A Vote On ObamaKennedyDeathCare Comes Today

If I'm not mistaken, there's supposed to be a vote on the Baucus version of ObamaKennedyDeathCare in committee today. It's only one version of the several floating around out there now, but it's possibly the biggest and most well-known one. So, let's take another look.

One of the more interesting developments to come out in the past day or so is that the insurance industry has finally come out against ObamaKennedyDeathCare. Hot Air sets it up and analyzes:

Until now, the health-insurance industry has mainly held its fire against the ObamaCare proposals in Congress, hoping that its givebacks would be enough to sate the Democratic class warfare that erupted this summer. Now, however, they have apparently taken off the gloves with a new analysis by accounting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers. The study predicts that the Baucus plan would increase premiums for an average American family by $4,000 per year, a breathtaking increase from a plan that purports to save costs:

After months of collaboration on President Obama’s attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the insurance industry plans to strike out against the effort on Monday with a report warning that the typical family premium in 2019 could cost $4,000 more than projected.

The critique, coming one day before a critical Senate committee vote on the legislation, sparked a sharp response from the Obama administration. It also signaled an end to the fragile detente between two central players in this year’s health-care reform drama.

Industry officials said they intend to circulate the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers on Capitol Hill and promote it in new advertisements. That could complicate Democratic hopes for action on the legislation this week.

That prompted a rather snide — and laughable — response from the Obama administration:

“Those guys specialize in tax shelters,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform. “Clearly this is not their area of expertise.”

Er, what? Health insurance premiums are not the area of expertise for health-insurance companies? Accounting is not the expertise of accounting firms? We can compare that to the White House, whose expertise thus far has been in getting elected, and not much else — certainly not economics, military strategy, or governance.

The GOP response is basically, "we told you so". Check out this video of an interview with one of the two actual doctors in the Senate, John Barasso:

Ironically, even if this goes through, there will still be millions of Americans who don't get health care coverage:

Despite the enormous costs, estimates say 25-million people would remain uninsured under the Baucus bill. The new study also criticizes the Baucus plan for not placing tougher mandates and penalties on those who do not buy health insurance, which would help spread the costs (and create new customers for insurers). PWC reports higher costs would occur due to these parts of the bill:

• Requirements to cover pre-existing conditions with guaranteed-issue insurance
• The new tax created on so-called “high cost” health care plans
• The new taxes on medical devices and other segments of health care
• Reduction in Medicare payments, which care providers would offset by raising rates on their other patients.

The report will be denounced as a political attack by the insurance industry. But the real attack is Washington’s assault on our pocketbooks and our freedoms.

And that, of course, will prompt even further spending and expansion of the government. You know it'll happen that way...it always does. This is just the first step.

Now, if Congress were serious about cutting costs, they'd do something that everyone outside of Washington understands is blindingly obvious: tort reform.

Lost in the shuffle of the CBO scoring of Max Baucus’ non-existent bill on the health care overhaul system this week is another analysis by the CBO on tort reform. According to CBO director Douglas Elmendorf on his blog, the CBO studied the impact of both the reduced cost of litigation and the elimination of defensive medicine that would result with tort reform. Elmendorf says that tort reform would reduce the federal deficit $54 billion over the next ten years, more than the fee Baucus plans to charge insurers for the privilege of existence (via MarySue at Ruby Slippers):

CBO now estimates that implementing a typical package of tort reform proposals nationwide would reduce total U.S. health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009). That figure is the sum of a direct reduction in spending of 0.2 percent from lower medical liability premiums and an additional indirect reduction of 0.3 percent from slightly less utilization of health care services. (Those estimates take into account the fact that because many states have already implemented some of the changes in the package, a significant fraction of the potential cost savings has already been realized.)

Enacting a typical set of proposals would reduce federal budget deficits by roughly $54 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates by CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee of Taxation. That figure includes savings of roughly $41 billion from Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, as well as an increase in tax revenues of roughly $13 billion from a reduction in private health care costs that would lead to higher taxable wages.

But that’s not the end of the savings, either. A 0.5% reduction in health-care costs would mean $11 billion in savings per year overall, with roughly 40% of that benefiting the federal government in Medicare and other federal program costs. That amounts to a whopping $110 billion in cost savings over ten years to the entire medical industry, which would help keep premiums in check for consumers.

So, naturally, they're going to ignore the idea completely.

The bottom of the line is that the Dems are most likely going to strong-arm this through by warping the legislative process, using the vapor bill tactic, and by renovating the bill behind closed doors. They're going to do this on an issue that will put government on the road to controlling 1/6 of the American economy, take away people's freedom to make their own decisions on health care, ration that care -- especially to seniors -- drive quality down and drive costs through the roof. And, of course, this will all happen in direct contradiction with the wishes of the American people.

Feel free to call your Senators. Now might be your last chance to do so. It would be nice if there were a chance to stop this, but the Dems have the votes to do it if they want. This could be the beginning of the end of the American health care system.

We'll see what happens.

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Top 10 health care questions for President Obama
Mankiw on the Baucus bill's 20% marginal-tax-rate hikes
Baucus plan would cost family of four $20,000 over 10 years in premium hikes
Hassett on Baucus's middle-class tax hike