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.
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.
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.
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.
On February 19, 2010, Heather Higgins particpated on the panel, Saving Freedom From ObamaCare: It Isn’t Over Yet, at CPAC.
Congressional Quarterly Healthbeat
| By Jane Norman, CQ HealthBeat Associate Editor |
| Conservative opponents of Democrats’ health care overhaul plans touted their success in Massachusetts and vowed at a Washington political conference Friday to continue their drive to ensure the demise of a “big government takeover” of the system.
“They are not giving up, and we must not either,” said Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, as she introduced a panel on “Saving Freedom from Obamacare: It Isn’t Over Yet” at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a longtime event gaining new attention this year with the growth of the tea party movement. Much of the anti-overhaul action described by the panelists has come not in Washington, where Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress, but in the states. Heather Higgins, director of the conservative advocacy group Independent Women’s Voice, said it was involved in building support for the candidacy of newly minted Republican Sen. Scott P. Brown in his surprise victory in a Massachusetts special election in January to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy. Brown gave Senate Republicans the 41st vote they needed to successfully mount filibusters. Independent Women’s Voice ran radio ads in Massachusetts on health care targeted at women and independent voters and placed thousands of recorded telephone calls featuring two physicians opposed to the overhaul, said Higgins. Polling after the election found a majority of those who heard the group’s message backed Brown, she said. “Small, independent efforts actually matter,” said Higgins. Both of the physicians on the recorded phone calls “had total strangers track them down and thank them” for the calls, she said. Eric Novack, an orthopedic surgeon and chairman of Arizonans for Healthcare Freedom, described how his advocacy group gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures and pushed to include on the Arizona ballot in 2008 a constitutional amendment that would block any state plan for universal health coverage. Known as the Freedom to Choose Act, it stated, “Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no law shall be passed that restricts a person’s freedom of choice of private health care systems or private plans of any type.” While the amendment narrowly lost, voters will consider a new version in this fall’s election and Novack said lawmakers in more than 30 states now are proposing similar initiatives. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, those include proposed constitutional amendments, changes in state laws and proposals for prohibition of unfunded federal mandates. “We have made unbelievable progress — we can’t let up on this,” said Novack. “We can make a difference at the state level.” Hal Scherz, a pediatric urologist in Atlanta who is president of Docs 4 Patient Care, a group opposed to the “government takeover” of health care, said his physician members believe an overhaul should target lower costs, improved access and changes in malpractice laws. They’d like to see consumers able to purchase insurance over the Internet and across state lines, for example. Scherz, who blasted the American Medical Association for its endorsements of Democratic bills, said that when he meets with the parents of his young patients, he takes two minutes at the end of the conversation and asks to talk with them about the health care overhaul. “Most of them say yes and thank me for doing this,” he said. Source: CQ HealthBeat |
According to the White House’s website, the President used his weekly address this weekend to “call on Democratic and Republican leaders to attend next week’s health care meeting in good faith to find reforms that work for American families and small businesses.” It’s a little hard to swallow given all the reporting on how Democrats plan to ram through their unpopular plan through Congress using legislative maneuvers that subvert traditional Congressional rules.
The President’s address repeats what’s been contained in just about every speech he has given on health care. He highlights all the problems with the status quo. Yet that’s really besides the point. Yes, everyone knows that the current system is flawed. The question is what to do about it. And the American people overwhelming recognize that a trillion dollar government initiative to micromanaging the health insurance of all Americans will not make things better, but much, much worse.
The most interesting part of this address was when the President said that he considers Republican proposals to “allow Americans to purchase insurance from a company in another state to give people more choices and bring down costs” a “good idea.” Certainly, that sounds like bipartisanship and like the President is open to using reform to encourage real competition.
Yet don’t be fooled: in the very next sentence he stipulates that we should “pursue them in a way that protects benefits, protects patients, and protects the American people.” Sure, President Obama and Congressional leaders may consider allowing inter-state purchase of health insurance, but they are also going to so heavily regulate the insurance industry–dictating exactly what each policy can and cannot contain and at what price–that it really won’t matter who you buy your insurance from anyway, since they’ll all be selling the same government created product.
