the House, but I am skeptical it will be added back in a House/Senate Conference. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is telling the Senate Democrats that a bill requiring mandates with no public option will result in a 2010 election setback for her party.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich responded: “An amazing number of Democrats voted no, and I think it puts them in a position where there’s a clear signal to the House Democrats that unless you’re suicidal, you’re going to drop this because why would a marginal House Democratic member vote for a government option in the House knowing that it is absolutely dead in the Senate?”

Reaction to the Presidential Address on Health Care by Gregory Hilton

Earlier tonight President Obama addressed a Joint Session of Congress on health care policy. My reaction was as follows:
Mr. President: If we spend more than all other countries, and we aren’t any healthier, then why do you want us to spend another $1 trillion?
The President said: “We believe that less than 5 percent of people will sign up” for the public option. The same figure was used in Massachusetts when they initiated a government plan. The $100 million budget three years ago is now over $700 million. If only 5 percent of the people are going to sign up is there really a crisis? How does the U.S. Government legally charter a non-profit company that uses no taxpayer funds under the public option?
The President said: “30 million Americans can’t get coverage.” Two weeks ago he was claiming it was 48 million.
“If Americans can’t find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice.”
Why can’t we give the uninsured vouchers and let them shop?
“I will not sign a plan that adds a dime to the deficit, now or in the future. . . We can pay for this plan with savings.”
The plan is already projected to cost $948 billion over ten years. How are you going to find an almost $1 trillion in savings? Will it be done by rationing care? Will it be done by cutting $622 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.
The President continued to ignore tort reform. We definitely need serious reforms and the best alternative is the Patients’ Choice Act. This addresses the issue of affordability without rationing care or adding to the debt. It is estimated to save us $960 billion during the next decade.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) described the need for transparency: “To understand how much government is already interfering with your health care, imagine if when you wanted to buy a new car, but all of the auto company websites had been disabled and you were directed to a third-party site set up by Congress that buried basic information about automobile features and price. Then imagine that if you lived in New Jersey you must buy certain features, however costly, but if you lived in California you had to buy another set of features. Then imagine that Congress set up a system where you did not really shop for your car at all because your employer and the government took care of the details.”
Burr says the Patients Choice Act will: “Shift decision-making authority in health care away from government and health insurance bureaucrats and back to individuals. Specifically, we would shift health care tax benefits to individuals and families in the form of a tax rebate worth $2,200 for individuals and $5,700 for families. Under our plan, if you like the health care you have, you can keep it — but you will have more money in your pocket because you will still receive a tax rebate.”

Addressing Major Arguments in the Health Care Debate by Gregory Hilton

No one is dying in the United States because they do not have health insurance. Poor people who are sick are treated and hospitals have to absorb the losses for this care. Doctors are required to treat everyone who comes to the Emergency Room. With universal health care, doctors will be employed by the government. If that system was so great Canadians would not be coming to America for health care. In the UK there are numerous complaints about getting a simple procedure done. Some people have to wait 6 months before being diagnosed. Without incentive there’s no quality.
No one should die because the government rations health care, and no one should go broke paying taxes to pay for new entitlements. Free health care for everyone sounds wonderful. Unfortunately the government has nothing of its own to give us, it must first tax us to pay for it. Nothing is free. We do need a far better insurance system and tort reform, but government run health care has been a disaster for Medicare/Medicaid, VA and the Indian Health Service.
We do need health care reform and lets begin by deregulating the insurance companies and putting a cap on law suits. That would be an excellent start to make things more affordable. Many tests right now are ordered just because doctors are afraid to get sued. The costs of litigation (successful and otherwise) are passed along to consumers, further driving up costs. The insurance industry is also heavily regulated, so our country is broken up into 50 separate markets, decreasing competition between companies.
The GOP is proposing vouchers for poor people, and a national market for health insurance so that competition across state lines will improve choice for everyone. Tort reform with caps on awards, and health savings accounts for insurance premiums. We want to help the 22.4 million currently uninsured Americans get health care coverage at lower costs.

