Medicare

Paul Ryan Attacked Because His Father Died Early, Resulting in Survivor Benefits

by Hans Bader on April 22, 2011

in Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

At the age of 16, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suffered the death of his 55-year-old father. Because of his father’s early death, the government made survivor payments for a few years to Paul Ryan’s family — including for Paul Ryan himself, for the two years until he turned 18.

The death of Paul Ryan’s father probably cut government spending on Ryan’s family, since his father never got to collect a dime in retirement benefits despite paying into social security for many years, and since retirees typically collect at least a decade’s worth of benefits. Thus, the Ryan family got no special breaks.

But the liberal magazine The American Prospect, and liberal blogs like Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake, and Daily Kos, are using Ryan’s father’s early death against him, falsely accusing him of hypocrisy. For example, a Daily Kos diary attacks Ryan as an “evil hypocrite” in a post entitled, “Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18.” Never mind that Ryan’s recent budget proposal doesn’t in fact seek to abolish entitlements, much less get rid of Social Security, and doesn’t seek to reduce the survivor benefits he once received. It merely seeks to cut the rate of growth of exploding Medicare costs by eventually giving its recipients vouchers they can use to shop around for medical care.

Not all Daily Kos diaries reflect the views of Daily Kos as a whole, but this one does, since it was briefly featured on the top of the front page of Daily Kos, and was listed as a “recommended” blog post in the sidebar on the right side of Daily Kos’s main page in recent days. 282 Daily Kos readers have commented in response to it, seemingly all agreeing with its hateful sentiments.

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Obamacare’s Costs Rise, as Obama Backers Get Preferential Treatment

by Hans Bader on March 7, 2011 · 1 comment

in Economy, Features, Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Regulation

Post image for Obamacare’s Costs Rise, as Obama Backers Get Preferential Treatment

The cost of Obamacare continues to explode and exceed its sponsors’ predictions. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has now admitted to double-counting in the Obamacare budget, using the same $500 billion twice, first “to sustain” the existing Medicare program and then to “pay for” brand new Obamacare entitlements. Last year, the CBO hiked its estimate of Obamacare’s costs by $115 billion, even as many of its promised benefits failed to materialize.

Obamacare was supposed to save patients money by curbing insurance company profits and expanding state Medicaid programs to cover millions more people. (This expansion was criticized by state officials, including a few Democrats such as former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who called it “the mother of all unfunded mandates.” Bredesen’s health care legal advisor concluded that Obamacare’s Medicaid-expansion provisions were unconstitutional.)

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Fuzzy Math on Foreign Aid Shows Why Spending Cuts Are Difficult

by Ryan Young on December 6, 2010 · 1 comment

in Economy, International

According to a new poll, the average American thinks that 25 percent of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid (or, more accurately, government-to-government transfers). They would like it cut to about 10 percent.

The actual figure is under 1 percent.

As Aid Watch’s Laura Freschi points out, that means most Americans want to increase government-to-government transfers ten-fold from current levels while also cutting them in half.

That most people think like this is a major reason why cutting the federal government’s $3.5 trillion budget is so difficult. The issues that people get worked up about tend to be small potatoes, in budgetary terms.

Besides transfer payments to other governments, earmarks are another lightning-rod issue. But even if earmarks were abolished entirely, that’s only about 2 percent of the budget. It would put the smallest of dents in spending.

Entitlement spending is the single largest driver of current and future deficits. That’s where the battle is. Aid spending and earmarks are not threatening to bankrupt the country. Social Security and Medicare are. And those programs are extremely popular. No politician with an eye on 2012 would be willing to cut them.

The government has made promises it can’t possibly keep. But most people refuse to believe that. So they don’t. As a guarding mechanism, they instead make grand assumptions about how much things like transfer payments to other governments and earmarks cost.

22,000 Lose Their Health Insurance Due to Obamacare

by Hans Bader on September 29, 2010

in Economy, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Zeitgeist

Approximately 22,000 senior citizens just lost their health plan with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, which dropped its Medicare Advantage Program due to “cuts in Medicare” that “are being used to fund national health care reform.”  As the Washington Examiner notes, “President Obama’s most frequently repeated health care reform claim — ‘If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it’ — sounds about as credible these days as the finger-wagging Bill Clinton did when he said, ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman.’”

While Obamacare cuts Medicare for the elderly, it does nothing to slow the growth of health-care spending, since it adds costly new Medicaid mandates for people on welfare, as former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, a healthcare expert, notes in the New York Post.  She calls it “Obamacare’s redistribution of health.”  Obamacare will also cause Medicaid lawsuits to proliferate at taxpayer expense.