The President claims that he doesn’t want the summit to be merely “political theater,” but it’s clear that’s exactly what this will be. Today, the White House will release its new proposal and then will focus on forcing it through Congress by any means necessary. They see the summit as a chance to preen about bipartisanship, which they presume the obsequious media will dutifully cover as an actual good faith meeting, before returning to business as usual.
The good news is that the American people increasingly recognize these tricks for what they are, and will remain committed to defeating the Democrats’ abomination of a health care bill.
In anticipation of next week’s summit, the indispensable Grace Marie-Turner wrote a reminder on NRO about the real consequences of the Democrat’s proposed health care legislation (which the American people continue to overwhelmingly reject, with more than six in ten calling for Congress to start over completely).
Here are a few highlights of the problems she identifies with the current proposals:
*Health costs would continue to rise. The Congressional Budget Office says health-insurance premiums would continue their steady upward climb under the Reid bill. Families purchasing insurance in the individual market would see an increase of $2,100 in the year 2016, over and above increases they already would be facing as health-insurance premiums continued to rise at about twice the rate of general inflation….
*Federal health spending would increase. Chief Medicare actuary Rick Foster estimates that under the Senate bill, “Federal expenditures would increase by a net total of $279 billion” between 2010 and 2019.
*People would lose the coverage they have today. Steep cuts in Medicare Advantage would mean that at least one-third of seniors likely would lose their comprehensive Medicare Advantage coverage as their plans withdrew from the program, cut their benefits, or raised their premiums.
As for people with employer-sponsored insurance, the CBO says that 10 million of them could lose their current coverage. Independent studies by the Lewin Group found that a full “public plan” option would mean 83 million Americans could lose private coverage.
*Taxes would increase . . . on the middle class. The bills call for nearly $500 billion in new taxes, including taxes on insurance companies, Cadillac health plans, medical devices, and “the rich” — taxes that would hit the middle class and increase prices and health-insurance costs for consumers….
*Job creation would suffer: The new taxes on businesses and individuals would further retard job creation and the economic recovery, and the higher health costs would discourage small businesses — the engine of job creation — from hiring.
That’s just a small sample of what she identifies. Read the whole thing to get a scope of what we are fighting against, and why this legislation must be stopped.
The purpose of next week’s health care summit seem to be to recreate some momentum for the Democrat’s health care legislation, and to put Republicans on the hook for failing the public—particularly the poor—by condemning them to the status quo by blocking legislation. Yet the working poor would be among the biggest losers from the Democrats proposals. The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon details a few of the ways that the current legislation would hurt low-income workers, in his latest policy study, “Obama’s Prescription for Low-Wage Workers: High Implicit Taxes, Higher Premiums.” Here’s a highlight:
House and Senate Democrats have produced health care legislation whose mandates, subsidies, tax penalties, and health insurance regulations would penalize work and reward Americans who refuse to purchase health insurance. As a result, the legislation could trap many Americans in low-wage jobs and cause even higher health-insurance premiums, government spending, and taxes than are envisioned in the legislation.
Those mandates and subsidies would impose effective marginal tax rates on low-wage workers that would average between 53 and 74 percent— and even reach as high as 82 percent—over broad ranges of earned income. By comparison, the wealthiest Americans would face tax rates no higher than 47.9 percent.
Over smaller ranges of earned income, the legislation would impose effective marginal tax rates that exceed 100 percent. Families of four would see effective marginal tax rates as high as 174 percent under the Senate bill and 159 percent under the House bill. Under the Senate bill, adults starting at $14,560 who earn an additional $560 would see their total income fall by $200 due to higher taxes and reduced subsidies. Under the House bill, families of four starting at $43,670 who earn an additional $1,100 would see their total income fall by $870.
Regardless of how the White House and the media try to spin what happens next week, it’s good news for Americans—and particularly those with lower incomes—if the current version of health care reform is defeated.