By almost 300 billion.

CMS: House health bill will hike costs $289B

The House-approved healthcare overhaul would raise the costs of healthcare by $289 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

This would be infuriating, if I had taken seriously in the first place the notion that an interventionist, intrusive government program was capable of saving the taxpayer money.

Moe Lane

PS: For extra points, watch as the Democrats suddenly decide that CMS must be ignored.  As opposed to, say, 2004.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

While it was largely lost in the debate over passage of Pelosi-care on Saturday night, it may turn out that the most politically costly vote many Democrats cast was against the Motion to Recommit.

Simply put, the Motion to Recommit gives the minority party one last chance to force a vote on a change to the underlying bill. Here’s a summary sent out by the Republican leadership of the Motion to Recommit on the health care overhaul:

The Republican Motion to Recommit H.R. 3962, Speaker Pelosi’s Government Take-Over of Health Care, would amend the bill to add medical liability reform (savings of $54 billion) and use the savings achieved to create a “Seniors Protection and Medicare Regional Payment Equity Fund.”

The fund would require the Secretary to prioritize funding to protect those seniors hit hardest by the cuts to Medicare under Speaker Pelosi’s bill.  Specifically, the purpose of the fund would be to:

• Preserve seniors’ access to Medicare Advantage,
• Protect seniors’ access to medically-necessary care (including seeing doctors and hospitals without waiting in lines, and preventing coverage determinations based on cost), and
• Address payment inequities and geographic variations in Medicare that hurts seniors who live in areas with high-quality, low-cost services.

The Pelosi Government Take-Over of Health Care cuts more than $500 billion from Medicare, leaving seniors with reduced benefits and fewer choices.  While at the same time, the Pelosi bill protects trial lawyers by not addressing real medical liability reform, a critical reform that would reduce health care costs for all Americans.  The Republican motion to recommit offers Members a choice on who to protect: seniors or trial lawyers.

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The debate over health care has reached a fevered pitch in our nation’s capital.  Over the last several months, millions of Americans have spoken out at town halls, have called and written in to the White House, and have even made personal visits to their members of Congress to express their strong opposition to government run health care.  Yet Speaker Pelosi has once again ignored their voices.

Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill H.R. 3962 was drafted without committee hearings or markups behind closed doors by Speaker Pelosi and a very limited number of her inner-circle.  Weighing in at more than 2,000 pages, Pelosi’s bill will cost the American taxpayers $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.

Real reform of our health care system is needed.  We must help those who want health insurance but cannot afford it.  We must expand access to health care in rural America.  We must fix our medical malpractice laws so that doctors can focus on saving patients rather than paying lawyers.  And we must expand our investments in preventative care.  However, that doesn’t mean we should throw out the car because it has a soft tire.  This country still has the best doctors, the best treatments, the best researches, and the best hospitals in the world.  Improvements need to be made, but not at the cost of potentially destroying our current health care system, saddling our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt, decreasing our standard of care, and burdening American families and small businesses with $729.5 billion in new taxes.

I will continue to oppose Speaker Pelosi’s government run health care legislation and any legislation that comes before Congress that includes a public option.

Congressman Frank Lucas represents Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District.  For more information, visit his website at www.house.gov/lucas.

MEMORANDUM EXCLUSIVE FOR REDSTATERS
FROM: Michael Hammond
RE: The Pelosi Bill

-The real cost of the bill is at least $1.3 trillion (the CBO score, plus the “doc fix”) –- and probably much, much more.

-The absolute minimum increase in the deficit would be $150 billion. You can probably add to this most of the $426 billion in supposed Medicare “cuts,” plus the substantial overruns in program costs as a result of underestimation of premiums. A deficit increase of between half a trillion dollars and a trillion dollars is almost certain.

-Employers would be required to purchase government-mandated government-prescribed insurance for all of their employees with premiums which, according to some estimates, would be double the minimum wage. With a penalty which, for most employees, would be 8% of payroll, it would be more economical to drop insurance for anyone making under $2-300,000, depending on the level of employer contribution.

-As a result, most individuals with employer-provided insurance will not be able to “keep the insurance they currently have.” The 10.2 million seniors with Medicare Advantage will also lose “the coverage they currently have.” And it is possible that the “grandfather” protection of individuals could be defeated by something as simple as a rate increase.

