public option

LibertyWeek 72: Champagne Wishes and Climate Change Dreams

by Richard Morrison on December 7, 2009

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Your host Richard Morrison teams up with collaborators Jeremy Lott and William Yeatman to bring you Episode 72 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We begin with UN climate hypocrisy in Copenhagen, presidential arm-twisting on health care and a cloudy look at government transparency. We conclude with the end of the tobacco road in Virginia and scandal of banking and nepotism in Venezuela.

“Public Option” Is a Gimmick That Won’t Improve Healthcare

by Hans Bader on October 26, 2009 · 1 comment

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Health and Illness, Healthcare, Insurance, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Sanctimony

In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”

In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013 and $600 for a single person. By 2019, family premiums could be $4,000 higher and individual premiums could be $1,500 higher.

CEI’s Greg Conko calls the Baucus bill “worse than the disease.”  In a recently-released paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” Conko notes that most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without reducing long-term health care inflation.  The only measures that could conceivably reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.

A new study by the Oliver Wyman consultancy found that provisions contained in the health-care reform bills, like guaranteed issue and community rating mandates, would drive up premiums by 50 percent for individual policies and 19 percent for small group plans.

A study from the Independence Institute says that ObamaCare would drive up inflation and medical-care costs, while shrinking the economy.

As CEI’s Conko notes, many states have highly concentrated markets.  In Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Alaska, for example, 95 percent or more of the health insurance market is served by just two insurers.  But Obama and congressional Democrats oppose letting insurers compete across state lines, blocking competition that could make health insurance cheaper.  Other countries with cheaper health insurance permit insurers to compete nationally.

ObamaCare would raise taxes.  It would also explode state and federal budget deficits, and would actually cost $2 trillion — far more than its promised $800 billion price tag.  It also ignores needed reforms that would actually reduce the costs of health care, like steps to reduce the cost of defensive medicine, which wastes $200 billion annually.  And it contains special-interest pork, like racial preferences.

Senate Finance Committee Rejects Public Option

by Greg Conko on September 29, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, Features, Healthcare, Regulation, Zeitgeist

The Senate Finance Committee, by a 15 to 8 vote, rejected an amendment proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) to Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care bill that would have added a government-run, or ”public,” health insurance option to the overhaul proposal.  Joining all ten of the committee’s Republicans in voting “no” were five Democrats, including Baucus himself, Bill Nelson (Fla.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), and Thomas Carper (Del.).  A second, and slightly less bad ”public option” amendment, sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) was also rejected by a 13 to 10 vote, with Sens. Nelson and Carper switching sides.

As I’ve written previously, the public option is not the worst aspect of the various health reform proposals, the purchase mandate is.  Still, these votes should be viewed as a strong positive, signalling broad concern about the extent of the Democratic position.

Of course, Liberal Democrats are fuming.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) remain committed to a public option.  President Obama signalled his enduring support for it in his September 9 address to Congress, despite White House back-tracking from the public option during the August congressional recess.  And, now, two left-wing advocacy groups, the Progressive Campaign Change Committee and Democracy for America, have launched a television ad campaign condemning Baucus for his decision to move forward without a government-run health insurance option for the non-elderly middle class.

This should serve as a warning to conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans (Yes. I mean you, Olympia Snowe (RINO-Me.).  You may spend months negotiating a compromise with your Senate colleagues.  But, please remember that all that will be torn asunder once a bill is reported out of committee and gets to be amended after debate by the entire Senate, and again when the final Senate compromise goes to conference and has to be reconciled with the House bill.  You may think you’re playing nice with your Senate Finance Committee colleagues and getting as good a deal as can be expected from that nice old Max Baucus.  But, trust me, Henry Waxman is ruthless.

Public Option Is Not The Worst Aspect Of ObamaCare

by Greg Conko on September 17, 2009 · 1 comment

in Culture, Healthcare, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Regulation, Zeitgeist

Much of the hullabaloo over President Obama’s health care speech to Congress last week focused on his endorsement of a “public option” — that is, a government-run, not merely government regulated health insurance plan for the non-elderly middle class.  Throughout the August congressional recess, it appeared as though the White House was ready to abandon the public option, since that was a major source of contention among congressional Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and a sizeable portion of the American public.  In his speech, Obama paradoxically came out firmly in support of a public option, while acknowledging that his support was not so firm that he wouldn’t be willing to bargain the public option away.

Still, the public option is not the worst aspect of the various Democratic health reform proposals, the mandatory purchase requirement is.  Under each of the three bills moving through Congress, every person living in the United States would be required by law to have insurance.  And, if your employer doesn’t provide you with it, you’ve got to buy it yourself or pay a fairly stiff monetary penalty.  What’s more, each of the proposals would eliminate some of the options that are available now — particularly the low-cost insurance plans that cover only catastrophic health events and have substantial cost-sharing features.  And, depending on which bill would eventually be enacted into law, Congress, state insurance commissioners, and/or a federal Health Choices Commissioner would be empowered to determine whether any given plan even “qualifies” as health insurance.  The end result will be higher, not lower costs, for almost every person living in the country.

President Obama knows this, of course.  During the presidential campaign, he roundly criticized Hillary Clinton for proposing essentially the same thing.  As today’s Wall Street Journal points out:

“The political irony here is rich. If liberal health-care reform is going to make people better off, why does it require “a very harsh, stiff penalty” to make everyone buy it? That’s what Senator Obama called it in his Presidential campaign when he opposed the individual mandate supported by Hillary Clinton. He correctly argued then that many people were uninsured not because they didn’t want coverage but because it was too expensive. The nearby mailer to Ohio primary voters gives the flavor of Mr. Obama’s attacks.

And the Baucus-Obama plan will only make insurance even more expensive. Employers will be required to offer “qualified coverage” to their workers (or pay another “free rider” penalty) and workers will be required to accept it, paying for it in lower wages. The vast majority of households already confront the same tradeoff today, except Congress will now declare that there’s only one right answer.”