Finance Committee Finishes Its Work

”Another area of consensus was the bipartisan opposition to creating a government plan that would compete with private insurers. The defection of five Democrats on a “public option” proposal offered Tuesday by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) underscored the reservations among moderate Democrats of venturing too far from the private, employer-based system that has long defined the nation’s health coverage.”

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I believe this pretty much sums up any “option” that would be proposed on the Senate floor or come to the combined committee before reaching the floor of the Senate. It is clearly understood, especially by more conservative Democrats, that the vast majority of Americans believe the private, employer-based system has been a very successful program. It has covered the vast majority of Americans for years now.
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People also know that a government run program is not only a big entitlement, but over time is not sustainable. People understand that under such a program, rationing will occur. People will die, and healthcare over all will decline. Especially for diseases such as cancer.
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Now for the tax increases. Obama promised in his campaigning that middle class taxes would not be increased. I am wondering how he will justify this tax? How can he go forward, sign this bill when it is clear taxes on the middle class will be increased in order to fund the subsidies for expanding Medicaid? Baccus said himself yesterday, if these “considerations” are not kept in his bill, then the entire bill will fail. “Considerations” being the money raised through the IRS in order to make this a budget neutral bill. This I predict in 2012 will be a George Bush I, “no new taxes” mantra from Republicans in ad after ad fighting Obama and his tax and spend policies.
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”Beginning in 2013, the finance panel’s package would require people to buy insurance or face penalties ranging up to $1,900, to be assessed on their income tax returns. It also would make it harder for taxpayers younger than 65 to deduct catastrophic medical expenses. Both provisions would fall heavily on the very taxpayers that Obama has vowed to protect, according to congressional tax analysts.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed Republican claims that the middle class would suffer, noting that the fines would hit only people who do not buy coverage and called the GOP charge “a silly argument that we can easily dispense with.”

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Well we shall see how “easily” this is “dispensed” with when the American voter goes to the polls. I do find it curious that this provision does not start until 2013, AFTER the 2012 elections. Don’t you think Karen? If it is such a great provision, why not implement it all NOW?

KT-Why don’t you take a cruise around the web and see how that NYT’s story is playing. Hint-Dave sure is getting a lot of headlines.

Rusty, with all due respect I would appreciate it if you no longer speak on my behalf by referring to what the “people” want. Please restrict your comments to what you believe, and the small number of people who share your beliefs.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

This is a juicy, detailed, sex scandal, if you can wade through the NYT’s turgid prose. The NYT is unique in making adultery & paying off the offended, cukold, husband dull & tedious. This NYT article is a new nadir for the NYT’s pius pornography.
Sen Ensign is now burned toast. It’s poetic justice that Sen Ensign, the pius fraud, Christer, is as filthy as a public commode that hasn’t been cleaned for 5 weeks.

Thanks, KT. You rock. Did you and / or Kate stay there until 2am? Did their staffs or key members even pull all-nighters? I’ve written before in jest about you staying all night, but was this time for real? (Where’s Jay, btw? Haven’t seen her here lately.) Now with the entire Senate, while Reid is the Leader, is he the real rainmaker or dealbreaker here? Or will one or two others actually cut the closed-door deals? I’m guessing Schumer’s one of them. Snowe still appears to be the debutante with whom the guys want to dance, but which lesser known senators do YOU believe will be key players / surprise starlets here, KT? Thanks.

Is this the part you do not like, Derek?
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“It is clearly understood, especially by more conservative Democrats, that the vast majority of Americans believe the private, employer-based system has been a very successful program.”

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If so, you have clearly written on numerous occassions that you are not in the majority. So go jump in a lake, I am not speaking on your behalf.

