Not really shot down by Obama:
[QUOTE=The New York Times]
The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits, as several influential lawmakers and many economists favor, to help pay for overhauling the health care system.
[/QUOTE]
Comments thrown up in the air to no one in particular are often difficult to comprehend. Also, I’ll take back my reading comprehension skills comment and repalce it with poor writing skills.
Are you seriously saying that The Economist does hatchet job stories?
Well, The Economist does take sides on issues (famously supporting the Iraq War, for example). Whether you consider that bias or not, there is plenty of loaded language in the linked article: “soak the rich”, “apparently “budget neutral” fashion” , and some dodgy language “increasing taxes on those making over $350,000 a year by up to 5.4%” (the surtax is only 5.4% for those making over $1 million, not $350k).
Now, whether their preferred method of removing the tax deduction for employer-provided coverage is a better idea or not (certainly possible) the language used does steer this more towards editorial than straight-shooting reportage.
As far as Obama’s comments and his role, he has remained open to almost any suggestion. He seems perfectly content to let Congress do the dirty work and build some consensus before putting his considerable weight on the scale. Whether this will prove to be a wiser approach than Clinton’s back-room planning will be seen in the next few months.
Health care reform is in serious trouble. The Congressional Budget Office just came out in opposition to it.
Obama boxed himself into a corner right out of the gate by framing the health care plan as a fiscal reform to save money. Nobody seriously believes that you can create a huge new government entitlement, bring tens of millions of new people under its umbrella, and then somehow manage to save money. Now that the bill has to be specific, that reality is showing up on the bottom line, and that’s scaring a lot of people.
For example, the Blue Dog Democrats are already jumping ship. And this thing hasn’t even gone to the Senate yet. The Senate is a more serious body, generally more centrist than the House, and there’s no way this bill is going to fly.
This was exactly what happened with Hillarycare in the 90’s. Once you get specific, it becomes impossible to be fair to everyone, so Senators and Congressmen who have to answer to their states or districts start backing away.
For example, the current bill extends the medicare payment scheme. Politicians from rural districts or more rural states have a big problem with this, because medicare payments are biased against them (health care costs in the cities are much higher and access to care often better, but rural people have to pay the same amount of money).
Then there’s the surtax on the rich, which isn’t much liked by politicians from states with wealthy populations, because it hobbles their ability to levy their own wealth taxes, and because the cost of living is very high in many of those states, so the ‘rich’ aren’t as rich as people with the same income living in cheaper states.
Then there’s the opposition from politicians in states that are suffering heavy job losses. Their overriding concern is job creation, and new health care mandates on small business will kill jobs (the bill admits this). This bill adds an 8% tax to any businesswhich doesn’t provide health care benefits and which has a payroll over $400,000.
A $400,000 payroll could hit businesses as small as a mom-and-pop grocery with a couple of managers and half a dozen clerks and stockboys. A lot of these businesses run on a shoestring, pay their employees fairly low wages, and have thin margins. They can’t just add 8% to the cost of labor. The likely response is that they will have to cut employment. And because the marginal cost of having the payroll go over $400,000 is so high, there will be a lot of businesses with payrolls close to that which will either cut employment if they are slightly over, or refuse to hire the next worker who would put them over the top. The same is true of pay increases - an increase which puts the payroll over the magic $400K limit is unlikely to take place.
But guess who loves such measures? Wal-Mart and other big retailers, who got on board early and lobbied hard for such measures. Many of them already provide health care benefits, or can provide it cheaper than their smaller rivals because of their larger risk pool and bargaining power with insurance companies. So Democrats who have championed small retailers and railed against the big box stores are in a position were they are helping put the small business competition at a greater disadvantage.
The devil’s in the details, and for something as complex as health care, there are a LOT of details. That necessarily means that any bill that passes will be so rife with compromises and payoffs to ensure votes that it will either collapse under its own weight or be passed and create a disaster.
This problem is not helped by Nancy Pelosi, who is the worst speaker in my memory. Her modus operandi is to get bills passed by simply buying off everyone who objects, regardless of the consequences for the bill itself. She did it with cap and trade, she did it with the stimulus, and she’s doing it with health care. She’s a big part of the reason why almost every bill that’s come out of the House this year has been an incoherent, pork-laden monstrosity that doesn’t come close to achieving the goals set out for it.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/american-medical-association-endorses-house-health-care-bill.php?ref=fpa
**
American Medical Association Endorses House Health Care Bill**
Yep, doomed.
(Note: Talking Points Memo is a left-leaning site, so maybe they’re lying…)
No they didn’t.
You get a really stark vision of American politics when the well-being of the people is up against Big Money.
Where’s Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
Right. The CBO doesn’t “come out in opposition to” or favor of anything. They just crunch numbers and report what they find, as nonpartisanly as they can.
Which is why they can’t evaluate the Republican proposal at all. 
When I finally decide whether I love him or hate his guts… A populist imperialist? Jeebus Rebus.
Pity they no longer distribute copies of their anti-Medicare hit LP, “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine”.
Yes, I misspoke when I said they came out in ‘opposition’. What I should have said was that they contradicted the claims being made by the White House and the Congress.
When Clinton tried to do it inside the White House, it was evil for not letting more pols have input. You can not please those who want to complain. but if somethings actually gets done, i would be shocked. The power of the Health care and Pharm lobbyists is too strong to defeat. They are crippling the effort. Yet the Repubs constantly said we had to do something to stop Medicade and Medicare from bankrupting the country. Just noise, they did not want anything done.
If you mean Hilary Clinton, no, it was evil because she violated the open meetings laws.
Regards,
Shodan
Trouble is, this time around there are nearly as many uninsured Americans as there are Republicans.
This time around, support for major health care reform is much lower than it was when Hillary tried it.
No, it was found that she did not.
Yeah, time lines are a bitch.
Don’t most other First world countries with UHC pay something like **half ** as much as the U.S does, as a % of GDP? If true, the only options I can take from that is that:
A) The health care there is only half-as-good as in the U.S.
B) Americans have naturally twice as many medical conditions as other First-World countries.
C) The U.S. would save money by switching to a UHC system similar to those other countries.
Which is it?
There are many other possibilities:
When people are poorer, they tend to have less money for luxuries. The U.S. has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world, and therefore spends more of its GDP on health care. Just like it spends more of its GDP on pet food.
Other countries have healthier populations.
The U.S. is uniquely unsuited to large centrally managed health care. Its form of government leads to pork and incoherence when policies are instituted nationally.
The U.S. has a bigger percentage of ultra-rich people, who spend exhorbitant amounts of money on health care.
Other countries are free riding on the U.S.'s pharmaceutical industry and other U.S. health care research and development.
The U.S.'s health care spending is inflated, and other country’s health care costs lowered, by the fact that the people who need the most expensive, most complicated surgeries often travel to the United States to have it done.
Other countries contain costs largely through rationing. For example, the UK has 3.38 MRI scanners per million population. Canada has 2.8. The United States has 8.1.
Of course, the fact that most health care spending in the U.S. is done through third parties is a big part of the problem, and UHC could potentially help with that. But not with the bill that’s currently being proposed.
I wonder if you’ll address the refutation of your point that Gigobuster posted.
I suspect not.