Fix Health Care Policy

If you knew a dangerous virus was about to hit America and that you could beg the government for a vaccine, you’d probably do it, wouldn’t you? That’s just what states and businesses alike are doing right now in preparation for Obamacare. But rather than seeking a vaccine, they’re asking for waivers from the law’s onerous requirements.

To date, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has approved 1,372 Obamacare waivers, covering 3.1 million Americans. Yesterday, The Daily Caller reported that among HHS’s most recent round of 204 Obamacare waivers, “38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.” That’s right: Nearly 20 percent of exemptions from Pelosi’s crowning health care achievement were doled out in her backyard.

If that’s not enough irony for you, try this waiver on for size: On Monday, the Las Vegas Sun reported that Nevada—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state—received a partial statewide Obamacare waiver, too. If you’re keeping score, Reid was Pelosi’s counterpart in the Senate fighting to get Obamacare passed into law. Now his state will be one of three to get a waiver from the law’s requirements, while the rest of America suffers. (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: Department Health and Human Services, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, waiver

When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said of Obamacare, “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” apparently she meant that it would include pain and suffering for America’s businesses, except for those fortunate enough to get waivers, including a few high-class restaurants, night clubs and hotels that reside in her congressional district. Matthew Boyle at The Daily Caller reports:

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers. (Read the rest on The Foundry…)

Tags: high-class restaurants, Nancy Pelosi, ObamaCare, repeal the law, waivers

When now-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) was sworn in as Speaker on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8.67 trillion. By the time Pelosi surrendered the gavel to Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) yesterday, the national debt stood at $14.01 trillion. At $5.34 trillion, that means Speaker Pelosi added more than $1 trillion in debt per year during her tenure as Speaker. And yet she has the audacity to tell reporters Tuesday: “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.”

Only someone so out of touch with reality that they could claim that “deficit reduction” has been their “highest priority” while simultaneously adding more than $1 trillion a year to the debt could possibly claim that repealing Obamacare would add to the debt. But that is exactly what Pelosi wants us to believe. Also on Tuesday she claimed that repealing Obamacare would do “very serious violence to the national debt and deficit.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

While the CBO did produce a report projecting that Obamacare could produce $124 billion of savings over its first 10 years, no honest and intelligent person believes that that score will ever become reality. Not even the CBO. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote: “CBO’s cost estimate noted that the legislation maintains and puts into effect a number of policies that might be difficult to sustain over a long period of time.” Elmendorf then goes on to identify a number of specific Obamacare policies, such as arbitrary reductions in the growth rate for Medicare spending, that anyone who follows health care policy knows will be impossible to actually implement.  (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: CBO cost estimates, debt, deficit, Nancy Pelosi, repeal Obamacare

It is a well known economic policy rule that if you want less of something you tax it, and if you want more of something you subsidize it. Policymakers frequently follow this rule to influence behavior. This is why there are “sin taxes” on things like alcohol and cigarettes, and also why “cap and trade” taxes carbon. This is why there are subsidies for education and for “green” technologies. If taxes and subsidies make any sense at all, they make sense when used to tax “bad” things and subsidize “good” things.

Given this basic rule, can you guess which of these are being subsidized and which taxed in the Reid Health Bill currently in the Senate?

1. Innovative Medical Companies
2. Medical Devices, such as prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and pacemakers
3. Over-the-counter medicines
4. Privately funded medical care – including private health insurance plans, private medical expenses paid out-of-pocket, and employer-provided care

(answers below the fold) (more…)

Tags: Harry Reid, insurance premiums, medical innovation, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan, senate health care bill

Following last Tuesday’s election, the last thing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wanted to do was allow Members of Congress to go home and talk to their constituents about the $2.6 trillion health care bill she was marshaling through Congress. The centerpiece of Pelosi’s trap and pressure campaign was a Saturday address by President Barack Obama in the Cannon Office Building, where Obama warned Democrats: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit [Democratic voters] and it will encourage the extremists.”

