Baucus Healthcare Reform Bill is a ghost in a lab coat
From the Washington Examiner, we have the key points why the CBO analysis of this bill is worthless. Mainly, we do not have a bill.
CBO had to qualify its observations because it was not allowed to score the actual text of the Baucus bill but rather had to rely on a legislative summary provided by Senate committee staff. So not only were CBO’s analysts forced to look at language that put the bill in the best possible light, they were also denied the concrete details and precise legal wording that quite possibly could change their conclusions entirely. Such “close enough for government work” analyses suffice for Baucus and the Times, but for everybody else, by labeling its assessment as preliminary, CBO was clearly waving yellow caution flags.
Reading further, other yellow flags were present in the CBO analysis. As The Examiner’s Susan Ferrechio reported Friday, enactment of the Baucus approach will add approximately $900 billion to the federal budget. That money will have to come from somewhere. Half of it will come from massive cuts in Medicare Advantage, while the other half will be generated by new taxes on high-end insurance, higher income taxes, and new levies on drugs and innovative medical devices. We will address these additional yellow flags on this page on Tuesday in Part 2.
There is another reason why the CBO’s preliminary analysis should be taken with a grain of salt, though this one wasn’t mentioned in the report. Whatever the content of the Baucus bill once it is voted out of the finance committee, it will disappear into a legislative black hole as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and their key aides do what they did on the economic stimulus package back in February — huddle together behind closed doors to write the final bill, which will then be presented as a fait accompli in the form of a conference report. Everything else is mere sound and fury signifying nothing until Harry and Nancy do their thing in the dark.
As I will spend the next six days frantically pulling together plans for the next Boston Tea Party, I ask all of you to read about what is being proposed and make a call. The utter refusal of Obama and his lap dogs in the Senate and the House to consider alternative proposals - HR 3400, for instance (Have you heard of it or has the media blackout worked?) – and re-open the debate illustrates their dubious intentions. The Obama admin has no desire to provide quality healthcare access to all at an affordable price. They simply wish to coalesce power. And we will pay for it – with our money and our lives.
H/T – RedState
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Heh, I like this: “A Federal agency or program, and any State or local government that receives Federal financial assistance, may not subject any individual or institutional health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions” despite the fact that the opposite discrimination is explicitly a part of the bill. Nice.
Where is that from?
HR 3400
Maybe you could expand a bit on your “quote” or whatever. Possibly enlighten us as to where you found it so we can read it in context for ourselves.
Or are you being deliberately vague, not unlike the Baucus Bill being debated in the Senate Finance Committee as we speak.
Nothing vague, it’s a direct quote from the bill in one of the two abortion clauses, it shouldn’t be hard to find (but the OpenCongress link isn’t working for me now for some reason).
Sections 106 and 105 of the full text of the bill
Our economy is threatened by our growing health care bills. We can’t afford to do nothing.