ObamaCare: Not in My Back Yard

Contra Obama

"ObamaCare would be good for you...but for me or my constituents, not so much"

We've been through this before. Serious efforts to compel or encourage members of Congress to enroll in the very health care plans that they wish to foist upon the American public have failed to garner support from Democrats. Members of Congress simply cannot be expected to give up their Cadillac plans, their VIP treatment, and their extraordinary perks.

To appease Senators in states whose governments have already driven the cost of health insurance through the stratosphere, preferential treatment is in the works. Senator Baucus has set up new health insurance taxation to phase in slowly for states such as Olympia Snowe's Maine. For the 17 states with the highest-cost premiums, ObamaCare would come in a gentler form, taxing insurance plans at a more forgiving threshold than for the rest of the country.

Nobody seems to want plain old ObamaCare in their own back yard. It has become something of a NIMBY phenomenon.

This week, we were treated to the finest example of this sickening hypocrisy:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has secured a special deal protecting his state against the costs of expanding Medicaid under one of the major health care bills moving through Congress.

Mr. Reid, a Democrat, complained about the impact on Nevada when the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, unveiled his bill on Sept. 16.

Now Mr. Baucus has modified the bill to spare Nevada and three other states, and Mr. Reid, who faces a potentially difficult race for re-election next year, is taking credit for getting a “major increase” in federal money for his state.

The Senate bill, like a companion measure in the House, would expand Medicaid to cover childless adults, parents and other people with incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level, or $29,327 for a family of four. The federal government would pay most of the new costs — anywhere from 77 percent to 95 percent, with a higher share in poorer states, in the first five years.

Under Mr. Baucus’s original proposal, the federal government would have paid 87 percent of the new costs in Nevada. Under the modified version, the federal government would pay 100 percent of the new costs for the first five years.

Seems fair to me!

Update: Hawaii May Get to Opt Out of Health Bill

More

Extraordinary Health Care Perks for Congress

Little Known Office on Capitol Hill Provides VIP Medical Care for Low Price

Harry Reid makes special deal to protect Nevada from Obamacare.

Interactive refresher: From a bill to a law - health care

ObamaCare: No Insurance, Go to Jail!

Obama has spoken with Letterman more than he has spoken with General McChrystal.

First Amendment Trampled by Federal Government

The Democrat-run Federal Government has ordered a private insurance company to stop educating seniors on the potential disadvantages of ObamaCare proposals.

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which oversees the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), launched an investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from His Royal Highness, Max Baucus, D-MT.

Background info from the AP:

Humana is one of the largest private carriers serving seniors under a program called Medicare Advantage. About one-fourth of the elderly and disabled people covered under Medicare participate in the Advantage program, which offers a choice of private plans that usually deliver added benefits.

Humana has about 1.4 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, and the program accounts for about half the company's revenue...

Humana sent out a mailer focused specifically on the Medicare Advantage program. Here are some excerpts from the letter that was banned by your Imperial Federal Government:

With the media reporting daily on Congress' and President Obama's efforts to enact meaningful health reforms this year, many Humana Medicare Advantage (MA) members are contacting us with questions. Members just like you want to know what these reforms might mean for their Medicare health plan and how they can get involved to help protect Medicare Advantage.

***

Let your Members of Congress know why Medicare Advantage is important to you. Congress is considering significant cuts to Medicare Advantage now, and your Members of Congress will want to know why this program is valuable to you because these cuts could mean higher costs and benefit reductions to many on Medicare Advantage.

***

Leading health reform proposals being considered in Washington, D.C., this summer include billions in Medicare Advantage funding cuts, as well as spending reductions to original Medicare and Medicaid. While these programs need to be made more efficient, if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted, senior citizens enrolled in Medicare Advantage have good reason to be concerned about the Obama-Baucus plan:

"The Baucus draft legislation slashes $123 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage, which Democrats hate despite the fact that almost one-fourth of beneficiaries have chosen it over traditional fee-for-service Medicare. One reason seniors like it is because private insurers focus on quality and preventive care and try to manage benefits, as opposed to simply paying bills."

