54 billion in deficit reduction, 110 billion in reduced health care costs. Via the CBO’s blog, via Hot Air.
That’s a decent amount of savings, there: it’s a shame that the Democratic party would rather that trial lawyers got the money. After all, trial lawyers can be counted on to give the Democrats some of it.
Crossposted to RedState.
Or possibly just working mothers.
You may remember the ‘tampon tax‘ discovered in the Baucus bill – short version: Baucus went out and did a mass tax on medical devices to supposedly pay for his ‘compromise;’ unfortunately for him, things like condoms and tampons are classified as ‘medical devices’ – and you’d think that the resulting loud objections would have caused the Senator (more accurately, the Senator’s staff) to more thoroughly vet their policy changes.
You’d think. What Baucus did was do a quick hack and make the threshold for taxation $100. Amanda Carpenter points out the problem with that:
But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure. Particularly new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.
And, all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men an women — such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles — will be taxed, too.
Speaking as a stay-at-home dad, I can say with some authority that breast pumps make it a lot easier for working mothers to do both. I am stunned that the Democrats apparently care so little about either working mothers or the poor (who will be disproportionately affected by this legislation, as usual) that they’d blithely write legislation as slipshod as this. And that’s just the breast pumps. What are we going to say to somebody who can’t afford the tax on his or her pacemaker? “Sorry?”
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Most of the rest of this Time article on the looming Democratic problems with passing its health care rationing bill is kind of bland, but this: this is pure genius.
Barack Obama will no longer be able to stand on the sidelines and will have to declare his own position on many of the issues that have divided his party.
After all, his position is already well-known: the President will have turned out to have agreed all along with whatever bill makes it out of Congress for him to sign. As for showing leadership – what do you think this is, the Olympics?
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
I just can’t decide which is the better passage from this Time article (yes, Time) by Christopher Caldwell. It’s either this:
Democrats have a tiger by the tail. It is dawning on them that the people screaming at those town-hall meetings over the summer were not just feigning anger or sublimating their personal neuroses.
or this:
Democratic reform efforts once focused on building a European-style single-payer Utopia. They now focus on enlisting Republicans, if only a few, to share responsibility for a plan that Democrats, if they were sufficiently contemptuous of public sentiment, would have the votes to pass on their own.
Either way, it’s going to be an interesting October. The public dislikes the current plan – more accurately, the lack of same – coming from the Democrats; and the non-Democratic portion of the country prefers to be responsible for their own health care choices. And yet, going bipartisan on this will infuriate the Democrats’ partisan base. It is, frankly, a mess for them.
A solution? The Left doesn’t want to hear my solution. Because it starts with them admitting that they weren’t that smart, after all, and gets worse for them from there…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
(Via AoSHQ) I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starting to get a little tired of this.
…one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.
You’ll notice that this doesn’t come with a corresponding tax forgiveness. I hadn’t realized that Keillor had a hankering to bring back slavery; well, live and learn.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
I love reading articles like this (and for this one, all you need is the title):
Not that my love of articles like this reflects anything except a stain on my character, given that I enjoy them as the political equivalent of drunken hobo fight videos*. I may not have learned much in the last six years, but once thing that I have taken away from my observations is that people who are losing political battles tend to fight as hard as they know how. Which is not the same as ‘as hard as one would like,’ or ‘as hard as they can.’ So, when somebody has a problem with energy and/or skill levels of a particular candidate, at some point the possibility should be addressed that the actual problem lies in the actual candidate, and not in his or her methods or strategy. Which is what I think the case is here.
Put another way: the President can’t take off the kid gloves. They’re already off.
Moe Lane
*Admittedly, I’ve never actually watched a drunken hobo fight video, but I can extrapolate from the commercials.
Crossposted to RedState.
No. Seriously.
For those who don’t remember, the White House traded an $80 billion cap in costs with PhRMA in exchange for $150 million in pro-health care rationing advertising buys, then claimed that they didn’t do any such thing. Except that now Senator Carper’s committed the classic Kinsley gaffe: inadvertently telling the truth in Washington by admitting matter-of-factly that such a deal apparently took place.
Oops? Continue reading So, Senator Tom Carper just admitted to the PhRMA/WH deal.
Don’t blame me: I voted for the other guy. From before the “You Lie!” speech:
Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), a strong advocate of a public insurance plan, concedes that such a package is likely to be costly. “The larger the bill is, the more it’s going to save,” and that, he said, is the key.
(Via Kausfiles) Although admittedly Cardin came out against reconciliation. I wonder if that’s still true of him, though?
Crossposted to RedState.
This is actually from September 9th – you can tell, because they’re hyping the President’s speech as being a game-changer – but it’s instructive nonetheless. In this clip, Axelrod was asked, point-blank, why the administration isn’t trying to change the rules to let insurance companies compete across straight[*] lines, and his refusal to give a straight answer is almost as funny as is watching Wolf Blitzer pushing him to give one.
Mind you, the actual answer – “There isn’t anything in that scheme that benefits a Democratic client group, and interstate competition is part of the Republican plan that we keep lying about not existing, so we won’t support it” – is politically… fraught. Nonetheless, it’s instructive to remember that this administration has no interest in a bipartisan solution to health care reform, and even less interest in getting the Democrats in Congress under control. All the President wants is a bill to sign and the opportunity to declaim that he’s reformed health care. Anything will do at this point.
(Via Below the Beltway, via The Other McCain)
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
[*As RS commenter NightTwister guessed: this is a Freudian slip, but I’m not going to fix it. On reflection, I like it better this way.- ML]
(Via Texans for Sarah Palin) But it’s tax hikes for the wealthy (540 billion over 10 years), so that’s all right, right? At least, it’s tax hikes for the wealthy today. And what gets redefined as ‘wealthy’…
Key House Democrats decided Friday to raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for health care legislation, capping an up-and-down week for President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.
[snip]
Democrats on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee agreed to a new surtax that would start with households making $350,000 a year and begin in 2011, said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.
…well, that’s up to Charlie Rangel.
Have a nice morning!
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