The extremists. That is how the President of the Unites States describes Americans who do not want to see the federal government control over half of all health care spending. And just who are some of these extremists? Looking over just today’s papers we find:

• Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria: “Obama’s message to the country appears to be, “We have a dysfunctional health-care system with out-of-control costs, and let’s add 45 million people to it.” Americans see a health-care bill that has been produced by the old Democratic machine rather than the new Democratic technocrats — more Lyndon Johnson than Larry Summers. It might be the only way to get a law passed, and it might please the party’s base, but it will dismay independents.” (more…)

Tags: caucus, extremist, Fareed Zakaria, House, hoyer, Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership are frantically trying to find enough votes to pass their giant 2,032 page health care legislation this weekend. But before Speaker Pelosi and liberals in Congress pass their big bill, the American taxpayers should be fully aware of the full price tag of this monster.

As Heritage analysts noted earlier in the week, the Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary score of the bill (H.R. 3962) but too many in the media have not been reporting its true cost. The true cost is not the net spending on only the coverage related provisions ($897 billion) but rather the total gross spending for the coverage provisions ($1.05 trillion) as well as any additional spending in the bill (approximately $217 billion). That would raise the plan’s price tag to about $1.5 trillion when including the roughly $210 billion cost of the “doc fix” is included. The “doc fix” refers to the undoing of the flawed Medicare payment update formula, which Congress created but has routinely stopped from being enforced. Under current law, that formula would result in a 20 percent reduction in doctors’ pay under the Medicare program. (more…)

Tags: debt, deficit, Medicare, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan, spending, tax, trillion

Today at 2pm the House Rules Committee will meet to consider the rule for H.R. 3962 , the Affordable Health Care for America Act. As of this morning 104 amendments had been filed with the Rules Committee for consideration. Republican’s have filed 87 amendments and Democrats have filed 17. The debate in the Rules Committee and a final vote could continue well into this evening.

The rule being debated today will not only cover HR 3962 but will also apply to HR 3961, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act, also known as the Doc Fix. This is a procedural gimmick that allows the costly Doc Fix bill to be combined with H.R. 3962 after the bill passes the House. This allows Congressional Leaders to avoid a stand alone vote on Doc Fix in the Senate. A few weeks ago, a $247 billion dollar Doc Fix bill failed in the Senate with 13 Democrats opposing ending debate on the bill. (more…)

Tags: H.R. 3962, house rules committee, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan, pelosi health bill, tea party, tea party health care, the Affordable Health Care for America Act

The key to this chart is the second graph showing the spending “cuts” in the H.R. 3962. Nobody in world believes those cuts will happen. Which is why the true cost of the House health Bill is $1.5 trillion.

Tags: doc fix, Medicare, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan, trillion dollar deficits

Nancy Pelosi has unveiled the new health care bill in the House after merging together three different versions of legislation. To appease moderate Blue Dog Democrats and to meet President Obama’s oft-stated promise that reform wouldn’t cost more than $900 billion in the first ten years, Speaker Pelosi sought to reduce the $1.5 trillion total cost of the bill. Newsflash: she failed.

The Congressional Budget Office released its preliminary score of the bill and while some in the media have been reporting its net cost of $894 billion, the total cost of health reform legislation is more like $1.5 trillion. So, Speaker Pelosi is essentially right back where she started—with a huge (two) thousand page plan that carries a hefty price tag. (more…)

Tags: Medicaid, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan, Obama's failed stimulus

When CNS News reporter asked Nancy Pelosi “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?,” her response was “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Is Pelosi serious? Did the Speaker Pelosi really say that asking “is this Constitutional” is a trivial question? Could her statement be a gaffe?

Nope. It’s no gaffe. Pelosi’s press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, clarified for the record that asking the speaker of the House to articulate the Constitutional authority for the health care mandate “is not a serious question.”

Frequent readers of the Foundry will recall that we have asked is the Individual Mandate Constitutional and is National Health Insurance Constitutional? We argued in August that the healthcare legislation is unconstitutional: specifically, neither the necessary and proper clause, the general welfare clause, nor the commerce clause of the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate a national health care. (more…)

Tags: individual mandates, Nancy Pelosi, Obama Health Care Plan