Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare. 

Click the link to go to our action center.

Not all the action on healthcare reform is happening in smoke filled rooms. 
 
This week the Senate is considering its next payoff to a powerful lobbying group—a $247 billion package for the American Medical Association.  The funding is not offset and would dramatically increase the deficit.  Harry Reid is betting that the bill will prove politically impossible for most Senators, including Republicans, to oppose as it addresses the number one priority for most doctors over the years—the fact that Medicare doesn’t reimburse them enough.  By considering the “doc fix” apart from overall healthcare reform, he and Max Baucus remove a major cost to that package.  As Senator McConnell said, “This is so transparent. They’re taking this issue out of health care, suggesting that we spend a quarter of a trillion dollars, not pay for it, so that they can then argue, the very next week potentially, that this trillion-dollar health care bill is paid for.” 

Even the media is reporting this is a bribe. Harry Reid will pay off the doctors’ lobby and in exchange the doctors lobby will support Obamacare.
 
The strategy is simple.

• Payoff the docs;
• Make your bill appear to cost less; and,
• Force Republicans to choose between their doctors and the fiscal health of the nation.

 
Now to be fair even many conservatives agree that Medicare’s physician reimbursements are set ridiculously low, amounting to a form of price controls on the system.  And since doctors don’t have to participate in Medicare or take new seniors on as patients, if reimbursements are set too low, it creates access problems.  That has led many to support short-term fixes that are often paid for with other spending reductions as stop-gaps until the overall system could be reformed.  But let’s remember something folks.  Medicare is a government-run healthcare program—the fact that it proves so costly that price controls are adopted is exactly what we’ve been arguing the future holds if Obamacare gets passed.  Making it work right is not something that Republicans in Congress should sell their soul to fix and its certainly not something that should be allowed to enable a government takeover of the health care system. 
 
Republicans need to fight this for what it is—a quarter of a trillion dollar payoff to the AMA to get them to keep supporting Obamacare.  This will be a great litmus test of whether Republican claims of fiscal responsibility have any merit whatsoever.  It’s easy to oppose a nearly trillion dollar stimulus and a nearly trillion dollar health takeover.  It’s hard to tell your doctors back home, in the words of the immortal Meatloaf, that you’d do anything for love but won’t you do that.  But that is exactly how we activists will ever know that Republicans have gotten our message—when they learn to say no to their voters when it comes to spending. 
 
A brief message to you doctors out there, many of you good Republicans.  Seriously, chill out.  Congress is not going to let your reimbursements get cut so stop believing your AMA spam—from the same people who are no doubt enjoying their coffee and donuts over in Rahm Emmanuel’s office.  These people (at least their lobbyists in DC) don’t want you to be free; they want you to be slaves to government in as much as many of you are already to Medicare.  Don’t let that happen on your watch and with your dues and don’t be fooled by this shell game happening in the Senate and presumably soon in the House of Representatives. 
 
Call your Senator and Representative — particularly those of you in Republican states and districts — and tell them to oppose S. 1776, a $247 billion doc fix that isn’t paid for and enables the passage of Obamacare. 

The Baucus bill is finally out.

It came in at 1,502 pages.

The Clinton health care bill was only 1,342 pages.

The Baucus bill has more pages than the last two Harry Potter books. Keep in mind that the last Harry Potter book was so thick they’re making it into two movies instead of one.

The Bill Number is S. 1796.

If Republicans don’t go along with the Democrats, Harry Reid is threatening to drop copies of the bill on their heads.

You may remember the ‘tampon tax‘ discovered in the Baucus bill - short version: Baucus went out and did a mass tax on medical devices to supposedly pay for his ‘compromise;’ unfortunately for him, things like condoms and tampons are classified as ‘medical devices’ - and you’d think that the resulting loud objections would have caused the Senator (more accurately, the Senator’s staff) to more thoroughly vet their policy changes.

You’d think. What Baucus did was do a quick hack and make the threshold for taxation $100.  Amanda Carpenter points out the problem with that:

But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure. Particularly new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.

