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I’m glad yesterday’s health care summit went well for Republicans. Democrats hogged the time, used too many anecdotes that say nothing about the merits of their proposals, and did little to assuage the many concerns that Americans have about their trillion-dollar health care legislation. Republicans were able to show that they aren’t just the party of no. They want to improve the health care system, and have real ideas about how to do so. The President must have hoped to make Republicans look like ogres so barely-paying-attention Americans would root for health care’s passage; he failed.
But what does that mean for the prospects of health care reform? Probably very little. Here is what the WSJ’s Kim Strassel says about the effect of the summit and coming political battle to pass a bill.
The Summit Show was designed by Democrats for Democrats, to give Mr. Obama an all-day stage to inspire and exhort his party to charge once more into the health fray. It’s about “altering the political atmospherics,” admitted one senior Democrat. Yet for all the talk of “jump-start,” there’s little to suggest the ugly politics of passage have changed. …
The strategy is somewhat bully for Mr. Reid, who can afford to lose eight of his own members. It’s meaningless for Mrs. Pelosi. If the speaker had the votes post-Brown to pass the Senate bill, we’d be living under ObamaCare. She didn’t have them then, and yesterday’s summit was a sideshow to the problems she has getting them now.
A few numbers: Mrs. Pelosi passed her health-care bill in early November, with three votes to spare. The one Republican yes has since bailed. On the Democratic side, one vote has left Congress, one has died, and one retires this week. A smaller Congress means Mrs. Pelosi only needs 216 votes. If all were equal to November, she’s at 216.
Only it isn’t November. It’s nearly March, and the speaker is being asked to pass a bill vastly different from her own, in the wake of a crushing electoral defeat and in light of dire public-opinion polls.
While it’s heartening that the road looks tough for Pelosi and Reid, no one should take for granted that they can’t put enough pressure on wavering Members to get this done. That’s why those Members need to keep hearing from us to remind them that voters—their real bosses—don’t want this health care bill to become law.
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IWV Director Heather Higgins discusses the healthcare debate.
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IWV Director Heather Higgins talks about her experiences with the healthcare debate.
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The potential use of the reconciliation process continues to hit road bumps: this bump is the very important Budget Committee Chairman, Senator Kent Conrad. As Politico reports:
Conrad, who has been open to reconciliation as long as the fixes are limited, said the order must be reversed. The House must pass the Senate bill first — before either chamber considers the reconciliation package, he said.
“I don’t know of any way, I don’t know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes,” said Conrad, who would be a central figure on the Senate floor if Democrats embark on the complicated process. “I don’t know how you would deal with the scoring. I don’t know how I could look you in the eye and say this package reduces the deficit. It’s kind of got the cart before the horse.”
When reminded that House Democrats don’t want to do health care in that order, Conrad said bluntly: “Fine, then it’s dead.”
We can only hope he’s right. (Hat Tip: Critical Condition)
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CQ Politics Blog
With Democrats poised to enact something, opposing forces are in full battle gear.
- “We’re trying to go gangbusters this week,” said Carrie Lukas of the conservative Independent Women’s Voice.
- “We’re going to try to make Members profoundly uncomfortable if they were going to vote for it,” said Ryan Ellis of the Americans for Tax Reform.
- “We’re trying to bring the energy level and engagement level of our activists back up to where it was last year,” said Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity.
- The Chamber of Commerce, a powerful opponent of the Democrats’ proposals, sent the President a letter asking him to drop the House and Senate bills in favor of “a fresh approach.”
- “There’s really not a lot of time to reboot before elections,” said Brian Burgess of the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
For more, see “Activists Step Up Health Care Fight” by Congress.org’s Ambreen Ali.
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IWV Director Heather Higgins joined The Steve Largent Show to discuss healthcare reform.
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So much for “new” health care legislation. What the President has proposed doesn’t change the essential problems with the old health care bills: it is still a move toward one-size-fits-all, government-run health care, which empowers bureaucrats to decide what kind of health insurance all Americans must have and costs taxpayers trillions.
Surprisingly, the new bill does what might have seemed impossible—it makes the old legislation even worse. It raises more taxes, spends more taxpayer money, and creates more debt (though no one knows exactly how much since the CBO says it lacks so many details it can’t be scored). It also creates another government agency. This one is called the “Health Insurance Rate Authority,” and essentially it will be involved in imposing price controls on the insurance industry. Yes, this bill offers new layers of regulations and is an even more pronounce lurch toward government-controlled health care.
