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Posts Tagged ‘Health Plan’

Obama Lies, Quotes Lincoln “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true”

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

President Barack Obama, pictured here at the House Democratic Caucus meeting today, implausibly claimed that after the passage of Obamacare, all Americans will keep their present health plans and doctors despite clear indications to the contrary

In his last speech before the historic vote on his Obamacare package in the House of Representatives set for tomorrow, President Barack Obama gave a speech to a members-only House Democratic caucus meeting today.   In his speech, the President sadly repeated many of the same lies and misrepresentations he made yesterday at George Mason, including his false claims that everyone can “keep their doctor” and “keep their plan” while also falsely asserting that Obamacare will be an “historic” deficit reduction bill.  Obama made these claims despite their debunking by even establishment media sources many months ago, and the CBO’s addendum to their scoring made public late yesterday that reports an addition to the deficit of $59 billion over the next 10 years from Obamacare once the “doctor fix” is factored in.

Despite making these misleading and explicitly false statements in his speech today, Obama recited an Abraham Lincoln quote about speaking the truth in his speech today, twice:

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true”

Apparently the establishment media has no interest in reporting on the explicit lies (you can keep your doctor, you can keep your health plan and Obamacare will be “historic” deficit reduction) repeated again by the President today, as the NYT, CNN, WaPo and the AP all focus on the rhetorical grandeur, the “history being made” and the “impassioned plea” in Obama’s speech to Democrats today while ignoring the substantively false claims made by the President.

Amazingly, none of the above-linked articles make any reference to the President’s claims that all Americans will be able to keep their doctor and keep their insurance after the passage of his reform plan; instead, the establishment media just completely ignores these explicitly false statements.

The Associated Press epitomizes the frenzied, wrongful efforts of the establishment media to cover for the explicit lies of the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats regarding Obamacare, printing this as if it is fact:

The sweeping legislation, affecting virtually every American and more than a year in the making, would extend coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans, forbid insurers to deny coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and cut federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade.

Congressional analysts estimate the cost of the two bills combined would be $940 billion over a decade.

In repeating the explicitly false claims above, as made by Obama and the Democrats, the AP fails to mention the fact that the CBO admitted last night that Obamacare will actually add $59 billion to the deficit over 10 years when the pending “doctor fix” is enacted and further fails to mention that the CBO has also stated that at least $50 billion in additional funds will be required to administer Obamacare over 10 years after its passage, meaning Obamacare will add at least $109 billion to the deficit over the next decade. Sadly, that $109 billion in deficit spending resultant from Obamacare does not account for the many additional budget gimmicks used by the Democrats to entrench the false perception that the bill that creates over $100 billion a year in new federal entitlement spending will actually be an “historical” deficit reduction bill. Even the NYT’s Obama-loving (literally) columnist David Brooks listed the many ways the CBO score is explicitly rendered false by no less than seven Democratic “dodges” designed to game the CBO scoring process:

They’ve stuffed the legislation with gimmicks and dodges designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but don’t genuinely control runaway spending.

There is the doc fix dodge. The legislation pretends that Congress is about to cut Medicare reimbursements by 21 percent. Everyone knows that will never happen, so over the next decade actual spending will be $300 billion higher than paper projections.

There is the long-term care dodge. The bill creates a $72 billion trust fund to pay for a new long-term care program. The sponsors count that money as cost-saving, even though it will eventually be paid back out when the program comes on line.

There is the subsidy dodge. Workers making $60,000 and in the health exchanges would receive $4,500 more in subsidies in 2016 than workers making $60,000 and not in the exchanges. There is no way future Congresses will allow that disparity to persist. Soon, everybody will get the subsidy.

There is the excise tax dodge. The primary cost-control mechanism and long-term revenue source for the program is the tax on high-cost plans. But Democrats aren’t willing to levy this tax for eight years. The fiscal sustainability of the whole bill rests on the naïve hope that a future Congress will have the guts to accept a trillion-dollar tax when the current Congress wouldn’t accept an increase of a few billion.

There is the 10-6 dodge. One of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn’t have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That’s 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits, something unlikely to happen again unless the country agrees to go without health care for four years every decade.

There is the Social Security dodge. The bill uses $52 billion in higher Social Security taxes to pay for health care expansion. But if Social Security taxes pay for health care, what pays for Social Security?

There is the pilot program dodge. Admirably, the bill includes pilot programs designed to help find ways to control costs. But it’s not clear that the bill includes mechanisms to actually implement the results. This is exactly what happened to undermine previous pilot program efforts.

All of the above-referenced “dodges” and gimmicks to obtain a good CBO score are based on publicly available information, yet nowhere in the establishment media can you find this information actually reported to rebut the ridiculously false claims by Obama and Democrats over the past few days that Obamacare will actually reduce the deficit and be “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history.” The NYT yesterday even manages to lionize the CBO scoring as unimpeachable and nonpartisan while attacking those who dared to note some of the above-referenced dodges and gimmicks listed by Brooks. In short, the establishment media is allowing the President and the Democratic Party to use an explicit lie (Obamacare reduces the deficit) to sell their comprehensive plan to the American public without informing the public in any way of illusory basis for such claims. Such conduct is a true abdication of the 4th Estate’s role as a watchdog of the American government.