President Obama falsely claimed that the health care law would cut health care costs, but regulators in some states are now approving increases in premiums precisely because Obamacare increases costs.

As columnist David Freddoso notes, the Obama administration has been a windfall for wealthy trial lawyers.  As I noted in the Examiner‘s print edition, “Obamacare will also result in an explosion of lawsuits against employers’ health plans by stripping them of protection against unnecessary lawsuits based on paperwork technicalities, and by displacing settled exhaustion principles in employee benefits litigation.”

Millions of Seniors to be Dumped from Health Plans Due to New Health Care Law

by Hans Bader on March 30, 2010

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation

Two million seniors are expected to be dumped onto Medicare from company prescription medication plans, thanks to a poorly-vetted provision of the new health care law signed by the president this week. It will cost the taxpayers billions in higher Medicare costs, and the companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax deductions.

It’s one of many penny-wise, pound-foolish provisions in the new health care law. It spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Fourteen attorneys general are challenging provisions of the new health care law in court. Their lawsuits argue that forcing people to buy health insurance is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

The new law imposes many middle-class tax increases, such as taxes on uninsured individuals, on cosmetic surgery, on medical devices, and on certain health care plans. It also increases taxes on many investors and imposes marriage penalties.

The new health care law will reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, break many campaign promises, and increase state budget deficits. It will jeopardize the quality of medical care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level. It ignores advice from doctors and federal experts, and lessons from countries with universal healthcare, about how to keep costs down.

Governors of both political parties assailed the health care bill as a job-killer that will drive up state deficits, increase taxes, and harm the economy. The governors of New York and California earlier warned that “their states will be crushed by billions in new costs.”

While the CBO has scored the health care bill as not increasing the federal deficit, thanks to the many tax increases in the bill, it has done so only by accepting many accounting gimmicks that even pro-administration journalists have admitted conceal the bill’s enormous cost and the fact that it will massively increase the deficit. The New York Times‘ David Brooks, once a staunch supporter of President Obama, recently said that the bill’s drafters were “corrupted by power” and called arguments for the law “unbelievable” and “insane.” The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, who also voted for Obama, wrote that the law “is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen.”

Maybe There’s Hope for Health Care Repeal

by Angela Logomasini on March 23, 2010

in Healthcare

Rarely, if ever, does Congress ever undo bad legislation, which makes the future of health care look rather grim. However, there is at one positive precedent. In 1989, Congress repealed the the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act because of protests by angry senior citizens. Check out this YouTube video of a righteous crowd of senior citizens following then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski into his car protesting that law. David Hyman notes on the Volokh Conspiracy noted back in August:

Representative Rostenkowski got out of the car and ran a block, chased by the crowd. He was then picked up by his car and whisked away. The incident resulted in front page coverage nationwide. The TV news ran footage of Rostenkowski fleeing from his constituents. Rostenkowski reportedly asked his press secretary whether the issue would go away in a few days, and was told “Let me put it this way Congressman. When you die, they will play this clip on television.” Three months later, the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act was repealed.

Today’s health care issue may have different angles, but surely there are plenty angry people to step up to the plate. So many people have so much to lose with this new law.

Image credit: Taken from the Volokh Conspiracy post where Hyman notes that this picture “appeared in Newsweek and the Chicago Sun Times, and was taken by Tom Cruze”

LibertyWeek 85: Health Care in Our Time

by Richard Morrison on March 23, 2010

in CEI Projects, Features, Podcast, Zeitgeist

Richard Morrison, Jeremy Lott, Greg Conko and Michelle Minton bring you Episode 85 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We put the big vote on health care front and center, while also touching on protests over immigration and legal challenges to the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules. We wrap up with a discussion of WWF’s Earth Hour and its scrappy competitor, Human Achievement Hour.

Health Care Bill Would Vastly Expand IRS Power; CBO Ordered to Base Cost Estimate on False Assumptions

by Hans Bader on March 19, 2010

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony

“House health care bill dangerously expands IRS power,” say a tax law professor and GOP leaders.   The Washington Examiner says that “16,500 more IRS agents” will be “needed to enforce Obamacare.”  That’s “the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II,” needed to “to collect, examine and audit new tax information mandated on families and small businesses.”