I guess since this if from the British press we should ignore it. Is it a scandal?
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Revealed: millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms
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Six lobbyists for every member of Congress as healthcare industry heaps cash on politicians to water down legislation
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America’s healthcare industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to block the introduction of public medical insurance and stall other reforms promised by Barack Obama. The campaign against the president has been waged in part through substantial donations to key politicians.
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Supporters of radical reform of healthcare say legislation emerging from the US Senate reflects the financial power of vested interests ‑ principally insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms and hospitals ‑ that have worked to stop far-reaching changes threatening their profits.
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The industry and interest groups have spent $380m (£238m) in recent months influencing healthcare legislation through lobbying, advertising and in direct political contributions to members of Congress. The largest contribution, totalling close to $1.5m, has gone to the chairman of the senate committee drafting the new law.
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A former member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet says fears that the industry could throw its money behind the populist rightwing backlash against public insurance have scared the Obama White House into pulling back from the most significant reforms in return for healthcare companies not trying to scupper the entire legislation.
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Drug and insurance companies say they are merely seeking to educate politicians and the public. But with industry lobbyists swarming over Capitol Hill ‑ there are six registered healthcare lobbyists for every member of Congress ‑ a partner in the most powerful lobbying firm in Washington acknowledged that healthcare firms’ money “has had a lot of influence” and that it is “morally suspect”.
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Reform groups say vast spending, and the threat of a lot more being poured into advertisements against the administration, has helped drug companies ensure there will be no cap on the prices they charge for medicines ‑ one of the ways the White House had hoped to keep down surging healthcare costs.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/01/lobbyists-millions-obama-healthcare-reform

“Reform groups say vast spending, and the threat of a lot more being poured into advertisements against the administration, has helped drug companies ensure there will be no cap on the prices they charge for medicines ‑ one of the ways the White House had hoped to keep down surging healthcare costs.”

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Bull-crap!
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This is what Obama has done with his share of the money being showered in Washington by the lobbyists.
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“The extent of their combined clout showed Thursday as Democratic senators tried unsuccessfully to override a deal the industry struck months ago with the Obama White House and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). If the deal fell apart, industry allies warned, the drug lobby could pivot from health-reform cheerleader to committed opponent armed with a $125 million war chest.

“They’re not foolish,” said Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), whose state is home to pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. “I know I would walk away.”

The showdown in the Finance Committee, over an amendment to squeeze more money out of drug companies, was an early test of the ability of Baucus and President Obama to hold together a tenuous coalition of industry and special-interest players that crushed health reform 15 years ago. It also foreshadowed battles to come: Democrats in both the House and Senate vowed anew to seek larger concessions from an industry that spent $92 million in lobbying in the first half of this year.”

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Guilty, guilty guilty.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/24/AR2009092401614.html

“It is clearly understood, especially by more conservative Democrats, that the vast majority of Americans believe the private, employer-based system has been a very successful program.”
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Its also unsubstainable. The costs to our businesses is killing them-there’s that death word.

rustyreturns you are full of it, the vast majority of Americans absolutely DO NOT believe the private, employer-based system has been a very successful program. This coverage model leaves millions of Americans without coverage and does not adequately cover the vast majority of us. If you have a major illness, sooner or later you will be dropped and/or your coverage will be lacking regardless. The motive is profit and believe it or not your life has a value in the insurer’s eyes. We are the most backward first world country in the world considering how awful our healthcare system is. Everyone likes their insurance until they need it. Also, the vast majority of Americans want a single payer system (look it up anywhere in the surveys – it tracks at over 70%).

rustyreturns is basically quoting Robert Zirkelback of a lobby called “America’s Health Insurance Plans”. Zirkelback said, “The vast majority of Americans are very satisfied with their health care coverage,” which is, of course, what you’d expect a shill for the insurance industry to say.

By the very definition of insurance, most people do not suffer from chronic or debilitating conditions that require them to heavily lean on their insurance providers. Poll people with serious medical issues and ask them how satisfied they are with the coverage. I bet you’ll find that those on Medicare or in the VA system will report the highest satisfaction. No wonder seniors are so nervous about reform; they don’t want their government-provided insurance to be touched. For some reason, they also don’t want to share it with their children and grandchildren.

[...] original here: Finance Committee Finishes Its Wo… Share and [...]