-Premiums will go through the roof and, unlike currently, Americans will be required to pay them, under penalty of law. Price Waterhouse estimates that the average family policy for a family of four will be $25,900 by 2019 (under the comparable Reid bill). And, although the study does not look at the impact of the subsidies, unlike the liberally touted Kaiser study, it does not ignore the impact of taxes on premiums.

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Earlier, we noted that Charlie Rangel has been getting huge numbers of contributions from the Virgin Islands, and we tied it to his blocking legislation that cuts payments to rum producers in the Virgin Islands.

Several weeks ago, the Washington Times reported that Puerto Rico has turned on the contributions also.

What’s going on?

The answer is that Charlie Rangel is holding Puerto Rican grandmothers hostage (via Medicare payments) to protect his rum buddies.

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The unsatisfied quenching of the Dem thirst for health care reform continued as the Senate Finance Committee received their vapor score for their vapor bill which had the net effect of discrediting the Congressional Budget Office. U.S. Rep. Shadegg renamed CBO the Cooked Books Office with a stinging post (as in, that’s gotta hurt):

Could you make your family budget look good in a ten-year analysis if you counted ten years of income but only seven of expenditures? That’s what the Congressional Budget Office did in their report on Senator Max Baucus’s health care bill.

Their subpar accounting includes revenue from tax increases and cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage starting in 2010. However, the bulk of expenditures begin in 2013, when many of the bill’s programs go into effect. It sounds like the CBO has started taking accounting tips from old Enron manuals. How can Democrats be taken seriously if they use ten years of revenue to pay for seven years of expenditures?

Heritage Foundation’s Brian Darling weighed in yesterday with his “Where’s the Health Bill?” post in Human Events:

As you read this, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and officials of the Obama administration are in a room at the Capitol rewriting health care policy. The American people aren’t invited. Only a few lobbyists, Obama czars and liberal Senators have even been allowed to see this bill.

The Senate is keeping this bill a secret because politicians were shaken by the August town hall meetings and the rage expressed by the American people toward the president’s version of health care reform. So, to minimize complaints now, the administration and Sen. Reid are making sure citizens are shut out of the process.

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Could you make your family budget look good in a ten-year analysis if you counted ten years of income but only seven of expenditures? That’s what the Congressional Budget Office did in their report on Senator Max Baucus’s health care bill.

Their subpar accounting includes revenue from tax increases and cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage starting in 2010. However, the bulk of expenditures begin in 2013, when many of the bill’s programs go into effect. It sounds like the CBO has started taking accounting tips from old Enron manuals. How can Democrats be taken seriously if they use ten years of revenue to pay for seven years of expenditures?

It’s frightening that Congress could soon vote on a bill that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars without the crucial information of an honest CBO score. But that’s just what Democrats will ask us all to do. It is smoke-and-mirrors trickery that should have no place in Congress – a deceitful playbook from which the Congressional Majority has played from time and time again.

Democrats will use these CBO numbers to continue the charade that their proposals would reduce health care costs for Americans. But one only has to look at the dozens of new taxes Senator Baucus’s bill creates to see that health care will become much more expensive for Americans. And for the first three years, we really won’t be getting what we’re paying for.

The difference between President Obama’s Joint Session of Congress speech on health care and this early primary campaign speech is stark and dramatic.

Candidate Obama admits the savings from Medicare reforms are theory, that Americans will have to pay more in taxes and that transitioning to a single payer system would be allowing everyone to join Medicare.

Now? His plan won’t add a dime to the deficit and his savings from cuts to Medicare will fund the lion’s share of his plan. But if you were wondering, does the President really believe what he said in his Joint Session of Congress and were wondering can he ever be honest about this subject — take a look at the video below.

Candidate Obama even makes a crack at the end of the video about how dangerous it is for a President to be saying to the country, we’re going this way, and to look behind him, and no one is following.

h/t Naked Emperor News and Gateway Pundit

And he wants to make sure that the pharmaceutical companies understand that, too. The House Energy Chair intends to retroactively remove what Waxman calls a ‘windfall’ involving Medicare D drug charges, and never mind what either the President or PhRMA thinks:

Drug makers contend they have already worked out a 10-year, $80 billion cost-savings deal with the White House and crucial Senate gatekeepers on the trillion-dollar health care overhaul. The industry says that trying to add Mr. Waxman’s provision could scuttle that agreement.