Problems with Health Care’s Public Option by Gregory Hilton

Health care spending in every Western country with a public option has been growing faster since 2000 than it has been in the United States. The public option is really the government option. It will not promote competition, it will eliminate it. It would sooner or later takeover over our health care system. It will deprive people of choice. If it was just another insurance policy, then we would have 1,501 opportunities.
President Obama has frequently reassured us that, if we are happy with our present insurance, there is no cause for alarm—our right to keep it will not be denied. Of course, it will no longer exist in a few years, so the right to keep it is pointless. A new “public option” would provide employers with a strong financial incentive to drop insurance for their employees, to give way to the public plan. Private insurers will be forced out of the game as the public plan draws unlimited credit from a government.
No one knows how much this public option will cost. Some estimates peg the 10-year cost at $1.7 trillion. When the government introduced Medicare in 1965, the estimated cost to taxpayers by 1990 was supposed to be $9 billion. In reality, the cost was $67 billion — a seven-fold miscalculation. So what happens if this public option ends up costing just three times as much as estimated? That’s a 10-year cost of $5.1 trillion to taxpayers. How will we pay for it? Through tax increases. It is interesting that one of the first arguments put forward by supporters of the public option is that it won’t result in a government-run system like single-payer health care. That may be so at first, but it puts the nation on the road toward single-payer.
The UK’s National Health Service is socialized medicine and it produces some of the worst health outcomes in the industrialized world. Britain is the Western state where you’d least want to have cancer or a stroke or heart disease. Ours is now a country where thousands of people are killed in hospitals for reasons unrelated to their original condition. Britain has become a place where foreigners fear to fall ill.

Should Republicans Shut Down the Senate Over Health Care by Gregory Hilton

Democrats definitely do not have the 60 votes necessary to pass the health care public option, and they may now resort to the reconciliation process which requires only 51 votes. Conservative activist Gary Bauer is urging a GOP shutdown of the Senate in response. He may be correct but my fear is what happened when Republicans shut down the government for 25 days in 1995 when a compromise could not be reached on the budget.
A shut down of the Senate is not analogous to a shut down of the government, but the 1995 effort resulted in a significant setback to the Republican Party. Bill Clinton appeared to be the winner in the budget battle, and it gave him significant advantages going into his re-election campaign. We should of course make a major effort to stop the public option, but if we fail after a reasonable time, it might be just as well to take this issue to the voters in 2010.
The government shutdown of ‘95 wound up closing down federal agencies which provided essential services and inconvenienced many people. This turned the tide against Republicans. Even if Democrats are successful with the reconciliation route, they would pay dearly for it in 2010. Republican could wait for the 2010 election because the public option is not scheduled to in effect until 2013.
On the other hand, Republicans could well have a mandate for a shutdown and they may not lose favor with constituents. Reconciliation would clearly be an undemocratic way of getting this done, when the majority of the public is opposed. During the 1994 shut down, Republicans were exposed because Speaker Gingrich added a personal bent to the proceedings which made it look extremely petty. Clinton got a major break when Speaker Gingrich made a widely-reported complaint about being snubbed by the White House. Former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay called it “the mistake of his Gingrich’s life”. Delay writes in his book, No Retreat, No Surrender:
“He told a room full of reporters that he forced the shutdown because Clinton had rudely made him and Bob Dole sit at the back of Air Force One…Newt had been careless to say such a thing, and now the whole moral tone of the shutdown had been lost. What had been a noble battle for fiscal sanity began to look like the tirade of a spoiled child. The revolution, I can tell you, was never the same.”
Gingrich’s complaint resulted in the perception that he was acting in a petty, egotistical manner. Later polling demonstrated that the event badly damaged Gingrich politically.

