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GOP Response to Dem Health Care Plan

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Major, Jul 15, 2009.

  1. Refman

    Refman Member

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    More of a dent than not eliminating them.
     
  2. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    The dent wouldn't even be noticeable. I'm not saying every dollar is well spent, but foreign aid is a very very cheap way of protecting/projecting American interests off our shores. If we got the same "bang for the buck" for defense spending as foreign aid, military spending could be cut by two-thirds (I exaggerate for effect).

    Cutting foreign aid to lower the deficit or to fund health care would be like trimming toe-nails to lose weight. Think about the more than $1 trillion tax-cut during Bush's first year that eliminated the surplus. Add to that the eventual nearly $1 trillion the Iraq War will end up costing. This is why America's fiscal house is in ruins.
     
  3. Major

    Major Member

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    I think people might be overreacting here. The "process" part of this has been very public - but every major bill goes through this kind of stuff. TARP and the stimulus package, for example, both looked dead for a while. Climate change did as well, though it may actually be dead. But virtually any major bill will look dead at times - some really will, others will be fine. It's just part of the Congressional process - I don't think we know anything more today than we did a month ago as far as it's likelihood of passage. And we probably won't until the fall when we see the bill that the House-Senate conference committee comes up with.

    This is also a possibility. I'm not a proponent of this, but Massachusetts sort of did a bill that didn't address costs very much and focused on coverage. So not, not surprisingly, there are major cost problems. But now that they have locked in coverage, they are focused on major cost provisions this year.

    It's almost the opposite of the GOP's "starve the beast" idea. Force the coverage and then when it's unsustainable, you'll force Congress to deal with the cost issues. I think it's a bad strategy, but it may be the end result.
     
  4. Major

    Major Member

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    Here's an interesting story from 538.com:

    http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/on-health-care-bipartisanship-without.html

    Seems like my type of solution - who knows whether they can pull it off or not.


    The big news of the day is the letter sent by a "gang" of six "bipartisan" senators (there was a sale on scare quotes at Target today) urging Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell (and by implication, the White House) that "taking additional time" on health care would be advisable. It's easy to read the letter cynically: "later" in senate speak quite often means "never". That might be particularly so on health care: odds are, frankly, that the Administration will continue to lose political capital until the unemployment rate improves, which even if a recovery in GDP growth is around the corner (which many economists think it is) is liable to take some time. Push this debate back to the autumn, and the effort could be being lead by a President whose approval ratings are in the low 50's or perhaps even the high 40's.

    What's interesting, though, is who exactly is in this "gang". Five of the six are whom you'd expect: three conservative Democrats (Liberman, Landireu and Ben Nelson) and two liberal Republicans (Collins, Snowe). But then there's Oregon's Ron Wyden, who is not particularly conservative and in fact is usually thought of as being rather liberal.

    Wyden, as you may know, has his own version of health care reform, which is entitled the Healthy Americans Act (HAA). The HAA is, in some ways, a more radical restructuring of the health insurance system than any of the other plans currently being contemplated by the Congress. It would completely remove the benefits tax exemption, create a national health insurance exchange (which would be open to everyone including those who opted out of their employer-provided coverage), and set some rather explicit cost-containment targets. I'm on record as being a fan, as are a lot of health care policy wonks like Ezra Klein. The interesting thing about Wyden's bill is that it has co-sponsors from all over the political spectrum: not just centrists but also fairly liberal Democrats like Jeff Merkley, Ted Kaufman and Daniel Inouye, and rather conservative Republicans like Idaho's Mike Crapo and Utah's Dick Bennett. If we plot the 100 senators from most liberal to most conservative (as determined from DW-NOMINATE scores), support for the HAA seems to be somewhat randomly distributed throughout the population:

    It's very rare to see something like this and a reflection of the fact that Wyden's plan cannot easily be characterized as either liberal or conservative ... it's just different.

    But what's this have to do with the letter that Wyden and his colleagues sent today? It's not immediately clear. While three of the six "gang" members (Wyden, Lieberman, Landrieu) are sponsors of Wyden's bill, the other three (Snowe, Collins, and Ben Nelson) are not.

    My guess, though, is that Wyden wouldn't have signed onto this letter unless he thought there was a real chance to marshal support for his bill. And my guess is that the other five signatories probably understood that.

    It's actually not completely clear that the Senate can't find 60 votes for the HELP Committee's bill once push comes to shove (much less 50). But those votes certainly won't be had easily, and Wyden's bill arguably represents an easier path. It begins with five Republican co-sponsors (Bennett, Crapo, Judd Gregg, Lamar Alexander and Linsday Graham) and would probably have little difficulty getting Snowe's and Collins's votes as well. The downside is that there might be a dozen or so Democrats who are extremely reluctant to touch the benefits tax exemption, which some of the AFL-CIO unions like AFSCME are very protective of. So the White House would either have to make some phone calls or find a few more Republicans to support the Wyden bill.