Putting aside the actual merits of the argument for a moment - I (and Hot Air) may have excellent reasons to assume that a Democrat posturing about ‘windfall profits’ is simply posturing, but it’s still an assumption - it’s instructive to see how little a powerful House Democrat fears the wrath of the White House on this issue.  Then again, this is what happens when you’re a President who hands off responsibility for a bill in the first place; the people who do the work naturally end up deciding that their opinions on its final form are more relevant than yours, and unless you have the ability to do something about it they’re going to show little reluctance in showing public defiance.  Given that the President just hit 50% on Gallup, and lacks any real experience in leading people who don’t want to be led, I’m not surprised that Waxman is doing this.

And this is why people say “If you want something done right, do it yourself.”  Cliche, yes, but cliches exist for a reason.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The New Testament book of Matthew contains a well-known allegorical tale known as the “Parable of the Ten Talents.” In this story, Jesus told of a man who entrusted his property to three servants while he was away. One servant was given five silver talents; another two; and a third one. The first two servants put that which their master had given them to good use, and doubled his money while he was away. The third servant, who had been given but one talent, buried the valuable quantity of silver to preserve it until his master returned, neither risking its safety nor putting it to good use while its owner was away.

Upon his return, the two servants who had taken that which he had entrusted them with and used it wisely during his absence presented their master with their earnings. He replied to each, “Well done, my good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”

The third servant, who had merely protected that portion of his master’s wealth with which he had been entrusted, presented the single talent upon the man’s return. Seeing this, the master flew into a rage, chastising the “wicked, lazy servant” for allowing cowardice and irresponsibility to prevent his putting the master’s money to good use and ordering the servant to surrender his talent to the servant who had proved his resourcefulness and trustworthiness by doubling his master’s five talents.

The moral of this New Testament parable – be a good steward of a little and you will be trusted with more, but poor stewardship will lose you the privilege of being trusted with anything in the future – is recalled to mind by the federal government’s current attempt to take over the American health care system. The 33 years Medicare has been in existence have provided the federal government with an opportunity to demonstrate what type of steward its legislators and bureaucrats will be of a national health care program millions of Americans are trusting for their coverage and care.

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That’s what White House Budget Director Peter Orszag had to say about the Congressional Budget Office’s latest statement that “the probability is high that no [health care] savings would be realized” by creating yet another federal board to oversee the federal government’s $33 trillion Medicare mess.

Here’s what Orszag said:

With regard to the long-term impact, CBO suggested that the proposal, with several specific tweaks that would strengthen its operations, could generate significant savings. (The potential modifications included items such as providing mandatory funding for the council, rather than having the council rely on the annual appropriations cycle, and requiring independent verification of the expected reductions in program spending rather than relying only on the Medicare actuaries for such verification, along with other suggestions, such as including an across-the-board reduction in payments as a fallback mechanism if the council did not produce proposals that generated adequate savings.)

That’s right: Orszag, President Barack Obama’s hand-picked budgetary whiz, is highlighting an admission by CBO that cutting payments to doctors accepting Medicare patients would result in lower government spending on health care.

Of course, the fact that the few remaining physicians who accept Medicare patients would drop these already-unprofitable clients as a result (something already happening in cities and states around the country as a result of the low reimbursement rates and regular governmental failure to pay on time) doesn’t matter here. After all, it’s just the numbers that matter.

You know — numbers. Like the ones the bureaucrats running the public option’s cost-effectiveness spreadsheets will be entirely relying on to determine whether or not you’ll be allowed to get that tonsillectomy, chemotherapy, or heart operation this year (or ever).**

Ah, sweet numbers. Because on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, we all look the same.

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House Democrats agreed Friday to raise taxes by about $550 billion to pay
for their sweeping expansion of the nation’s health care system.

The huge tax increase will only pay for about half the cost of the Democrats’ health spending plans, so according to the New York Times, the Democrats will also cut Medicare spending, the government health plan for the elderly, and other health care savings to pay for the rest of the $trillion-plus health care spending spree.

