Research Briefing

Will Obama Fold His Liberal Ambitions After Reid Unveils His Cards On A Government-Run Health Care Bill That Breaks Several Of His Pledges?

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): “Of All The Bills We’ve Seen, It’ll Be The Best … I Think If You’re Not Impressed, You Should Be.” (Carrie Budoff Brown, “Reid Calls Dem Caucus Meeting,” Politico’s “Live Pulse” Blog, 11/17/09)

BUT OBAMA SHOULD BE FAR FROM “IMPRESSED” WITH REID’S VERSION OF GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE AND INSTEAD WIELD HIS VETO PEN

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “The Plan I’m Announcing Tonight … Will Slow The Growth Of Health Care Costs For Our Families ...” (President Barack Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress On Health Care, Washington, DC, 9/9/09)

• REID’S REALITY: Senate Dems’ Government-Run Health Insurance Would Have Higher Premiums Than Private Coverage. “CBO’s assessment is that a public plan paying negotiated rates would attract a broad network of providers but would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans in the exchanges.” (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)
• And New Mandates “Could Have The Unintended Consequence Of Raising Health Insurance Premiums.” “A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions ... This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs ... As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums.” (Martin Feldstein, Op-Ed, "Obamacare's Nasty Surprise," The Washington Post, 11/6/09)

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “I Can Make A Firm Pledge. Under My Plan, No Family Making Less Than $250,000 A Year Will See Any Form Of Tax Increase. Not Your Income Tax, Not Your Payroll Tax, Not Your Capital Gains Taxes, Not Any Of Your Taxes.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks In Dover, NH, 9/12/08)

• REID’S REALITY: Senate Dems’ Bill Taxes Americans Who Don’t Buy Insurance. “Sec. 5000A. Requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage. Requires individuals to maintain minimum essential coverage beginning in 2014. Failure to maintain coverage will result in a penalty of $95 in 2014, $350 in 2015, $750 in 2016 and indexed thereafter.” (“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Section‐by‐Section Analysis,” Democrats.Senate.Gov, Accessed 11/19/09)
• And Tax Will Fall On Middle Class Americans. JCT Chief Of Staff Thomas Barthold: “Senator Grassley, the penalty proposed in the Chairman’s mark, is as you observed, it’s structured as a penalty excise tax, we have other penalty excise taxes in the internal revenue code ... we think that some people would be subject to the penalty excise tax when everything shakes out we would expect that some would have incomes less than $200,000 dollars.” (George Stephanopoulos, “Mandate Or Tax? Grassley V. Baucus,” ABC News’s “George’s Bottom Line” Blog, 9/22/09)

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “[N]othing In This Plan Will Require You Or Your Employer To Change The Coverage Or The Doctor You Have. Let Me Repeat This:  Nothing In Our Plan Requires You To Change What You Have.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress On Health Care, Washington, DC, 9/9/09)

• REID’S REALITY: Senate Dems’ Bill Will Cut Payments From Medicare To Doctors. “Permanent reductions in the annual updates to Medicare’s payment rates for most services in the fee-for-service sector (other than physicians’ services), yielding budgetary savings of $192 billion over 10 years. (That calculation excludes interactions between those provisions and others—namely, the effects of those changes on payments to Medicare Advantage plans and collections of Part B premiums.)” (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)
• Which Dems Admit “Will Force Doctors To Decline Medicare Patients.” “Rep. Eric Massa said tightening provider payments could lead to access problems for patients. ‘We will force doctors to decline Medicare patients,’ he said after a raucous town-hall meeting in Upstate New York. ‘If we believe these savings are there, let’s test the concept. But we can’t hinge the entire funding of this bill on these not-yet-seen savings.’” (Ceci Connolly, “Seniors Remain Wary of Health-Care Reform,” The Washington Post, 8/9/09)

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “I Will Not Sign It If It Adds One Dime To The Deficit, Now Or In The Future, Period.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress On Health Care, Washington, DC, 9/9/09)

• REID’S REALITY: Senate Dems’ Bill Hides “Doc Fix” Provision That Will Add $250 Billion To The Deficit. (Page 17, Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)
• And Bipartisan Coalition In The Senate Defeated “Doc Fix” Deficit As A Separate Bill.  “A group of Democrats joined all Republicans in blocking a 10-year freeze of scheduled cuts to doctors' Medicare payments ... Reid brought the $247 billion bill to the Senate floor this week as part of a deal to secure the support of doctors groups such as the AMA for passage of a separate, broader healthcare reform bill ...” (Alexander Bolton, "'Doc Fix' Collapses, Reid Tells Colleagues AMA Led Him Astray," The Hill, 10/21/09)

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “And One More Misunderstanding I Want To Clear Up—Under Our Plan, No Federal Dollars Will Be Used To Fund Abortions, And Federal Conscience Laws Will Remain In Place.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress On Health Care, Washington, DC, 9/9/09)

• REID’S REALITY: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) Says Senate Dems’ Bill Does Not Prevent Abortion Funding. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) modified the healthcare bills approved by two committees in order to address concerns from anti-abortion-rights senators that the bill would change current laws prohibiting taxpayer money from being spent on abortion while not alienating abortion-rights supporters. Reid did not succeed, according to Nelson, a key centrist swing vote Reid needs to advance his healthcare bill at a crucial test vote set for Saturday. ‘We have looked at the language,’ Nelson told The Hill. ‘That language is not language that I would prefer.’ ‘I think you need to have it eminently clear that no dollars that are federal tax dollars, directly or indirectly, are used to pay for abortions and it needs to be totally clear. [It’s] not clear enough, I don’t think,’ Nelson said.” (Jeffrey Young, “Ben Nelson: Senate Bill's Abortion Provisions Not Good Enough,” The Hill, 11/19/09)

OBAMA’S PROMISE: “The Only Thing This Plan Would Eliminate Is The Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars In Waste And Fraud … So Don’t Pay Attention To Those Scary Stories About How Your Benefits Will Be Cut… That Will Not Happen On My Watch.  I Will Protect Medicare.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks To A Joint Session Of Congress On Health Care, Washington, DC, 9/9/09)

• REID’S REALITY: Senate Dems’ Bill Will Slash Medicare Advantage. “Setting payment rates in the Medicare Advantage program on the basis of the average of the bids submitted by Medicare Advantage plans in each market, yielding savings of an estimated $118 billion (before interactions) over the 2010–2019 period.” (Douglas W. Elmendorf, Letter To Senator Harry Reid, 11/18/09)
• Leading To Many Seniors Seeing Benefits Cut In Half. SEN. MIKE CRAPO (R-ID): “So approximately half of the additional benefit would be lost to those current Medicare Advantage policy holders.” ELMENDORF: “Those who would be enrolled otherwise under current law, yes…” SEN. CRAPO: “So the current plan holders would recognize about half the benefits that they see under today under the current law.” ELMENDORF: “Yes, that’s right.” (Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) And CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf, Senate Finance Committee Markup Hearing, 9/22/09)