    Ultimately, though, this presents an opportunity to find a bipartisan solution that doesn't have to be a compromise solution -- a lot of smart, progressive folks think Wyden's bill is better on its face than the "traditional" versions that have been drafted by the House and the Senate, much less what those versions will look like after they've been through the meat-grinder of the Senate floor. The White House doesn't need to take more time on health care: it may simply need more votes. Especially after this letter today, it ought to at least be actively considering whether Wyden's bill is the way to get them.
     
  5. Refman

    Refman Member

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    Yeah, who really thinks that a billion or two annually is a lot of money? Geez.

    Exactly what interests are those? What American interests are served by funneling money for HIV in Africa or untold sums annually to Israel?

    Nowhere sis I say that this would fund the healthcare bill. I will say that I am loathe to send billions overseas when we have needs at home that are unfunded.
     
  6. B-Bob

    B-Bob "94-year-old self-described dreamer"
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    Thanks for the link, Major. I would just love to see some really new thinking, with bipartisan support of some kind, rule the day.

    I'm sure another letter to Feinstein from B-Bob will greatly sway her. :rolleyes:
     
  7. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    Nobody said it wasn't a lot of money, but calling $3-4 billion/year a dent in +$1 trillion is a long stretch. Is 3-4 cents a dent in $100.00+?

    Start a foreign aid thread and list your objections. How much foreign aid do you think is spent every year?

    What unfunded needs in particular and how much funding did you have in mind?
     
  8. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    Of course you are right. I expected Obama (and his popularity ratings) to hit major bumps this year because of the economy and because his agenda is so ambitious. Now the real test starts. TARP and the stimulus package are small potatoes compared to health care and climate.
     
  9. Refman

    Refman Member

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    You are completely missing the point. The estimates that I have heard for the health plan are $1 trillion for the first 10 years. If foreign aid totals $3 billion a year, then for the first 10 years it would be $30 billion. That is 30%. That is a pretty good sized dent.

    Does this pay for all of it? No. But it is a darned good starting point and a way for us to take care of the problem at home.
     
  10. Batman Jones

    Batman Jones Member

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    I think you could apply this logic to a lot of different line items. Pick the one you like the least, multiply it by however many years, presto. I can come up with plenty of ways to pay for health care by exing out the stuff I don't like. Anyone could.

    But while I agree in principle that we should tend to problems in our backyard before looking to help out elsewhere (and while I deeply believe the biggest and most important is health care), I don't think foreign aid is where we're making up the difference this year.

    Why? Because we're coming off the worst 8 year worldwide PR campaign this country has ever known. Literally.

    BushCo went out of their way to alienate us from the rest of the world. And they did it, amazingly, starting in a year when we had the whole world behind us (post 9/11).

    Obama inherited a lot of problems. One of those was a seriously problematic world view of the US. And it is a serious, serious problem. Obama recognizes it as such and he's taken great steps to rectify it. He's not going to ex out foreign aid to save such a relatively small amount of money when the return on repairing our relationships around the world is so great.
     
  11. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    You mean 3% ($30 billion is 3% of $1 trillion), but that's just for Israel and Aids prevention.

    Actually to be honest, foreign aid totals about $20 billion per year, which is about 1/5 the cost of the healthcare plan. But to say it's impractical and crazy for the U.S. to end all foreign aid would be a MASSIVE understatement. But I'm sure you disagree, which is fine.
     
  12. Refman

    Refman Member

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    I did mean 3%. Brainfart. My apologies.

    And yes, I do mean to cease squandering the money abroad as long as we have more pressing needs at home...like providing services for our citizenry.
     
  13. A_3PO

    A_3PO Member

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    We will always have pressing needs at home in perpetuity, like every country that's ever existed.
     
  14. Refman

    Refman Member

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    I do not know the foreign aid expenditures of other countries. How much do other nations give away compared to the US? As a member of the world community, we should do our share to keep the world as stable as possible, but I do not believe that we should do so if it harms our interests domestically.
     
  15. Major

    Major Member

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    Compared to all the other major industrialized nations, I believe we are first in raw $$ of total aid, and last in % of GDP in total aid.

    The issue with foreign aid is that it's hard to measure. For example, we give a lot of aid to Egypt, and they in turn play nice with Israel. Its basically hush money. Is that useful? Hard to say. We provide lots of money to fight drugs in Columbia. Does that pay itself off for us in the end domestically? Hard to say. Etc.
     
  16. rhadamanthus

    rhadamanthus Member

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    And for your weekly dose of idiocy, I give you RNC chairman Steele:

    There is entirely too much bull**** and hypocrisy in the above article to even know where to start.
     