The top federal tax rate is now 35 percent, but Democrats have vowed to raise it to 39.6 percent next year. The Washington Post quotes Robert Carroll, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Tax Foundation, as saying that combined with other federal tax adjustments, the Democrats’ new health care spending tax increase could leave some taxpayers facing top federal rates of at least 45 percent.

The Democrats’ new health care spending tax increase agreement enables House Democrat leaders to unveil health legislation Monday and bring it to a vote before the Congress takes an August vacation.

From the diaries, by Erick.

As the health care industry collectively does a damage assessment of the Pelosi-Kennedy-Obama health care plans to their individual interests, one thing is clear: things have changed radically in the last week:

1. hospitals will be facing cuts of billions from Medicare and Medicaid;
2. big Pharma is facing a certain drug re-importation fight sooner than later, likely during the health care scrum;
3. the doctors are posting with a No to the public plan and irritation on medical malpractice;
4. the teabag teams have planned a national no-new-taxes-for-health-care reform day — in every state of the Union;
5. the slumber of the anti-tax, pro-business groups was jolted by the U.S. Chamber’s war-cry of No More Mr. Nice Guy, and now the Chamber is ripping the Senate Health Care bill;
6. the unions and some employers are spooling to fight the tax on health insurance planned by one Democratic faction, and the White House has announced its opposition;
7. the pro-lifers are now scrambling to catch up and be relevant on the most important government program to their interests;
8. the Move-On.org crowd keeps sending alerts to its base to hold the liberal’s feet to the fire on the question of a public plan;
9. the Heritage Foundation is coming under fire from its friends about their footsie with various aspects of the Democrats plans, especially mandates and the connector idea, which really began when President Obama ran an health care ad quoting the Heritage Foundation in support of one of then-candidate Obama’s Health Care Reform Plans;
10. Gun Owners of America is leading the charge against physicians who now feel empowered to ask if their are handguns in the house, and that information making its way into the great medical record computers in the vast U.S. government. GOA is asking its members if it wants their gun ownership showing up in their medical records;
11. Speaker Pelosi and President Obama’s commitment to a Public Plan option is being questioned by political moderates in the normally-fawning media; and,
12. there is growing consensus among those who are finding problems with the various and wide-ranging proposals that the 180 million Americans who have health insurance should be the real target of the attacks on the Obama plan: specifically, the idea that your health care plan will not change is going to be the focus of some serious and politically relevant attacks (I’ve heard it be told, anyway).

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It’s no secret to anybody who’s been paying attention to budget numbers that the United States, with a current GDP of just under $14 trillion, is $52 trillion in the hole in one specific area: Medicare and Social Security payments owed to those who have already prequalified by paying into the system.

You can flip and fudge the numbers any way you want; no matter what, that’s some real money we’re talking about right there — and that’s just what’s already owed folks who are over 22 and in the workforce or have already retired, all having paid into the system at some point. The program could be ended today, and that’d be the unfunded liability we the taxpayers are facing: $52 trillion!

A Lack of Choice You Probably Didn’t Know About

Here’s something you might not know: the federal government skirts around this issue when doing its budgeting by counting Medicare and Social Security as “liabilities,” rather than “debts,” because those who are or will be eligible for returns under the programs have no actual binding or contractual right to those returns. That’s why you hear so much about a $7 trillion-ish national debt — that additional $52 trillion is left out of the discussion through a nefarious governmental play on words!

Here’s something else you might not — actually, probably don’t — know: Current and future Medicare costs for those already owed benefits make up over 60% of that liability ($32.3 trillion). Given this, you might think it a good idea to opt out of a Medicare program that probably won’t be solvent enough to cover the costs of your care as a retiree, in favor of a Health Savings Account or some other less costly, more efficient health insurance plan, which you can help pay for with your meager Social Security benefit checks.

Unfortunately, that’s not an option under federal law. Whether there’s money to fund your Medicare or not, once you’re retired, you’re legally required to accept Medicare as your health coverage. If you try to turn down Medicare Part A and go with another, more cost-effective (and higher quality) form of coverage, you officially forfeit your ability to collect on the Social Security benefits you paid into your entire working life!

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