Pelosi’s Blueprint For Healthcare Leads To Government Takeover - The Philadelphia Bulletin

Pelosi’s Blueprint For Healthcare Leads To Government Takeover - The Philadelphia Bulletin: "The new House health care bill, H.R. 3962, unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D, Ca., yesterday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. As written, the bill purports to cost only $1.05 trillion over the first 10 years and is paid for by over $700 billion in tax increases and cuts to Medicare Advantage and Medicare prescription drug payments. But, as troubling as those numbers are, the scariest thing about the bill is the solid foundation it lays for a complete government take over of the health care sector of our economy.

The Washington Post describes the bill as “creating an expensive new entitlement program, subsidies to purchase health insurance, and dramatically expanding an existing one – Medicaid.” This is true by itself, but the Post later dismissively adds: “If you’ve noticed that we haven’t talked about the public option in the House bill, that’s not an oversight. For all the fury over the issue, it doesn’t matter that much; the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimates that the government-run plan would actually have slightly higher premiums.” This is a breathtakingly naive statement by the Post and demonstrates that they have not yet fully grasped how all the different elements of the bill are designed to interact to produce President Barack Obama’s desired outcome.

The Medicaid Expansion: Under current law the CBO projects that only 35 million Americans would be on Medicaid by 2019. The House bill massively expands the Medicaid program by raising the upper income cutoff to 150 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL). As a result, the CBO now estimates some 50 million Americans will be enrolled in the program at a 10-year cost to the federal government of $425 billion. This does not include the $34 billion in increased Medicaid costs that state governments will have to spend.

The Insurance Subsidies: The House bill also creates a Health Insurance Exchange through which individuals without employer-based coverage could purchase insurance. The bill also provides “affordability credits” to people who are below 400 percent FPL. However, the bill also denies access to the credit for all people who are “eligible” for Medicaid. In essence, therefore, the House bill forces all Americans below 150 percent FPL to enroll in Medicaid or pay the individual mandate fine. The CBO explains why the Democrats chose this route: “The estimated costs of providing subsidies through the new insurance exchanges are now lower for several reasons: the larger expansion of Medicaid means that fewer people would be eligible for coverage through the exchanges.” In other words, it’s cheaper to force people into Medicaid than to give them subsidies high enough to buy private insurance. Furthermore, individuals are only allowed to enroll in the cheapest – i.e. basic – plans for the first two years. After that, they can only choose more expensive plans or the government run plan.

The Employer Mandate: The bill imposes a new 8 percent payroll tax on employers who don’t cover specified percentages of their employees’ health insurance. In the short term, this will only result in job losses and lower wages. But further down the road, the health plans would have to meet new requirements to be specified later by Mr. Obama’s new Health Czar – “Health Choices Commissioner.” If your employer’s health plan doesn’t meet those requirements, which are all but guaranteed to drive up the cost of your health plan, you couldn’t keep it."