  17. Major

    Major Member

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    The amusing thing is that Steele knows nothing about health care policy. He was asked in the Q&A after the speech whether he supported an individual health care mandate, and he had to ask what that was. When explained, he said he didn't deal with policy. So basically, he's just b****ing for the sake of it.

    http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/li...-health-care-whats-individual-requirement.php
     
  18. rhadamanthus

    rhadamanthus Member

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    I don't find that very amusing. More like exasperating. These guys should be kicked in the mouth for speaking so stupidly so often.
     
  19. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Member

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    Not sure which thread to put this..

    Medicare took one year; overhaul to take nearly 10
    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hiiWnivT__38YVG-emF9zy6xVW_AD99ICP600
    By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR (AP) – 7 hours ago

    WASHINGTON — President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and 11 months later seniors were receiving coverage. But if President Barack Obama gets to sign a health care overhaul this fall, the uninsured won't be covered until 2013 — after the next presidential election.

    In fact, a timeline of the 1,000-page health care bill crafted by House Democrats shows it would take the better part of a decade — from 2010-2018 — to get all the components of the far-reaching proposal up and running. The moving parts include a national insurance marketplace overseen by a brand new federal bureaucracy — the Health Choices Administration.

    Medicare was big. This could be bigger. If a bill passes, Americans probably will be discovering — and debating — its effects for years.

    "It touches every part of the health care system," said Dan Mendelson, a health care consultant who served in Bill Clinton's administration during the second term. "We are only just beginning to explore and understand what the effects would be on premiums, providers and the evolution of health care technology."

    The plan is "at least as far-reaching" as what former President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton attempted in the 1990s, says Mendelson, now president of Avalere Health.

    Did anybody think it was going to be simple?

    The House bill isn't close to becoming law. The Senate has its own ideas. But the House proposal represents the most comprehensive effort by lawmakers to meet Obama's twin goals of guaranteeing coverage to all Americans and slowing the pace of rising medical costs.

    It advances the first goal slowly, and independent analysts doubt it will meet the second.

    First comes the pain. In 2011, the government would start collecting higher taxes on upper-income people to pay for the overhaul. The uninsured would have to wait until 2013 before they started receiving the benefits — after the 2010 and 2012 elections.

    Collecting the taxes up front — and paying for the benefits later — would help to keep costs manageable over the 10-year window Congress uses for budget estimates. Still, it's not yet adding up. The Congressional Budget Office says the plan would increase the government's deficit by about $240 billion over that period. Long-range forecasts could turn out worse.

    One thing isn't in dispute — the role of the federal government would increase each year.

    "Having accepted a government bailout of the financial system, and with the government having a big part in running GM, it is just a very different attitude now in terms of the government," said Gail Wilensky, who ran Medicare for President George H.W. Bush "We're seeing that in this package."

    The timeline, prepared by Democratic staff members, reflects the proposed expansion of government responsibilities. Here's a look at how some of the parts would unfold:

    _ 2010

    The government sets up a Health Benefits Advisory Committee led by the surgeon general to recommend a basic benefits package. Community health centers serving low-income people get a funding boost. Insurance companies are barred from engaging in "rescissions" — the cancellation of existing policies. A campaign is launched to reduce health care paperwork. Doctors serving Medicare patients are spared a 20 percent cut in fees.

    _ 2011

    The benefits committee unveils a recommended package for adoption by the Health and Human Services Department. HHS sets rules requiring insurance companies to spend a minimum percentage of premiums on medical costs. Medicare recipients get relief from the 'doughnut hole' coverage gap in their prescription benefits.

    Tax hikes on upper-income earners take effect.

    _ 2012

    In the presidential election year, low-income seniors get additional financial assistance with their Medicare prescription plans.

    _2013

    The year of heavy lifting and major coverage changes. Insurance companies are barred from discriminating against people with health problems. The government opens the health insurance exchange — a new purchasing pool — to individuals and businesses with fewer than 10 workers. A government-sponsored plan is among the options available through the exchange, with premiums estimated 10 percent lower than private coverage. All plans in the exchange offer at least the basic benefits package. Individuals and families making up to four times the federal poverty level get subsidies to help pay for insurance. Individuals are required to get coverage — and employers to offer it — or face financial penalties. Businesses with payrolls under $250,000 are exempt from the mandate. Medicaid eligibility is expanded.

    _ 2014

    The health insurance exchange is expanded to include companies with up to 20 employees and people who can't afford premiums under their employer's plan.

    _ 2015

    The government decides whether to open the health insurance exchange — and the government-sponsored plan — to all employers.

    _ 2018

    Employers who continue to provide coverage outside the exchange must offer at least the same basic benefits available through the government-regulated purchasing pool.

    Obama, if re-elected to a second term, would have left office in January, 2017.

    AP Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.
     
  20. mc mark

    mc mark Member

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