Governors of both political parties assail the health care bill as a job-killer that will drive up state deficits, increase taxes, and harm the economy.  The governors of New York and California warned that “their states will be crushed by billions in new costs.”

The most recent version of the health care bill contains additional tax increases and Medicare cuts.  It dramatically increases taxes on investors by adding a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income (much higher than the 2.9 percent previously proposed by Obama), but few newspapers have reported that.

The Washington Post falsely claims that the CBO says the health care bill will save $1.2 trillion over its second decade, but the CBO says the figure is not from it (it’s from congressional Democrats).  Amazingly, the CBO, under orders from Democratic leaders, has understated the bill’s cost for the first decade by including the present fiscal year — in which ObamaCare is not yet law and thus has no costs — while excluding its last year from cost calculations.  The result was to reduce the projected price tag for the bill from $1.2 trillion to $940 billion.

While the CBO has scored the health care bill as not increasing the federal deficit, thanks to the many tax increases in the bill, it has done so only by accepting many accounting gimmicks that even pro-Obama journalists have admitted are deceptive and conceal the bill’s enormous cost and the fact that it will massively increase the deficit.  The New York Times‘ David Brooks, once a staunch Obama supporter, now says the bill’s drafters were “corrupted by power” and calls arguments for the bill “unbelievable” and “insane.”

Earlier, health care cost expert James C. Capretta explained how “Obamacare Is A Budgetary Disaster” that will cost at least $1.4 trillion more than promised.

The Congressional Budget Office, which refused to question Obama’s gimmicks to lowball the cost of his health care plan, nevertheless admits that “President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.”

There are $3,000,000,000,000 in tax increases in Obama’s budget.  But he’s spending money at such a furious pace that the deficit will skyrocket anyway: “The president’s budget would borrow 42 cents for each dollar spent in 2010,” and “double the national debt over the next decade.”  Obama recently ran up the largest budget deficit in history, by a huge margin.

The revised health-care bill would add a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income for individuals who make $200,000 or more, and households making $250,000 or more.  More importantly, it would also impose many middle-class tax increases, such as taxes on uninsured individuals, on cosmetic surgery, on medical devices, and on certain health care plans.

ObamaCare would reduce medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, and break campaign promises.  It  would cut the quality of  care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from experts about how to cut costs.

A retired federal judge says that the tactic congressional leaders are using to rush Obamacare into law violates Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution.

The Hidden Costs of Health Care Reform: “Obamacare Is A Budgetary Disaster”

by Hans Bader on March 8, 2010 · 2 comments

in Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, International, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony

The health care bills backed by President Obama will cost $2.3 trillion, not the $900 billion Obama claims, and will be a “budgetary disaster” that drives up the national debt, explains health care expert James C. Capretta.  The Obama administration managed to hide $1.4 trillion in costs generated by the health care reform bill though a series of budgetary “gimmicks” that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is required to treat as valid in scoring the bill’s enormous cost.

Although the CBO is low-balling the costs of ObamaCare, even it concedes that as a whole, “President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.”

ObamaCare spends money on frills like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia.

Most Americans oppose the health care legislation backed by the president. It would reduce lifesaving medical innovation, raise taxes, drive up insurance premiums, break many campaign promises, and increase state budget deficits.  It  would jeopardize the quality of medical care, while imposing restrictions that failed when tried at the state level.  It ignores advice from doctors and federal experts, and lessons from countries with universal health care, about how to keep costs down.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health care.  The bill does nothing to curb massive waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, even though it proposes to make massive cuts in Medicare (cuts so painful that most of them will never happen: year after year, Congress waives “the annual cut in fees paid by Medicare to physicians” mandated by an earlier law).

A CNN commentary noted that Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” contradicting Obama’s claim that the bill will leave you free to choose your doctor and keep your health care plan without government interference.

ObamaCare has also attracted criticism from groups like the Civil Rights Commission for containing both racial preferences and lower standards for treatment in predominantly-minority institutions, potentially harming both white applicants and minority patients.  This racial discrimination appears to violate court rulings like the Supreme Court’s Adarand decision, and the Rothe ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

LibertyWeek 74: TSA Under Fire

by Richard Morrison on December 29, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison, William Yeatman and Ryan Young join forces to bring you Episode 74 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We investigate the Department of Homeland Security’s antiterrorism efforts, China’s climate change conundrum and California’s chance at closing her budget gap. We finish with some dangerous snowballing in the streets and the last echoes in the Ballad of Kwame Kilpatrick.

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