Is This the End of the Public Option by Gregory Hilton

President Barack Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, today suggested that the White House is ready to accept nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run public option in a health overhaul plan. The President has been actively promoting the public option in numerous speeches during the past month but now his administration appears to be throwing in the towel. Secretary Sebelius and Senate Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) have completely changed their rhetoric. Comments on the Huffington Post demonstrate that the left wing is furious.
Republicans will now be blamed for killing health care reform, but the critics must be reminded that Democrats have veto proof majorities in both Houses of Congress. They do not need one GOP vote for passage of the public option. It would be more production for the liberals to direct their anger at Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), the Chairman of the Finance Committee.
Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) today described the public option as “a lost cause” and “a wasted effort.” “Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been,” Conrad said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.” The President has an op-ed column in today’s NY Times but it does not mention the public option.
There are now five different health reform bills and six Senators (3 Republicans and 3 Democrats) are leading the negotiations. The major topic is co-ops but that was not a great success for Blue Cross. I continue to hope for reforms such as selling insurance across state lines, association health plans and malpractice caps.
Not one House Republican is supporting health care reform’s public option. Democrats need 15 conservative “Blue Dogs” for passage and 4 have already signed on. The August recess is having an impact and non-Blue Dogs such as Artur Davis (AL) have also come out against it. More will follow. Nevertheless, House Speaker Pelosi will find the votes but the public option will not pass the Senate.
Pelosi only needs nine votes. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA), a Blue Dog, has already come out against the bill and says “It would be naive to think this month and what you’ve seen across the country will not have an effect on Blue Dogs. I would expand that beyond Blue Dogs to newly elected members who represent moderate to conservative districts. Spending a few weeks back home and seeing the level of displeasure, it will be tough for them to support this bill.”
What will the Senate pass? The current compromise involves a massive public subsidy to the private health care industry. This will break Obama’s campaign promise to allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug companies, and it will mandates that people without insurance buy inadequate policies or they will be fined by the IRS.
According to Miles Mogelescu in Huffington Post: “This could turn a generation against the Democratic Party, revitalize the Republicans, and ‘prove’ to many Americans that government intervention in the economy is a bad thing.”

Obama’s Grass Roots Lose Enthusiasm by Gregory Hilton

New York Times: Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama’s Grass Roots by Jeff Zeleny
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/policy/15ground.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Iowa is where the Obama phenomenon began but now “only the most diehard of supporters attend events.” If the New York Times is saying this you know the President’s agenda is in serious trouble. At the time of the Iowa presidential precinct caucuses the major issue was Iraq. The left was outraged when Bush announced a 21,000 troop surge for Iraq in 2007. Obama implemented a 21,000 troop surge for Afghanistan and they yawned.
Byron York noted this in his most recent column in National Review: “I attended the first YearlyKos/NetrootsNation convention, in 2006, and have kept up with later ones, and it’s safe to say that while people who attended those gatherings couldn’t stand George W. Bush in general, their feelings were particularly intense when it came to opposing the war in Iraq.
“It animated their activism; they hated the war, and they hated Bush for starting it. They weren’t that fond of the fighting in Afghanistan, either. Now, with Obama in the White House, all that has changed. . . . Not too long ago, with a different president in the White House, the left was obsessed with America’s wars. Now, they’re not even watching.”
The “fierce moral urgency” drained out of the antiwar movement as soon as a Democrat was elected President. Over 13 million people belong to his Organizing for America group and their passionate opposition to the Iraq War rocked the nation a year ago. They have paid organizers in 44 states and they have sponsored TV ads promoting the President’s agenda on health care and climate change. The liberal San Francisco Chronicle is covering major anti-Obama rallies by noting the events are the largest conservative demonstrations the city has seen in many years.
The President is an articulate spokesman for his cause. He has been working diligently but so far he is not having a major impact. He has recruited a few Blue Dogs on the public option such as Mike Ross (D-AR), but September should be a grim month for those supporting the Obama agenda.
The article notes, “Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago. . . . ‘People came out of the woodwork for Obama during the campaign, but now they are hibernating,’ Ms. Smith said.”
Dr. Phil Cantrell of Longwood University in Virginia recently wrote to me and said: “You are exactly right about the anti-Iraq War passion. As a professor on several different college and university campuses during those years, I saw my (almost entirely) liberal colleagues incite their students into opposition to the war in an overt way I had not seen before with politics in the classroom. I was “advised” by a much older colleague at Ohio University that I should excuse my students absences when they attended anti-war rallys, especially since, as I was told, ‘This generation was not always treated so kindly by conservative, 1950s era professors when they were protesting Vietnam.’
“I believe that this type of things lies at the heart of the enormous student vote that turned out for Obama as liberal baby-boomer professors saw themselves relieving the Vietnam War. Also, the Today Show ,if you remember, posted daily “body-counts” just as was done during Vietnam to drum up opposition. I believe the student vote will thus be much harder to rally in 2012.”