And, all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men an women — such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles — will be taxed, too.

Speaking as a stay-at-home dad, I can say with some authority that breast pumps make it a lot easier for working mothers to do both. I am stunned that the Democrats apparently care so little about either working mothers or the poor (who will be disproportionately affected by this legislation, as usual) that they’d blithely write legislation as slipshod as this. And that’s just the breast pumps. What are we going to say to somebody who can’t afford the tax on his or her pacemaker? “Sorry?”

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The Washington Times recently took a look at the forced health care rationing in Chairman Max Baucus’s health care overhaul legislation:

The offending provision is on Pages 80-81 of the unamended Baucus bill, hidden amid a lot of similar legislative mumbo-jumbo about Medicare payments to doctors. The key sentence: “Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician’s resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization.” Translated into plain English, it means that in any year in which a particular doctor’s average per-patient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the doctor’s payments by 5 percent.

Forget results. This provision makes no account for the results of care, its quality or even its efficiency. It just says that if a doctor authorizes expensive care, no matter how successfully, the government will punish him by scrimping on what already is a low reimbursement rate for treating Medicare patients. The incentive, therefore, is for the doctor always to provide less care for his patients for fear of having his payments docked. And because no doctor will know who falls in the top 10 percent until year’s end, or what total average costs will break the 10 percent threshold, the pressure will be intense to withhold care, and withhold care again, and then withhold it some more. Or at least to prescribe cheaper care, no matter how much less effective, in order to avoid the penalties.

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Max Baucus sicks the government on health care companies doing nothing more than educating their customers on the implications of the Baucus bill.

On Monday, Mr. Baucus issued a news release boasting of what he described as his efforts to keep the health care debate honest. “Baucus-requested investigation nails insurance scare tactics,” the news release proclaimed.

In the news release, Mr. Baucus said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, had “cracked down on insurance company attempts to mislead and confuse beneficiaries about how they would be affected by health care reform legislation.”

There’s just one problem. It has come to RedState’s attention that the person at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (”CMS”) that issued the threat to Humana is Jonathan Blum, a former senior Baucus staffer.

See here:

CMS has named Jonathan Blum as the director of (CMM). Blum joins CMS from Avalere Health where he served as Vice President of Medicaid and Long-Term Care Practice. Blum most recently served on the professional staff of the Senate Finance Committee as an advisor to Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and other Finance Committee members on prescription drug and Medicare Advantage policies during the development of the Medicare Modernization Act.

This begs the question: Did Baucus and Blum coordinate the harassment? Did Senator Baucus and Jonathan Blum coordinate to threaten private insurers if those insurers spoke candidly about the implications of the Baucus plan?

It would not be unusual for a former Senate aide to help his boss out. Weren’t some Abramoff crooks caught up in doing that? It seems entirely plausible that Max Baucus picked up the phone and asked Blum to unleash hell — abuse the power of CMS to threaten, bully, and silence honest opposition.

Is it legal?

I wrote earlier today about the thuggish tactics employed by Washington Democrats to get their health rationing plan passed. Astute readers will note that the name ‘Max Baucus’ seems to pop up over and over - lecturing the Congressional Budget Office on how much the health care bill should ‘cost,’ telling unions what ads they can and cannot air, and warning lobbyists that they need to make sure they’re on ‘the right team.’

Had I written that post a few hours later, I would have included Baucus’ push to hide the actual language of his health care bill until after the Finance Committee had approved it, and his use of a former staffer to muzzle those who disagree with him:

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Update: Several Republican Members of Congress are beginning to call the Democrats out over this. Congressman Dave Camp wants to know why the White House is censoring companies - especially while leaving supporters of the president’s plan alone. And Mitch McConnell is calling out Democratic colleague Max Baucus.