Grace-Marie Turner has a great sum up of the legislation:
The much-awaited health-care reform plan the White House released this morning is little more than an amalgamation of the taxing, spending, mandating, and regulating policies of the bills that passed the House and Senate last year.
Instead of offering a genuinely fresh approach, Mr. Obama split the difference between two bad bills that are hugely unpopular with the American people. He would continue to mandate that both individuals and employers pay for health insurance or face fines and penalties. He would expand Medicaid, the most dysfunctional health program in the country. And he would increase fees on insurers and other health companies — fees that will be passed along to consumers in the form of higher premiums.
The big new idea in the president’s plan is to federalize regulation of health insurance, creating a Health Insurance Rate Authority to conduct “reviews of unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.” This reflects the overall strategy to give more and more control over the health sector to Washington…
The Obama plan is not an improvement, and it offers Republicans little upon which to build a conversation that could lead to genuine compromise at Thursday’s summit.
The public needs to tell their representatives once again to kill this terrible bill and go back to the draw board to create real positive change in our health care system.
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On realclearpolitics, Jay Cost has an interesting discussion on the use of reconciliation. Anyone wondering what tactics Republicans will have available if Democrats try to use this path to push through their unpopular health care legislation must read this piece. Here is one Senate rule to know about, since it may be critical to the outcome of this legislative battle. Cost writes:
The Byrd rule, named after Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), was implemented in the 1980s because the Senate had used reconciliation to pass items that were not related to the budget. In other words, Senators were getting around the filibuster, that ancient device which is either the final protection against an extreme majority or the last recourse of a discredited minority (depending upon which side one finds oneself!). The Byrd rule puts limits on what reconciliation can be used for. Extraneous provisions are stricken from reconciliation bills, and have to be passed through the typical procedure. Here are several relevant definitions of “extraneous” (quoting a report from the Congressional Research Service by Robert Keith and Bill Heniff, Jr.):
A provision is considered to be extraneous if it fails under one or more of the following six definitions:(1) It does not produce a change in outlays or revenues…
(4) It produces a change in outlays or revenues which is merely incidental to the non-budgetary components of the provision.
(5) It would increase the deficit for a fiscal year beyond those covered by the reconciliation measure…This suggests why smart Democrats never seriously discussed using reconciliation to pass an entire health care bill. If a provision does not alter spending or tax revenues, does so only “incidentally” (an unimportantly ambiguous word!), or adds to the deficit – it can be stricken.
The Byrd rule will set the parameters of the legislative battle, should the Democrats take this path. In that case, the Democrats will write a reconciliation bill that resolves the differences between the two chambers and, so they hope, does not include extraneous measures, as defined by the Byrd rule. The Republicans will test how well the Democrats have drafted their legislation – raising points of order in the hopes of striking provisions that they argue are extraneous.
It’s important to know what Members of Congress can do to stop the bill, but it doesn’t change what the public can do, and that’s keep talking to your elected representatives and educating your friends and colleagues about the importance of defeating this government take-over of medicine.
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Activists step up health care fight
Congress.org
By Ambreen Ali
Activists are getting ready for the final showdown on health care.
As Democrats renew their push on health care this week, advocacy groups on both sides have stepped up their efforts to energize their bases and influence lawmakers.
President Obama’s health care plan — released ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan health summit — resembles the Senate bill (HR 3590) with a few concessions that could get House Democrats to pass the overhaul with a simple majority.
That strategy gives Democrats an advantage, since they hold the majority in both chambers.
But opponents of the overhaul are doing everything they can to ensure that won’t happen. They have started e-mail, robocall, and advertising campaigns telling members to pressure lawmakers against the President’s plan.
“We’re trying to go gangbusters this week,” said Carrie Lukas of Independent Women’s Voice. The conservative group has been using radio ads and phone campaigns to target specific Congressional districts.
“There’s a lot of Members of the House who have to be nervous about making this leap,” Lukas said, noting that some Democrats are nervous about midterm elections after Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) won in Massachusetts.
The House health care bill (HR 3962) passed by five votes, 220-215. The conservative groups are trying to identify the handful of Representatives who may be easiest to peel away from the majority.
