On July 15, six weeks ago, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed an amended $1 trillion health-care bill, with acting Chairman Chris Dodd calling it a "historic achievement." Too bad the committee won't reveal this history even to other Senators, much less to the public.
Three weeks ago Republicans on the committee wrote Mr. Dodd "to reiterate our request for a full copy of the bill as amended, in the four-week mark-up." Mr. Dodd has refused to comply. The Senate bill that is available on the committee Web site is 790 pages long. While that is some 300 pages shorter than the House health bill, that's in part because it doesn't include nearly 200 amendments that passed when the committee redrafted the bill. Amended sections of the bill might as well be written in invisible ink.
Tag Archives: kennedy health plan
CBO Dissects the Kennedy/Dodd Bill
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) appeared this morning before the HELP committee to answer questions about its analysis of the Kennedy/Dodd bill. There are a few important takeaways from CBO's comments:
- The Kennedy/Dodd bill will increase spending by more than $1.2 trillion, and this doesn't include the 10-year cost of the plan when fully implemented.The bill includes $723 billion in new spending, not including the $500 billion cost of expanding Medicaid assumed in the bill. CBO agreed with Senator Burr when he pointed out that the estimate includes only 6 years of full implementation of the program.
- If you like what you have, you can't keep it. The CBO confirmed that several million Americans would lose their employer-based health insurance they have now if Kennedy/Dodd becomes law. Continue reading CBO Dissects the Kennedy/Dodd Bill
Bait and Switch
Were you surprised by the studies last year, concluding that candidate Obama’s health plan would insure only one-half of the uninsured? How about the Congressional Budget Office’s finding that the $1 trillion Kennedy health plan will insure only one-third of the uninsured? Remember the recurrent theme about why change is needed: problems of cost, quality and access. Here’s the latest from the Washington Post:
Obama has distilled his position to three principles: reduce cost, ensure quality and provide choice, including a public insurance option.
Spinning the Polls
Perhaps humbled by its shellacking for hosting and broadcasting the Obama-infomercial on Wednesday, ABC and its collaborators at the Washington Post put a very different spin on a health-reform poll that has essentially the same results as the New York Times' one a few days ago. While the Gray Lady promoted the notion that the American people are ga-ga for a so-called "public option" for health insurance (actually a swamp of new federal bureaucracies, if Sen. Kennedy's bill is any indication), the WaPo/ABC folks are close to pushing the panic button on the plan for a government take-over:
Most respondents are "very concerned" that health-care reform would lead to higher costs, lower quality, fewer choices, a bigger deficit, diminished insurance coverage and more government bureaucracy. About six in 10 are at least somewhat worried about all of these factors, underscoring the challenges for lawmakers as they attempt to restructure the nation's $2.3 trillion health-care system. Continue reading Spinning the Polls
Hits & Misses – 2009/6/29
Another Estimate on the Cost of Kennedy’s Health Bill: It’s More Like $4 Trillion
Steve Parente and colleagues at Health Systems Innovations have scored the entire bill and come up with a ten-year cost of $4 trillion, including $460 billion in new spending in 2010 alone. This estimate assumes the mandates and coverage expansions will actually work and 99% of the population will be covered.
Why Health Reform is Bound to Fail
Why is Washington having so much trouble reforming health care?
Why, if they do pass a major overhaul, are the problems of cost, quality and access almost certain to get worse?
Answer: Because they don't understand health care. By that I mean, almost no one in Congress understands health care as a complex system. When they campaign, most politicians claim that health care problems could be solved with a few simple reforms. Now that it's time to legislate, they are discovering that health care is very, very complicated. In fact, there is no solution that even comes close to being simple or easy.
As Nobel Laureate Frederick Hayek taught us, a complex system is a structure that is so complicated, that no one person can even begin to grasp it in its entirety. The best each of us can hope for is to master the small part of it we interact with.
The economy, for example, is a complex system. To allow us to think about it — if only imperfectly — economists have developed a highly simplified model over a period of 200 years. In fact, the only reliable model that exists to understand complex social systems is the economic model. Yet we have completely suppressed normal market forces in virtually every aspect of health care. So what we are left with is almost certainly the most complicated market of all and no reliable model with which to understand it. Continue reading Why Health Reform is Bound to Fail
The $63K Question
The Congressional Budget Office says Sen. Edward Kennedy's oddly-named Affordable Health Choices Act will cost $1 trillion over 10 years (and that's only part of the bill)! Yet only about one-third of the uninsured (16 million people) would get insurance. That equals $62,500 for each newly insured individual – or $250,000 for a family of four. A decade from now, uninsured Americans would number about 36 million – a 20% decrease from what it is today.
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$63K Question: |
Why are we spending so much money |
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Answer: |
Because this is not about insuring the uninsured. It's about nationalizing the health care system. |
Hits & Misses – 2009/6/16
Hatch on the Kennedy bill: it's "the most liberal bunch of gobbledygook I've seen in my life – a complete liberal mishmash of ideas."
Four reasons why Obama's health plan will increase health care costs.
National Kidney Foundation: "compensating donors would cheapen the gift."
More on Kennedy’s Health Bill
As it turns out, the bill is not actually Senator Kennedy’s – who is sidelined with critical illness and we wish him well. This bill was apparently drafted by the committee staff under the nominal leadership of Sen. Dodd. Both Keith Hennessey and the Republican Policy Committee have provided analyses.
- Everyone will be required to buy health insurance – either directly or through an employer.
- A federal health board will define “essential health benefits” that everyone must have and will undoubtedly make cost-effectiveness (rationing) decisions like similar boards in Britain and other countries.
- If you fail to purchase insurance, you will be taxed and the size of tax penalties will be determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of the Treasury. (A rather incredible delegation of power!) A similar “play-or-pay” tax will be imposed on employers.
- Outside the place of work, insurance will be purchased in a government-controlled exchange and the exchange must include at least one government-run health plan.
- The government health plan will pay Medicare rates plus 10%, which is bad news for seniors. More than 100 million people may move from private coverage to Medicare but since young people will be paying higher rates, seniors will be the least preferred patients (last to get access to doctors).
- Existing plans will be grandfathered, but all other plans must implement managed care type rules that interfere with the doctor-patient relationship (“case management,” “best clinical practices,” “evidence-based medicine,” etc.).