Wonkette
Ouch times a billion! The heroic Congressional Budget Office has gone through the sexy new health care bills from the House and Senate and, because he is racist against Obama, has determined that neither comes close to doing what they need to do: Bending The Cost Curve down, in the long run, to save the federal government from debt default and apocalypse, in the medium run. This is potentially terrible news for Democrats, many of whom were already scared as the dickens of voting for party-line $1 trillion overhaul that they won’t bother justifying to their constituents. So: will the leadership pussy out and just give poor people a few bucks to buy some Advil, or will they get tough and make it work?
Here is Sen. Kent Conrad, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, chatting up CBO director Doug Elmendorf at a hearing today.
Conrad: Dr. Elmendorf, I am going to really put you on the spot because we are in the middle of this health care debate, but it is critically important that we get this right. Everyone has said, virtually everyone, that bending the cost curve over time is critically important and one of the key goals of this entire effort. From what you have seen from the products of the committees that have reported, do you see a successful effort being mounted to bend the long-term cost curve?
Elmendorf: No, Mr. Chairman. In the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount. And on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.
Conrad: So the cost curve in your judgement is being bent, but it is being bent the wrong way. Is that correct?
Elmendorf: The way I would put it is that the curve is being raised, so there is a justifiable focus on growth rates because of course it is the compounding of growth rates faster than the economy that leads to these unsustainable paths.
Rats!
He adds that if you want to overhaul health care on this magnitude — which all of these Democrats supposedly really wanted to do during the election, when they were giving speeches, and people were approving, COME ON NOW — “there has to be very substantial reductions in other parts of the federal commitment to health care, either on the tax revenue side through changes in the tax exclusion or on the spending side through reforms in Medicare and Medicaid.”
Elmendorf suggested, as he has been suggesting, and as health care people from both sides of the aisle suggest, because it is a good thing to suggest, that unless you really slash the potatoes out of Medicare and Medicaid, you must either eliminate or cap the tax exclusion protecting employer-based health insurance — a subsidy that encourages unnecessarily expensive and getting expensive-er health plans. Barack Obama, for one, has demanded this option be kept off the table, because it might push workers out of employer plans that they like, which he promised never to do. He also promised to never tax anyone making less than $250,000 a year, so… goddamnit.
If Democrats want to make this reform worth the effort, they’re going to have to suck it up and cast difficult votes, for the first time in their lives. But what’s the point of liberals building “political capital” if not to eventually exhaust it all on a good health care overhaul?
CBO Sees No Federal Cost Savings in Dem Health Plans [The Note]
“Do you want Barney Frank doing your colonoscopy?”
A fuck lot more than I want McCain doing my budget, thank you very much. At least Barney knows his way around an asshole.
So the cost curve in your judgement is being bent, but it is being bent the wrong way. Is that correct?
It really is all about the buttsecks in DC ain’t though…
I don’t recall anyone raising this question about the horrible Medicare prescription drug bill. And it cost twice as much as the legislators said it would, had a huge “donut hole” of the population that wouldn’t be covered, expressly disallowed the Federal government from getting volume discounts on drug purchases, and spawned 26 horribly confusing plans that require an accountant, a doctor and a lawyer to choose from. And Republicans hailed it as a great success. The bottom line is, let’s get the damn thing out the door first and worry about it doing something it never promised to do later.
It’s all very simple… take away health care and then after a little while only healthy people will be left. Problem solved.
“But what’s the point of liberals building “political capital” if not to eventually exhaust it all on a good health care overhaul?”
I think you’re missing the whole point here. Change is only to be talked about.
Preach, Brother Newell!
As someone who lives in a place with single payer healthcare that had been under attack from the same idiots who are making your lives miserable, the one thing that anyone should think about is that you aren’t going to “save” money. It is going to cost you in taxes or copayments or whatever, but that most of your money will be actually spent helping people not paying lawyers to deny you care and definitely not for HC insurance execubots and CEOs hooker and blow bills.
Canada City’s HC office overhead is around 7-8%. US America’s overhead is 24-27% and you spend about 20-30% more on healthcare than we do per capita.
Sussemilch: Beautifully stated.
What’s wrong with just taxing rich people, like the House bill does? Eventually, there will have to be reductions in health care spending but what matters is total spending by Americans as a portion of the GDP, not government spending alone, as the CBO moron seems to say. And public systems tend to be more efficient. Also, EFCA is probably way more important bill that whatever lame health care thing is eventually signed. People don’t know this, but the final bill may require you to give Barney Frank a colonoscopy.
Wait, providing health care to 47 million uninsured Americans is going to cost money? Who could have ever forseen that??
Hey Asshole! I think you meant to say Doctor Barney Frank.
Wait, fixing healthcare and saving America rests on Congress making tough but necessary decisions?
Oh, yes. We’re fucked.
If it was possible I had colon cancer, I’d rather have Barney Frank do it than the ABSOLUTELY NO ONE that would do it if I couldn’t get health care.
suchsweetthunder: That is ocrrect. You talk about change, which will allow you build a large stockpile of political capital. Then you drop it on brown people while borking cocaine laden teenagers, allowing the other side to contine begin it’s own accumulation the magnificent, ages old cycle of American political turnover.
Mild Midwesterner: That’s what we’ve been doing.
So effed in the ay we are, and not in the good ol’ fashioned BarneySexy way.
The floor of the US Senate is nothing more than a wood & marble-framed red carpet representation of gaping, governmental goatse. Rarely does something come out of it other than an endless succession of limp, shitty dicks.
When Congress gets both hands on this bill, the results will not be pretty.
ManchuCandidate:
There you go again. Making sense with your “facts n stuff”. Socialist!
Seriously, I worked with an engineer from Canada who was offered a contract in the good old USA. He did the math. Because both his wife and he both had preexisting medical conditions they couldn’t afford to work here. Even though he was going to make more money the insurance costs made the move impractical.
Something stinks to high heaven here. Didn’t the CBO estimate the HELP bill would cost $600 billion? Is Elmendorf contradicting the group he works for?
Tax the fucking rich!
Yeah, yeah, joke if you want, but the good Senator Frank gives a hell of a colonoscopy. Or so I’ve heard.
This is why, in the end, the Republicans will always have it over Democrats because all the Republicans call for is low taxes and everybody is like “wheee! low taxes!” and vote them in and since the Republicans don’t really want to do anything else but cut taxes and blow shit up, they can then spend the rest of their time having romps with Argentinian women or whacking off to Sarah Palin. Democrats actually want to get stuff done which puts themselves in a position where they have to actually do the stuff they said they’d do and doin’ stuff is hard.
Monsieur Grumpe: A lot of US uninsured’s have pre-existing conditions: they’re young and healthy so they don’t buy insurance. How dare they!!
No,Mr. Conrad. I want him doing yours.
Barney Frank + Ass = Comedy Gold
I do not undertand this. Would somebody please come up with an easy to understand chart on how a regular old insurance company presently works? Like where the desk is that says NO to every claim, or sick person who applies? Barney Frank might be a viable alternative.
Monsieur Grumpe: Mr. StopIt hails from the UK, and since those socialists at the NHS insisted he have coverage whether he wanted it or not, he was actually able to give my insurance company his NHS number proving he had the required prior insurance coverage, which exempted him from pre-existing coverage limitations.
If the cost curve keeps bending up maybe it’ll eventually hit the g-spot.
Mild Midwesterner: Hey, if everyone has healthcare, then only healthy people will have healthcare. Also.
Answer: Universal Heath Care