Americans for Tax Reform has been using the plan’s tax provisions to sway lawmakers against the bill. The group said the President’s proposal includes a net tax hike of $748 billion over the next decade.
“We’re going to try to make Members profoundly uncomfortable if they were going to vote for it,” Tax Policy Director Ryan Ellis said.
The group used similar analyses of the House and Senate bills to lobby lawmakers, making them well prepared for what Ellis called the “the third round.”
But it also works to the activists’ disadvantage that the health care debate has dragged. Grassroots bases that were energized around health care last year have waned over time.
“We’re trying to bring the energy level and engagement level of our activists back up to where it was last year,” Phil Kerpen, a spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, said.
The group is holding a counter-event to the health summit to get some of that excitement back.
“We’re likely near the end one way or the other,” Kerpen said. “Either they’ll succeed in getting something very unpopular through or they’ll move on.”
As for the summit itself, some groups are adopting a wait-and-see approach.
The Chamber of Commerce, a powerful opponent of the Democrats’ proposals, sent the President a letter yesterday asking him to drop the House and Senate bills in favor of “a fresh approach.”
Others, including the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, have already written it off the event as “kabuki.”
“This is a last-ditch effort by the President to restart the debate and take hold of the narrative,” spokesman Brian Burgess said.
The group has been targeting the public option through radio and television ads that ask voters to get in touch with lawmakers. It’s a “trickle-up” approach to which Burgess said lawmakers respond.
If it works this time around, conservative activists may prevail.
“We’re at the point where if [the summit] doesn’t work, there’s really not a lot of time to reboot before elections,” he noted.
Ambreen Ali writes for Congress.org.
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Ideas for the White House Health Care Summit:
More Choice and Individual Control Particularly Important for Women
In anticipation of this week’s White House Summit, many are offering their ideas for how policymakers can improve upon the current system. IWV would like to highlight a few reforms that would be particularly important for women.
In particular, women face unique challenges in the existing health care system: Today, health insurance is tied to employment, which means that women (who frequently take time out of the workforce and work in part-time positions that don’t include health benefits) often face disruptions in their coverage. Buying health insurance on the individual market (instead of through an employer) can often be costly and difficult.
Before considering how best to address this problem, it’s important to consider why the problem exists in the first place. Why is it that in the U.S. health insurance—unlike many other types of coverage, including car, life, and home/renters insurance—is linked to employment status?
The current, flawed system is largely the product of ill-conceived government policy. Right now, employers purchasing health insurance receive tax breaks while those purchasing in the individual market don’t. This is at the heart of the problems that plague today’s health care system. Those with employer-provided health insurance are shielded from the full costs of their coverage, encouraging the over-consumption of medical treatment and driving up costs for everyone. Those without coverage through employers are forced into the more expensive individual market, which discourages the healthiest from obtaining insurance on their own, which further drives up prices.
There are a number of ways that policymakers could address these problems and make the health care system work better for women. Here are three simple solutions that IWV believes should be seriously considered during the health care summit:
•End the Bias In Favor of Employer-Provided Care: Policymakers should reform the tax laws so that individual and employer-provided health insurance operate on a level playing field. This would make it easier for women to continue coverage when taking time out of the workforce, and make insurance more affordable for those who don’t receive health benefits through work.
• Allow Inter-State Competition for Health Insurance: Under current law, people can only buy health insurance from a provider within their state. Opening up the insurance market so that insurance could be purchased across state lines would provide individuals more options and lower costs.
• Eliminate—Don’t Add To—Costly Mandates: Individuals have different needs and preferences when it comes to insurance. Instead of new government mandates about what insurance policies must contain (which drive up costs), the government should allow insurance companies to offer a wide variety of options, from high deductible catastrophic plans to specialized, full-service plans.
What women don’t need is a trillion-dollar government plan that strangles private health insurance, discourages much-needed medical innovation, puts government in charge of determining the medical treatments, drives up the price of premiums, and adds to our already exploding deficit.
Policymakers often talk about embracing big government reforms in order to help women. Yet women have much to lose in a one-size-fits-all, government controlled health care system and much to gain from moving toward a system of greater choice and more portable insurance. Our Representatives should focus on moving us in the right direction.