Here is Rusty’s successful employer based system at work:
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Competitive Disadvantage
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The United States spent 16 percent of its GDP in 2007 on health care, higher than any other developed nation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that number will rise to 25 percent by 2025 without changes to federal law (PDF). Employer-funded coverage is the structural mainstay of the U.S. health insurance system. According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 71 percent of private employees in the United States had access to employer-sponsored health plans in 2006. A November 2008 Kaiser Foundation report notes that access to employer-sponsored health insurance has been on the decline (PDF) among low-income workers, and health premiums for workers have risen 114 percent in the last decade. Small businesses are less likely than large employers to be able to provide health insurance as a benefit. At 12 percent, health care is the most expensive benefit paid by U.S. employers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
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These ballooning dollar figures place a heavy burden on companies doing business in the United States and can put them at a substantial competitive disadvantage in the international marketplace. For large multinational corporations, footing healthcare costs presents an enormous expense. General Motors, for instance, covers more than 1.1 million employees and former employees, and the company says it spent roughly $5.6 billion on healthcare expenses in 2006. GM says healthcare costs add between $1,500 and $2,000 to the sticker price of every automobile it makes. Health benefits for unionized auto workers became a central issue derailing the 2008 congressional push to provide a financial bailout to GM and its ailing Detroit rival, Chrysler.
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It is difficult to quantify the precise effect high healthcare costs have had so far on the overall U.S. job market. Health care is one of several factors–entrenched union contracts are another–that make doing business in the United States expensive, and it’s difficult to parse the effects of each factor. Moreover, economists disagree on the number of U.S. jobs that have been lost to offshoring–the transfer of business operations across national boundaries to friendlier operating environments. The Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder, in a 2006 Foreign Affairs article, says that judging by data compiled from “fragmentary studies,” it is apparent that “under a million service-sector jobs in the United States have been lost to offshoring to date.” Blinder goes on to predict that somewhere between 28 million and 42 million U.S. jobs are “susceptible” to offshoring in a future where technology allows the more efficient transfer of jobs. Many other economists, however, have shied away from making such estimates, and some have criticized Blinder’s approach.
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It is clear, however, that healthcare expenses affect every level of U.S. industry. For large corporations they mean the massive “legacy costs” associated with insuring retired employees. For small business owners they can be even more devastating. “In many places, you have small businesses that simply cannot afford to offer coverage,” Sarbanes says. Often, he says, healthcare expenses make it impossible for small business owners to hire candidates they would otherwise desire.
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http://www.cfr.org/publication/13325

Why are you all playing with the troll? It is pointless.
Goal number one right now is to find out whether every Democratic Senator will vote to bring bills supported by Democratic leadership to the floor for an up or own vote. Any Dem that is willing to filibuster Democratic legislation needs to feel some angry and loud pushback.

Amen!

Rusty is correct in his comments.
It is simple amazing how many people on the left totally ignor the results of National surveys when the results donot fit their belief systems.
Facts can be so inconvenient.

Pelosi in particular is under great pressure to reduce the price tag of her measure

Let’s not forget that HC reform will cost less than the Bush tax cuts for rich people, so the people making this particular demand are mostly hypocritical liars.

Thanks for the link. This is an interesting aspect of HC reform that has been underplayed imo. The GOP and Blue Dogs are not really the pro-business party they claim to be.

The person who is making that demand is named Barack Obama.

IMO Obama has handled this very poorly. He gave away the farm to begin with by saying single payer was out of the question. Then he made the demand about costs to placate those who will not vote for this in any case no matter what the final version says. Better he should have pressed for an answer as to why the US pays twice as much than any other developed nation for health care with poorer results.

And then there is the overpayment for drugs…

Yes, because he wants to appease the Blue Dogs and Olympia Snowe, in order to get something passed. At least that’s my take.

Where does the figure come from?

Although the White House has not drawn a connection, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who has been working on a bill designed to attract moderates in both parties, has indicated his legislation should cost about $900 billion. The president and his congressional allies have been under pressure to keep the cost of the overhaul under $1 trillion over the next decade. The total cost is particularly important to fiscally conservative Democrats, who will be key to passing a healthcare bill, particularly in the Senate.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-health-costs14-2009sep14,0,3918351.story

In the U.S., “fiscal conservate” means “direct the flow of money upward.”

(comment 14 was meant to be 13.4)

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/27846.html

Translation for those of you who don’t speak Village: Cutting him loose.

