DemCare: The Final Phase

It's a new week, and the DemCare dust should be settling for at least a few days as Congress adjourns for Thanksgiving. But, let's continue to inform ourselves, shall we?

For anyone who thinks the government will -- or can -- handle a program this big with anything resembling competence, well...don't hold your breath:

According to the Office of Managment and Budget, in FY 2009 improper payments rose to $98 billion from $72 billion in FY 2008. Of this $98 billion, $54.2 billion was in improper Medicare and Medicaid Spending (improper payments include fraud and payments that aren't fully accounted for).

Over at the NPR blog, Julie Rovner writes:

The Medicare Advantage error rate also jumped — without any change in measurement methodology — from 10.6 percent to 15.4 percent.

Said Orszag, without a hint of irony, given the pitched battles in Congress over Democrats' efforts to cut tens of billions of dollars from the Medicare Advantage program, "this is one of the reasons why, as part of health reform, we believe that there are crucial changes necessary to the Medicare Advantage program.

Here is a chart of improper payments.

They can't even handle what they've got without massive fraud and loss, so can you imagine what they'll do with what they're going to get if this passes.

Keith Hennessey continues to reveal some startling information found in the Senate DemCare bill. The latest is this:

Under Leader Reid’s amendment, in the year 2019 about 16 million U.S. citizens would be uninsured and be forced to pay a penalty tax of almost $800 per year. About eight million illegal aliens would be uninsured and would owe no penalty tax. Both groups would get their health care through a combination of out-of-pocket spending and use of uncompensated care in emergency rooms and free health clinics.

Why does anyone believe any promise made by the Democrat leadership anymore? And why does any rank-and-file Democrat get away with following that same leadership?

Remember how Harry Reid bought Sen. Mary Landrieu's vote for $100 million? Well, it appears the price tag was a bit higher: $300 million. Not that it really matters, of course. The woman has proven she has zero principles...especially when she had the gall to actually flaunt the price tag.

And yet, Harry Reid continues to chant the ludicrous mantra that this whole thing is all paid for. Yeah, here's your 'paid for':



I've seen several great ideas for how to move forward on this:

Erick Erickson:

Sixty Senators voted to proceed to debate health care. There will be another shot at stopping it through filibuster.

Voters will remember.

Along the way, there seems to be divisions shaping up within the Democratic Party. Amendments will be offered to try to patch up differences.

Republicans should exploit this. Drag out consideration of the bill as those divisions grow, then offer amendments to exploit the divisions.

As I have said before, if Republicans work to improve the legislation, they presuppose its passage. Instead, the GOP should plan for the destruction of the bill by offering amendments designed to divide and fracture the Democrat coalition.

Dan Perrin:

For the group of U.S. Senators up in 2010 — the ones facing the independent voters that turned 2:1 against the Democrats in the New Jersey and Virginia elections — they will each be tagged all election cycle with providing the one vote needed for ObamaCare to come before the Senate. They could have stopped it, but they did not.

The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed needs 60 votes, and therefore every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Independent can be accurately accused of providing the winning vote for Senator Reid to proceed to the very unpopular bill.

And, for my personal favorite, Ramesh Ponnuru:

Conservatives and Republicans should commit themselves not only to defeating Democratic health-care legislation, but to repealing it if it is enacted.

They ought to announce that they will work for repeal for two reasons. The first is straightforward: Making the announcement will increase the probability that the legislation, if enacted, will be repealed. Otherwise inertia might carry it forward even if the public is dissatisfied with its operation in its early years. Conservatives might win some elections and then find themselves divided, with some merely seeking reform of Obamacare. Momentum might dissipate. Most programs, once enacted, never go away, no matter how badly they work. Conservatives should make a strong commitment not to let that happen this time.

The second reason for pledging to repeal the health-care legislation if it’s enacted is that making the pledge will reduce the likelihood that it is enacted to begin with. It would tell vulnerable congressional Democrats who just want this politically damaging debate over that enacting it will not end the political pain—that this debate is not going to fade away by the next election, or maybe even the one after that. Some Democrats may be willing to lose congressional seats in order to enact a longstanding liberal policy goal. A pledge to repeal the health-care legislation would tell even these Democrats that they could end up losing seats for nothing—for nothing lasting, anyway.

Repealing Obamacare should be the Right’s fallback strategy, and making it known that it will be might make it slightly less necessary to fall back to.

You know, this is the first time I've seen any prominent pundit say anything about what happens after this thing gets passed. Sure, we're all going to do everything we can to stop it from ever becoming law, but...shouldn't we have a coherent plan of action? After all, the Dems have all the votes they need (if they can twist the arms hard enough), so it would really be a miracle if we could put a stop to it. It's good to finally see someone thinking along these lines and talking about it.

Here's a good wrap-up from the Heritage Foundation:

The Senate voted this evening by a 60-39 majority to commence debate on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s bill that would radically expand government control over private health care decisions. The bill is over 2000 pages long, costs an estimated $2.5 trillion over the first ten years of implementation and carries a half trillion dollars in new taxes. Many Americans have to be thinking right now — they have heard from their dissenting constituents at Town Hall meetings and have seen the poll numbers for Obama’s health care bill dropping like a rock so why would they keep moving this bill forward?

This debate will center around many issues including huge taxes increases, economy-killing employer mandates and:

1. Abortion: Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) offered an amendment to the House bill to ban all federal funds flowing into the health care system from funding abortion. Senator Reid put language in the bill that allows some funds to go to abortion services by using an accounting gimmick. This issue could take the bill down, because the House approach is far different from the Senate approach. If this bill becomes a referendum on abortion policy, it may fail.

2. Cost: Senator Reid has promoted his bill as costing the federal government $849 billion and as a budget cutting bill. Conservatives in the Senate have pointed out that the costs are more accurately $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years of implementation because the benefits are not even scheduled to be paid out until 2014. There is a huge disparity between the two sides as to the cost of the bill and if it gets bigger and bigger on the Senate floor, then it may suffer a legislative implosion.

3. The Public Plan: Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) has pledged to support a filibuster of any bill containing the public option. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) will only accept a public option with a trigger. Other Senators have expressed reservations about different permutations of the public option. A bill with a too strong public option may not have the support to pass the Senate.

4. Wild Card: As with all these debates, there may be an issue that comes out of the blue and becomes central to the bill. There were debates over “death panels” during initial stages of the debates and controversies over coverage for illegal immigrants. Some other issue may be offered as an amendment or may be buried in the 2000 pages of the bill that may become the next controversy to prevent passage.

The week after Thanksgiving, the Senate will start the process of considering and voting on amendments to the bill. This process may go in one of two directions. It is possible that Reid uses the amendment process to buy just enough votes to pass the bill through targeted special interest amendments. Expect Connecticut, Nebraska, Arkansas, and, yet again, Louisiana to receive special treatment in the amendment process. If Senator Reid is able to buy support during this process, the bill will pass and the President will sign Obamacare before his State of the Union.

Scenario two kicks in if opponents of the bill play hardball. If opposing Senators offer non-germane amendments, like the legislation to restore the 2nd Amendment in the District of Columbia or a resolution of disapproval for Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Kahlid Sheik Mohammed in federal courts, then the Senate would be mixing some volatile issues into the health care mix. Regardless the course of action, this bill will either pass or fail as a direct result of the actions of a handful of Senators.

Let's hope those few are the ones on our side.

There's my two cents.