Health Wars (10/14/09)

Well, it's a day later, and while panic is not always unfounded, in this case it most assuredly was.

Why?  Because there simply is no chance that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Axis can "sneak" anything past us.  Not even in the Baucus "vapor" bill itself:

The bill creates a new health entitlement program that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will grow over the longer term at a rate of 8% annually, which is much faster than the growth rate of the economy or tax revenues. This is the same growth rate as the House bill that Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) deep-sixed by asking the CBO to tell the truth about its impact on health-care costs.

To avoid the fate of the House bill and achieve a veneer of fiscal sensibility, the Senate did three things: It omitted inconvenient truths, it promised that future Congresses will make tough choices to slow entitlement spending, and it dropped the hammer on the middle class. …

Most astounding of all is what this Congress is willing to do to struggling middle-class families. The bill would impose nearly $400 billion in new taxes and fees. Nearly 90% of that burden will be shouldered by those making $200,000 or less.

It might not appear that way at first, because the dollars are collected via a 40% tax on sales by insurers of “Cadillac” policies, fees on health insurers, drug companies and device manufacturers, and an assortment of odds and ends.

But the economics are clear. These costs will be passed on to consumers by either directly raising insurance premiums, or by fueling higher health-care costs that inevitably lead to higher premiums. Consumers will pay the excise tax on high-cost plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.

I seem to remember Barack Obama solemnly promising that under his regime 95% of Americans would get a tax CUT.  Instead, they'll get indirectly taxed right out of the health insurance market altogether, which is the intended pretext for the feds riding to the "rescue" with single-payer, while at the same time generating vastly less revenue than Baucus staticly and dishonestly insists, meaning....exploding deficits.  Count this middle-class rape and pillage as DOA #1.

These "unintended" exploding deficits will be on top of the exploding deficits BaucusCare tries to conceal with the phantom promise of Medicare cuts:

As the CBO notes, his bill would cut Medicare payments to doctors by 25% in 2011, then hold them at that level perpetually. In other words, given inflation, Baucus proposes endless cuts in what the program pays physicians and others.

Assuming 3% annual inflation [instead of the raging hyperinflation we can expect], by 2014 doctors’ real incomes from Medicare payments would be cut by a third from 2010. By 2025, they’d be cut in half.

If Baucus’ cuts actually go through, physicians’ willingness to see Medicare patients would dwindle alongside their pay. But if the cuts don’t actually get made [and they won't], Baucus’ plan would explode the federal deficit.

Without the savings from Medicare and related programs, the CBO projects that the bill would raise our deficits by $1.3 trillion over the next twenty years — and rising.

So, let's take score: They can gut Medicare and throw granny into the nearest snowbank to eat Alpo until she croaks and only explode the deficit "moderately"; or they duck the wrath of the gray lobby and TRIPLE the cost of this apocalyptic boondoggle over its first two decades.  Shinola, we'll ALL be reduced to dining on dog chow long before then at that rate.  Either way, that's DOA #2.

Oh, and good news: the Democrats have solved that little problem of almost half of existing physicians quitting if BarryCare passes:

A respected medical specialist has carefully reviewed the healthcare reform bill in the U.S. House, and he declares that it would amount to a virtual "draft" of doctors into the government's "public option" health insurance program....

This bill "is virtually a draft because it says all physicians are automatically in the public option unless they opt out, and the opt out mechanism will be later determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services," Dr. Blaylock said.

"Well, we don't know how difficult it will be for physicians to opt out. Will there be penalties, fines, taxes, etc.? Because that's all left up to the Secretary."

He added on that score: "One of the things that concerns the legal minds of this country is that any bill that contains arbitrary language can be interpreted after it's passed any way they want to. And in this bill, virtually every page gives arbitrary powers to the Secretary of Health and Human Services."

Is the U.S. Constitution even IN the rear-view mirror of this "October revolution"?  Say hello to DOA #3.

Crushing taxes, stolen health care, skyrocketing debt.  Would you believe BaucusCare will also deliver....vastly lower wages?  Yes you can!:

Many employers share the cost of the insurance they provide with their employees; that is, the employer pays some portion of the insurance premium, and the employee pays for some portion.  To the extent that the increased cost of the insurance policy is paid by the employer, we would expect that to exert downward pressure on wages paid by the employer.  To the extent that the increased premium cost is paid through the employee share, the added cost of the excise tax can be expected to reduce consumer demand for high cost insurance products.  Over time, the downward pressure on wages attributable to the employer share of the increased cost would also reduce consumer demand for high-cost insurance products.

The problem with that is the definition of “high cost insurance products”.  The JCT is not talking about the upper 5% of health-care plans, not even in the initial year.  In the first year of the tax, the JCT predicts that 11% of all plans will be subject to the excise tax.  By 2019, the JCT predicts that a third of all policies will carry that tax, increasing costs and depressing wages in one form or another.

Higher company co-pays mean lower or no raises, or even wage cuts, directly, and more deducted from those lower wage levels in each paycheck.  And, of course, it means fewer jobs "created or saved" because of the higher cost to the company...unless the company decides to just dump health insurance coverage for employees altogether and consign them to the private option or single payer outright.  Greetings, DOA #4.

And yet...the Donk hard-left, fully exposed and unmasked as the Marxist-Leninists they truly are, are bound and determined to force this crackdown on us anyway.  And certainly they talk a confident game of BarryCare's "inevitability."  But do they really have that much power?

Mnnnneeeeeah, maybe not, doc:

If Democratic leadership hoped Republican Olympia Snowe’s decision to cross party lines Tuesday would inspire her fellow middle-of-the-roaders, they were mistaken…

Moderate Democrats did draw plenty of inspiration from Snowe – but instead of using her “yes” vote as a reason to embrace health care reform, fence-sitters hailed the caveats in her public statement Tuesday as a rationale for withholding their own judgment.

Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson said his colleague from Maine wasn’t “forecasting what her future votes might be” when she cast the lone Republican vote for the Finance bill…

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.

IOW, they're not going to forfeit their seats at Dirty Harry's table any more than Snoweball is.  Which means that they, and NOT the hard-left, still hold the upper hand, no matter how vehemently the Obamunists refuse to admit it.  Quoteth Eeyore:

Politico’s already warning about a Democratic civil war if House [re]gressives decide that Baucus’s plan isn’t nearly socialist enough for their tastes. If Reid buckles and includes a public option, Snowe walks away, the Blue Dogs are denied their political cover, and all hell breaks loose between the centrists and the left.

And if Reid DOESN'T buckle, the lefties walk away, there's no cloture, and the bill dies right then and there.  Karl gets the penultimate word:

For a moment, savor the scenario in which the nutroots’ party purge of Lieberman could end up derailing their most cherished agenda item....[T]he Baucus vapor bill defines the most plausible conservative outcome. If Lieberman does not support the vapor bill, he may end up backing the GOP on the floor more often than Snowe.

In sum, the Dems (and the establishment media) gained a few days of Snowementum, but take a fair amount of risk in building her up for taking a vote they did not need to get the vapor bill out of committee. Meanwhile, one of the sixty votes the Dems will need in the full Senate announced he would not support a proposal more conservative than what they are likely to produce. On balance, yesterday’s news for the GOP was better than the establishment media would have everyone believe.

Exit question: If you wouldn't fly the hostile skies of Obamaflot, why would you put your life in the hands of ObamaCare?