I’ve not had the chance to comment on this yet (except on Twitter), but the thuggish tactics of the Democrats in Washington are getting harder and harder to ignore. I’m prompted to the comment by the audacity of Senator Max Baucus and the HHS to start censoring political speech that they disagree with:

The Obama administration warned insurance companies Monday that they could face legal action for allegedly trying to scare seniors with misleading information about the potential for lost benefits under healthcare legislation in Congress.

“As we continue our research into this issue, we are instructing you to immediately discontinue all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your websites,” said a notice from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid…

In one case, the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the agency, launched an investigation of Humana Inc. after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), a lawmaker usually viewed as a reliable ally of the insurance industry. Baucus also put together the Senate Finance Committee’s version of the healthcare bill.

So Baucus (and other Democrats) are pushing for a health care overhaul that depends on dramatic Medicare cuts to bring down the cost. The Medicare providers (the insurance companies) believe that taking hundreds of billions out of the system just might impact care for seniors - so they warn them of the fact. And rather than respect respect the right of companies to speak to their customers, or respect free speech generally, Democrats are turning to blackmail to shut these companies up.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened this year - not by a long shot:

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If this is a problem, don’t go on national television and give exclusive interviews.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You were against the individual mandate…

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: …during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t

How is that not a tax?

[snip of semantic-free commentary by the President]

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

Via Jazz Shaw, the relevant passage:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is between 100-300 percent of FPL, the excise tax for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or an individual claimed as a dependent) is $750 per year. However, the minimum penalty for the taxpayer unit is $1,500. If a taxpayer’s MAGI is above 300 percent of FPL the penalty for failing to obtain coverage for an individual in a taxpayer unit (either as a taxpayer or as an individual claimed as a dependent) is $950 year. However, the maximum penalty amount a family above 300 percent of FPL would pay is $3,800.

Please note for the record that the transcripts show that they were talking about Baucus’ tax bill. Points to George for pressing the point - and bringing in the dictionary definition, which the President responded to with all the - but points taking away for not demolishing the President on the spot with that one. Ach, well.

Video making this point after the fold.

Moe Lane

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Harry Reid must really be in danger of losing his Senate seat.

Today Harry Reid sent out a press release to the national media praising Senator Baucus for his new proposal on health care reform.

There’s just one problem. And it could be fatal to Harry Reid’s re-election chances in Nevada.

While Reid was praising Baucus to the national press corp, in Nevada he sent out a press release severely critical of the Baucus plan and said it was a raw deal for Nevada.

Harry Reid wants to have it both ways. He can’t.

In the last few days there’s been a lot of debate over how much health care ‘reform’ will cost. Democrats have talked about the latest estimate from CBO. Liberals have cheered about the reduced cost of the revised bill. They don’t mention that Senate Democrat leaders have been pressuring CBO to be ‘more creative’ with their health care score. Nor do they point out that only Senate Democrats have seen CBO’s findings. Today Congress Daily reports that according to Democrat sources, CBO estimates the bill will cost $1.5 trilllion:

CBO has scored the House healthcare overhaul bill at $1.5 trillion over 10 years, according to sources. House Ways and Means Democrats plan to help pay for the bill by raising taxes on people earning $250,000 or more and taxing sugary beverages, sources said.

The tax on sugary drinks is expected to raise about $50 billion. A previous Ways and Means paper revealed Democrats were considering raising taxes on the wealthy through a 2 percent surtax that would raise $256 billion.

The House will not pay for the measure by taxing employer-based healthcare benefits, suggesting a merger of the House and Senate bills will be difficult. The Senate Finance Committee wants to keep its offsets within the health arena if possible and is weighing capping the value of employer-based coverage eligible for the tax exclusion.

Instead, the House will make Medicare cuts in the neighborhood of $500 billion and raise another $350 billion from an employer mandate. The specifics of the offsets are still somewhat in flux.

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One must wonder these days if the Democrats are wrapping themselves around Chicagoland rough and tumble politics, or are they wrapping themselves around the politics of hyper-inflation experiencing third world thugocracies.

