Tag: health care

Health Care Rationing bill up to 1.2 trillion.

You do not have the right to be surprised.

That ‘mere’ 900 billion? Not happening.

WASHINGTON – The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

Via Hot Air Headlines. What did happen was that the Democrats decided to increase various programs by a third because… well, because the bill was there, and they have a commanding majority in both houses of Congress, and Democrats like spending your money on both worthy and ‘worthy’ causes*. So, since they have no intention of paying for this thing anyway…

Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t vote for any of these people. But how is that ‘teach the GOP a lesson’ thing working out for the rest of America?

Moe Lane

Continue reading Health Care Rationing bill up to 1.2 trillion.

Rasmussen: 54/42 against Pelosi’s health care rationing bill.

Give House Democrats credit: their latest version of the health care rationing bill actually moved the numbers a little.  Just not in the way that they hoped.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the House version of health care reform legislation last week, but most voters are still opposed to the effort.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down from 45% a week ago but unchanged from two weeks ago.

Much obliged; the drop in support from the last time the Democrats unveiled a version of health care rationing was starting to abate, so having this handy reminder of who’s running Congress these days – and the implications – is really, really handy.  Some people might quibble that if Democrats wanted to be really helpful they’d have scheduled their latest announcement last Saturday, but I’m not greedy.  This will do nicely for tomorrow’s races.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Nancy Pelosi’s non-tort reform.

Jen Rubin:

Remember Obama’s effort to try a “test” for tort reform? (We don’t actually need a test, since it has worked to lower medical malpractice coverage and help increase access to doctors in states that have tried it.) Well, Pelosi’s bill has an anti-tort-reform measure. On pages 1431-1433 of the 1990 spellbinder, there is a financial incentive for states to try “alternative medical liability laws.” But look — you don’t get the incentive if you have a law that would “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.”

See Hot Air for more, including a link to the actual language and a reminder that the Democrats never had any intention of doing anything at all to disconcert trial lawyers.  Which is the point that I’d like to hammer home, here: there is no reason to be surprised at this.  We knew back in August that something like this was going to happen; and this is precisely the sort of political doubletalk that the people opposing the Democrats’ health care rationing bill have come to expect from the current ruling party.

So.  To any random Democrats reading this: when Nancy Pelosi looks you in the eye and tells you that the new health care bill addresses tort reform, she is lying to you.  Because she thinks that you are stupid.

She. Thinks. That. You. Are. Stupid.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Palin boosts Boehner’s health care address.

Via her Facebook account, of course:

Mark my words – tomorrow is the game changer! Tune in to hear common sense solutions that bury the false accusations that conscientious members of Congress have no solutions to meet America’s health care challenges.

If you’re like me, shaking your head wondering why all the miscommunication between Washington and the American people who have been saying, “Please hear what we’re saying about our desire for health care reform,” then tomorrow will be a refreshing time of clarity for all.

As she notes, preview here. This will be interesting to see for two reasons; first off, as Dan Riehl notes this should provide Rep. Boehner’s address with a bit more traffic than these things usually get.  I’ll be interested to see whether or not it’ll be a significant spike, but it should be something.  Second: if you were holding out hope that former Governor Palin was going to play third-party advocate… you might as well stop.  This is her way of saying that NY-23 is a special case, not a general one; and that she’s still in, and in with, the GOP.

[Insert tired, yet labored Halloween cliche here.]

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

And here’s confirmation that the Speaker is banning public access.

I just got tipped on this:

(Background: the Speaker of the House is holding a press conference on the Democrats’ health care rationing bill, and shutting out the public. This video shows security confirming that the restrictions comes from the Speaker’s office.)

The utter arrogance of the Democratic party leadership is only matched by their utter ignorance of the realities of modern communication technology.

Senate Majority Leader Reid’s successful public option rollout.

No, seriously: successful.  You see, by Mary Katharine Ham’s count Reid only explicitly lost Senators Lieberman and Lincoln from his own caucus, and Senators Collins & Snowe from ours for his clumsy and ill-planned advocacy of a government ‘public’ option in the Senate health care rationing bill.  It was not unreasonable to expect that Reid would not only alienate those four, but Senators Ben Nelson and Landrieu as well; so if one looks at this result and squints it sort of looks like a win for the Senate Majority Leader.  If one grades on the curve, that is.