Public Opinion Shift Demonstrated in Pennsylvania Senate Race by Gregory Hilton

Angry crowd jeers Specter By Luis Fabregas, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Friday, August 14, 2009
“http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/s_638276.html”

A major change is happening throughout the nation. As the article above notes, “About 1,500 people waited for hours under the beating sun for the town hall meeting on health care reform. The 200 or so allowed into the hall greeted the Republican-turned-Democrat with rounds of thundering jeers reminiscent of a Jerry Springer show. Some stood up and applauded, and so began a 90-minute showdown marked by passionate pleas for action, interruptions from angry hecklers and incessant chants that drowned out Specter’s call for civility. ‘Read the bill!’ the crowd roared. ‘We will be taxed!’
Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) is now trailing his GOP opponent by 12 points after having a huge lead a few months ago. The electorate is energized and the center is moving to the right. Unlike many of his colleagues, Senator Specter does deserve credit for showing up at town hall meetings during the August recess.
Specter has always had difficult re-election battles and he is a diligent campaigner. This powerful message goes way beyond the Specter campaign. The grassroots left was energized last year, and now the grassroots right has awakened. They may go back to sleep after cap and trade and the health care public option bite the dust. I am surprised this has happened so early in the Obama administration.
I hope Specter wins his primary. He switched parties but he is continuing his opposition to the union card check legislation. His primary opponent, Rep. Joseph Sestak (D-PA) is a retired Admiral. Obama is keeping the Pentagon budget constant without any increases. Sestak wants to make significant cuts in DoD spending and because he was a flag officer he will receive prominent attention from the news media.
The feedback for the town hall meetings demonstration that people are concerned about a deficit which has increased ten times from two years ago. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says they are “un-American,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid calls them “evil mongers,” and Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) says they are similar to the Nazi’s. One reason these lawmakers are angry is because independent voters are now siding 2-1 with opponents of the public option, the stimulus and cap and trade.

Key Democratic Senators Oppose Public Option by Gregory Hilton

Moderate Democrats understand public opinion polls and that is a major reason why the Obama agenda is sinking on Capitol Hill. Democratic Senators Kent Conrad (ND), Max Baucus (MT) and Ben Nelson (NE) are now expected to oppose the public option on health care reform. The Senate’s number two Democrat, Dick Durbin (IL), says he can accept a bill without a public option. The President’s lobbying has been focused on the public option and this will be a major setback for the Administration.
These Democrats have been citing a study by the Lewin Group indicating that a public option could entice 119 million people to drop their private coverage, and it would be a death blow to the insurance industry. The largest existing public health programs — Medicare and Medicaid — are the main reason that the government’s long-term finances are in shambles. Sen. Conrad doesn’t believe a public option will reduce costs. He has noted “We don’t need government-run grocery stores or government-run gas stations to ensure that Americans can buy food and fuel at reasonable prices.” Conrad said he would not vote for any health care reform that funded abortions, care for illegal immigrants or a plan that mandates end-of-life counseling.
A public option bill can not pass the Senate but 64 House Democrats are now on record saying they “simply cannot vote” for a bill that “at minimum” does not have a public option plan. They will not vote for a “co-ops” compromise. Rep. Weiner says the real opposition number is 100. There are 257 House Democrats and if you take away 64 the remaining 193 are well below the 218 needed for passage.
Liberal activist groups are working full blast on a grass roots campaign to convince progressive lawmakers to take a pledge in solid support of the public option. They do not want the President to compromise. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) just explained why the Pelosi plan scares many people: “I think if we had a good public option it would lead to single payer system.” In addition, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says: “We’re going to have some type of public option, call it ‘co-op,’ call it what you want.” From the start, the Administration has always held that “the goal is non-negotiable; the path is,” as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel put it.