In Chicagoland politics, like third world thugocracies, opponents of government get gunned down, thrown in jail, threatened by the powers of government, etc. We saw this happen a few months ago when a bank executive wrote a letter to the editor in his local newspaper criticizing TARP. Barney Frank demanded he appear before Congress to answer questions unless he recanted his position.

We see it again today, very starkly,

Roll Call reports Senator Max Baucus, the Democrat leading the fight for socialized healthcare, is threatening businessmen that appearing with Republicans will be harmful to their business interests.

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Unbelievable.

Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican had tried this?

Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called a last-minute, pre-emptive strike on Wednesday with a group of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to advise their clients not to attend a meeting with Senate Republicans set for Thursday.

Russell Sullivan, the top staffer on Finance, and Jon Selib, Baucus’ chief of staff, met with a bloc of more than 20 contract lobbyists, including several former Baucus aides.

“They said, ‘Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all of your clients know if they have someone there, that will be viewed as a hostile act,’” said a Democratic lobbyist who attended the meeting.

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Hardin, Montana - a very small, very poor town with a very new, very empty jail, is willing to take on the responsibility of holding Gitmo detainees:

Hardin borrowed $27 million through bonds to build the Two Rivers Regional Correctional Facility in hopes of creating new employment opportunities. The jail was ready for prisoners two years ago, but has yet to house a single prisoner.

People here say politics in the capital of Helena has kept it empty. But the city council last month voted 5-0 to back a proposal to bring Gitmo detainees — some of the most hardened terrorists in the world — to the facility.

Montanan Senators (both of whom are Democrats) wet themselves in response:

The state’s congressional leaders have lined up against the plan. “Housing potential terrorists in Montana is not good for our state,” Max Baucus, the state’s senior Democratic senator, wrote to [economic development director Greg Smith]. “These people stop at nothing. Their primary goal in life, and death, is to destroy America.”

Adds Sen. Jon Tester, “I just don’t think it’s appropriate, that’s all. I don’t think they know what they’re asking for.”

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Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the former trial lawyer lobbyist who looked out for the interest group while in the state’s highest office — even though doing so meant preventing decreased costs and increased access to care within her own state’s health care system — has a tax problem.

According to this letter from Sebelius to Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, respectively, the Kansas Democrat and her husband hired a CPA to “conduct a thorough review” of their tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 “in preparation for [her] confirmation process as the nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

While conducting his review, the CPA found that the Sebeliuses owed $7,040 in federal taxes, which was paid along with $848 in interest.

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We at Red State have pointed out several times that while Chris Dodd agreed to insert an amendment into the stimulus bill to protect AIG bonuses, he was not in position to do so. Chris Dodd was not a Member of the conference committee that drafted the final version of the bill - the only one that had protection for AIG. The Democrats on the conference committee locked the Republicans out of the process and wrote the bill themselves. No Republican supported the conference report; no Republican signed it (look on the final page of the conference report here).

The Democrat conferees were Daniel Inouye, Max Baucus, Harry Reid, Dave Obey, Charlie Rangel, and Henry Waxman. One (or more) of them allowed Dodd to make the change.

So who was it?

Harry Reid needs to talk about his role in this. And so should Daniel Inouye, Max Baucus, Dave Obey, Charlie Rangel, and Henry Waxman. Each was responsible for the contents of the bill that the six of them drafted together.

After twenty-four hours of denials, Senator Chris Dodd is admitting that he added a provision to the stimulus package to protect the bonuses AIG intended to pay executives.

Dodd, you will recall, is the single largest recipient of AIG employees’ campaign funds in the United States Congress.

Here’s the thing though: the amendment had to be added before it went into conference with the House. Senator Dodd was not one of the Senate representatives in the conference.

Inside Conference, the participants go over all the amendments. They have to in order to make sure the House version and Senate version are identical. Someone had to do Chris Dodd’s bidding in the Conference Committee.

Who was it?

The Senate representatives were Senators Reid, Inouye, and Baucus. Which of them worked with Senator Dodd to make sure AIG was protected?