Then again, while the question is not yet moot, there’s a certain amount of mootness creeping in right now…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Rasmussen: 54/42 against health care rationing.

It would seem that finally putting out all the various versions, alternates, and fevered mutterings of what the Democrats are trying to call ‘health care reform’ has helped to clarify matters for voters some more. It’s just not clarifying matters in a fashion that will make the current ruling party happy. Rasmussen’s latest snapshot:

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has passed its version of health care reform, 42% of voters nationwide favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s down two points from a week ago and down four from the week before.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% are opposed to the plan.

It is perhaps unkind to point out two details about the 42%:

  • The current state of affairs means that the number represents support for the hope that there will eventually be an acceptable health care bill.
  • Hope is not a plan.

…but it’s probably necessary.  Watching the… seven*?… Democratic factions try to reconcile the mess that they’ve created for themselves should be remarkably engrossing.

Moe Lane

*Well, you’ve got House progressives & Senate liberals; like vulnerable House members and ‘moderate’ Democratic Senators, there’s the House/Senate split on outlook to consider.  So that’s four.  Then there’s the House’s and the Senate’s leadership, with the two groups being barely civil to each other these days.  That’s two more.  And then there’s the White House, who pretty much caused this mess by letting the other six factions have free rein over the process.  So, seven.

Crossposted to RedState.

This Week’s White House Two-Minute Hate: insurance companies.

Admittedly, nobody actually watches this stuff anymore, but it’s still just the smallest bit distressing to see the President threaten an entire industry.

The President doesn’t handle opposition to his will all that well, does he? Even the New York Times is forced to admit that this was ‘unusually harsh;’ Instapundit was harsh himself, but mostly just accurate when he called this ‘desperate.’ See also Business Week, particularly for some actual fact-checking of some of the claims made by the President (I’ll do one right now: that ‘bipartisan’ support he’s claiming is ONE Republican Senator who went along with ONE bill that was going to advance to the floor anyway).  Monday’s going to be a fascinating day, really.

Exit question, as Allahpundit would have it: how much of this is just pique over the administration having to drop the Humana probe?  I’m guessing at least a third.

Moe Lane

PS: I think that we may safely assume that the $21 million that the insurance industry gave to Democrats in 2008 will represent the high-water mark of that particular section of the economy.  I hope nobody at the DSCC, DCCC, or DNC was actually counting on that particular revenue stream…

Snowmentum! – Well, everybody else is using the line.

Honestly, I’m hearing as many different reasons for Senator Snowe’s yes vote in committee yesterday as there are people makng them, ranging from the apologetic to the apoplectic – and a couple that were Armageddonic, if that’s even a word.  But one thing is becoming apparent: moving the ball, it is not.  There are a bunch of illustrative sections in this Politico article, so here’s one more or less at random:

In this environment, few uncommitted Democrats were willing to make any new commitments on Wednesday. And no one thought Snowe’s vote would break the logjam.

“It didn’t change anything for me,” Pryor said.

[snip]

“We just finished the first quarter,” Nelson said. “There are three quarters to play. The bench is worn out. The quarterback keeps getting sacked. And the crowd has about had it, too.”

Continue reading Snowmentum! – Well, everybody else is using the line.

White House pulls DNC ad to mollify… Bob Dole.

How worried is the White House that it doesn’t have any Republican support for its health care rationing bill?

WASHINGTON (Oct 11) – The Democratic National Committee is canceling a television ad touting GOP support for health care reform after protests from one of the Republicans mentioned, former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.

[snip]

Dole told ABC News on Sunday that he objected to the ad’s criticism of the current Republican leadership.

“I just didn’t think it was fair, when I’ve tried to be helpful in encouraging a bipartisan solution, for the DNC to run an ad that I interpreted and I know others did as a backhanded comment about Republicans,” Dole said.

This worried. Also, desperate: after all, while I have nothing against former Senator Dole I’m also not that interested in his position on health care. If the President wants the GOP to sign off on his health care proposals, there are plenty of current Republican elected officials for him to court. The complication that most of them have been repeatedly rebuffed by this administration for months (and are thus legitimately disbelieving of the administration’s motives) is a complication of the administration’s own making, and is their complication to resolve. The White House can start by apologizing to Rep. Boehner and the rest of the House leadership for shutting them out for six months. Continue reading White House pulls DNC ad to mollify… Bob Dole.