This is obviously not the sort of information that should be freely disseminated. Fortunately, our benevolent dictators in Washington D.C. have banned the Humana letter in order to protect senior citizens from the vulgar and unvarnished truth. Here are some excerpts from the letter sent to Humana from our courageous HHS/CMS Officials:

CMS has learned that Humana has been contacting enrollees in one or more of its plans and alleging that current health care reform legislation affecting Medicare could hurt “millions of seniors and disabled individuals..."

***

CMS is concerned that, among other things, this information is misleading and confusing to beneficiaries, represents information to beneficiaries as official communications about the Medicare Advantage program, and is potentially contrary to federal regulations...

***

As we continue our research into this issue, we are instructing you to end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your website.

Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions. [emphasis mine]

Chilling.

Yesterday, the agency also barred all Advantage insurers from providing similar information to their beneficiaries.

David Henderson makes an important observation: "One of the ways that governments try to 'win' debates is to make debate by the other side illegal. This is what HHS is doing, at the behest of Senator Baucus."

Baucus and his statist buddies should keep their fingers crossed. If in spite of the Humana letter ban, Seniors do learn too much and begin to feel threatened by what Democrats are trying to do with Medicare Advantage, it could have a significant impact on the 2010 elections. Karl Rove explains:

"There are roughly 23,400 seniors on average in a congressional district who have Medicare Advantage, but who face losing it if Mr. Obama has his way. That's enough votes to tip most competitive House and Senate races."

Update:

Sen. Mitch McConnell: Obama is stifling dissent on health care reform, h/t Adrienne

Fees are Taxes Too!

Senator Max Baucus (D, MT) is floating his new plan for health care. As chairman of the Senate Finance committee, Baucus has been a key player in the health care debate.

For all the pomp and circumstance (and idle chatter about "compromise") there's precious little in the plan that we haven't already seen in the House bill, H. R. 3200. But details have been pretty sketchy thus far.

No word yet on how many millions of Americans will remain uninsured under the Baucus plan, but the cost is estimated to be around $900 billion. If history can be trusted to teach us anything, this is almost certainly a conservative estimate. (The one time when liberals are conservative is when they're estimating the cost of their stupid plans.)

Lets get down the key features:

• No public option

• $400 billion in cuts from Medicare

• No tort reform

• New job-killing taxes on employers to provide for the cost government subsidies for employees who are covered by a government-run insurance exchange

• $6 billion a year in new taxes on the health insurance industry (starting in 2010)

• New excise taxes on health insurance companies that provide high-end insurance plans

• Would bar insurance companies from dropping a policyholder in the event of illness as long as that person has paid his or her premium in full.

• Creates government-run health care cooperatives.

• Expands Medicaid, starting in 2014, to cover millions of lower-income people.

• Creates health insurance exchanges for small businesses and individuals.

• Creates catastrophic insurance as an option for people 25 and younger. (Government-run or private — who knows?)

• Would provide tax credits to help low- and middle-income families purchase private insurance coverage.

• $900 billion in new spending

• Presumably forces everyone to be on health insurance or face some kind of financial penalty.

• The plan would likely violate an Obama campaign pledge not to increase taxes on families earning less than $250,000 a year.

Obama's loyal servants at The New York Times and other liberal news outlets have assiduously avoided using the word "tax" in reference to the new plan, opting for the less emotionally charged term: "fee". And they have carefully refrained from pointing out that any new tax on the private health insurance industry will ultimately and inevitably be paid by individual policy holders.

The AP has taken the obfuscation one step further and has assured us that all laws of economics will be suspended and that consumers will be virtually insulated from the impact of the tax. They even quote a mystery entity: "If insurance companies passed the new fee along to customers, they would run the risk of losing out in a newly competitive environment, a source said." Hmm...a source, now I'm convinced!

Some liberals have been surprisingly honest. Ezra Klein, for example: "...we're taxing insurance companies rather than workers, even though the end result will be the same." Bottom line — new taxes on the middle class.

Let's not forget Obama's solemn statements:

Exhibit A: "But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

Exhibit B: "On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes — government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong."

Final words...watch for the new language:

Fee = Tax

Medicare Savings = Medicare Cuts

Government Organized = Government Run

Fair = Unprofitable

Competition = Regulation

Accountability = Government Control

Marketplace = Political Scheme

Budget-Neutral = Economically Unsustainable

Bipartisan = Liberals + Blue Dogs + Olympia Snowe