“It is clearly understood, especially by more conservative Democrats, that the vast majority of Americans believe the private, employer-based system has been a very successful program.”
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This assertion is completely false and directly at odds with polling going back years. It would be totally cool, Rusty, if you could try to make your point without simply making stuff up.
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“In any healthcare proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance–extremely important, quite important, not that important, or not at all important?”
Total important: 77 percent (76 percent in June 2009 NBC/WSJ poll)
Total unimportant: 22 percent (20 percent in June 2009 NBC/WSJ poll)
“it is interesting to note how public opinion about a public option hasn’t changed despite the protests from the right and a media climate that has shown negative responses to the public option. Indeed, he reflects on how interesting it is that even 71 percent of Republicans favor it and wonders therefore why many members of Congress remains uncomfortable about a public option.”
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And what do doctors think about the public option?
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When polled, “nearly three-quarters of physicians supported some form of a public option, either alone or in combination with private insurance options,”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112818960
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Quit making up lies and start facing the facts, Rusty. You are not in the majority any more.
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Finally: “in Kaiser polls from 1992 to 2000, a large majority of the public agreed that the federal government should guarantee medical care for people who don’t have health insurance. In a slightly different question asked more recently by Kaiser in June 2003, more than seven in ten adults (72 percent) agreed that the government should guarantee health insurance for all citizens, even if it means repealing most of the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush, while less than one-quarter (24 percent) disagreed with this statement. Finally, the last time Gallup asked whether the federal government should make sure all Americans have health coverage, they agreed that was a federal government responsibility by 62-35 (November, 2002).”

Rusty spews an unbelievable amount of crap in these threads. Really, it’s this kind of focused endless numbing attack on the truth, a constant attempt to make real dialogue impossible, that has baffled the media and helped drive America off the rails.

The one thing the Republicans have managed to do, in no small part thanks to Fox, is to simply have their own set of facts, unrelated to reality. The health care debate is a perfect example of this, as Rusty throws whatever mud he can into the discussion, for no other purpose than to make sure said discussion is never fruitful.

Meanwhile, in the real world, people die and America declines.

I support the public option because I think it’s the surest way to control costs. I don’t believe it would sway very many people to switch from their present insurance providers, as evidenced by San Francisco’s experience with their own city-run public option. If done right, meaning abandonment of the Medicare-style fee-for-service arrangement, it would help to bring down costs of procedures and prescription drugs, and would apply pressure on insurance corporations to bring down the costs of premiums.

That said, a co-op option, or the state-level “public option light” plan initiated yesterday by the senator from Washington State COULD work just as well if there was more deliberate regulation of prices of procedures. There is a precedent in this country for regulation of things like cargo rates, utility rates, EPA gas mileage standards, etc. What (besides medical corporate power) is to prevent price caps on medical procedures and pharmaceuticals?

Ironically, the closest thing I have heard of to such regulation is Olympia Snowe’s trigger idea, which calls for a public option to be triggered in if costs increase by a certain percentage. Someone needs to introduce an amendment to the Senate Finance bill that would simply regulate costs of procedures, office visits, and prescription drugs, like the Dutch do, whose costs are less than 60% those in the US, yet they cover everyone, and can do so even without a public option.

As I see it, the only way to significantly bend the cost curve, besides rationing, is to Regulate prices.

Now, if only we could find a US-based journalistic organization that would be willing to investigate if these crazy Europeans are on to something.

Maybe they could investigate how much has been spent on lobbying and advertising this year versus, say, 30 years ago.

Maybe they could ask if we really had private, for-profit health insurance in 1980, or was it all private NON PROFIT health insurance?

Maybe they could ask if we are better off for all that for-profit business and all that lobbying and advertising.

Hmmm…..where could we find such an organization? Hmmm… Anyone?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2009/09/polling_on_health_reform.html
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“However, only 35 percent of those surveyed said President Barack Obama’s reform agenda and the debate in Congress will lead to better health service, while 41 percent said they would expect it to lead to lower costs.”

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http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58T0MY20090930
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/122822/americans-sharply-divided-healthcare-reform.aspx
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Just in case anyone is reading this late into the thread. I can back up my claims with facts. With real poll numbers. Whereas the shills on the left can only reguritate Democrat talking points with no basis in fact.

But did the polling specifically ask people who have done their homework? Anyone polled who has done their homework would be appalled by 1. the astronomical increases in overall health care costs, and 2. the fact that we rank 35th in the world in quality of heath care delivery, yet we spend double the amount any other country spends. I’m dubious of the polling numbers cited above.

But, michaelyoder et al, most Americans agree that health care does need reform. I agree on that point.
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But, what most Americans, the vast majority believe is that the Democrat proposal, the Obama proposal is NOT what they want in reform.
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It is very clear, and Republicans and Blue Dog Dems have acknowledged this fact.
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The current proposals will be defeated, and then we can come up with a proposal that makes logical and fiscal sense, not some ideological policy road map to satisfy the Progressive wing of the liberal Democrat Party.
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Health care does need major reform. But, the reform needs to be for ALL Americans, not just for the few.