The Misinformation and Lies on Obamacare Presented by President Obama and Deemed by the Media as Truthful Remind Some of the World Described by George Orwell in his classic work, "1984"

Further, Obama concludes by claiming that Democrats must pass this bill for “the American people”:

“Help us fix this system,” Obama said. “Don’t do it for me. Don’t do it for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid — do it for all those people out there who are struggling. . . . Do it for the American people. They’re the ones who are looking for action right now.”

Amazingly, the Washington Post and the other establishment media articles fail to note that CNN’s latest poll found 73% of Americans want Obama and the Dems to either stop or start over from scratch and only 25% are “looking for action right now.” Similarly, Fox News’s latest poll found that 64% want Obama and the Dems to stop or start over from scratch and only 30% are “looking for action right now.” Even the highly left-wing Kaiser Foundation’s latest poll shows that 56% of Americans want Obama and the Democrats to stop or start over, while 42% want to proceed to a vote now. All of the establishment media reporting also omits any reference to the fact that a full 80% of the American public are satisfied “with the quality of medical care available to them” in the much-reviled “status quo”. Based on these polls, it is impossible to claim with a straight face that passing Obamacare now is what the American people are looking for “right now” – yet this is exactly what Obama is saying, and the media simply cheers without retort, notwithstanding the indisputable facts noted above.

Finally, Obama today made the equally ridiculous claim that Obamacare “runs straight down the center of American political thought” and “is a middle of the road bill” and, again, no one in the media even bothers to rebut this claim with the obvious fact that the only bipartisan thing about Obamacare is the opposition to Obamacare, as at least 31 House Democrats are joining a unified Republican opposition to the bill. Sadly, facts such as these go unmentioned by the establishment media reports as they scurry to defend their hero President Obama as the final hours tick away before the all-important House vote on Obamacare.

When the 4th Estate (media) work so strenuously to support both the President and the Congress in an effort such as Obamacare, avoiding the reporting of any facts which could possibly hinder the Democratic effort to “remake one-sixth of the U.S. economy” while cheerleading every step of the way, the continued viability of the American political system moving forward can reasonably be questioned by centrists and independents as such coordinated misinformation brings to mind the world described by George Orwell in his classic work “1984”.  Should Obamacare pass the House and become law, years from now historians will review Obama’s speeches from yesterday and today and likely designate them as some of the most misleading speeches by an American President in the history of our country.

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Obama Today on Obamacare: Most Misleading Presidential Speech in American History?

Friday, March 19th, 2010

President Barack Obama gave another speech on Obamacare today in Virginia at George Mason University, and such speech may be the most misleading speech ever given by a US President

As the reality that Obamacare is going to pass the House of Representatives sinks in after the House’s 222-203 vote yesterday to approve the use of the “Slaughter Solution” (which “deems” the Senate bill “passed”), President Barack Obama took to the stage at George Mason University to make a speech reminiscent of his campaign speeches in 2007-2008: short on actual details and heavy on unrealistic, misleading claims with grandiose rhetoric mixed in for good measure.

Sadly, the President made claims he almost certainly knows are false (you can keep your doctor, you can keep your health plan, Obamacare will reduce the deficit, for instance) while omitting any explicit reference to the $500 billion in cuts to Medicare (over the next 10 years) used to fund over half of the nearly one trillion dollars in new entitlement spending under Obamacare for the years 2014-2019 (major benefits do not begin until 2014), making today’s speech a contender for the most misleading Presidential speech in American history. Further, as leaked just now, a Democratic leadership memo to congresspeople instructs them to lie to the media and public about the substance behind the CBO preliminary scoring while ignoring the realities of the additional $371 billion in federal spending set to be enacted by Democrats as an add-on to Obamacare known as the “doctor fix” immediately after the passage of Obamacare.

Obama’s speech recycles most of the misleading talking points used by Obama and the Democrats over the past year despite the debunking of such claims by objective fact-checking organizations and simple reality, as will be outlined below. Obama began by accurately stating that the Obamacare debate is really “a debate about the character of our country.”  Obama then goes off the rails somewhat with this rhetoric, stating that the question of passing Obamacare is about

“Whether we can still meet the challenges of our time. Whether we still have the guts and courage to give every citizen, not just some, the chance to meet their dreams.”

In fact, Obamacare is about whether the United States will move towards a new, radically altered system of strict federal government control and oversight of the health care industry or whether the United States will continue on its present path of substantially private-run health care.   The drive of Americans to meet the challenges of “our time” is of course not epitomized by a massive increase in government spending and control over the health decisions of Americans, regardless of Obama’s expertly-crafted rhetoric above.   Indeed, Obamacare will fundamentally alter the character of the United States, making most American citizens reliant upon a giant federal government bureaucracy, instead of themselves, for the provision of life-saving health care, forever altering the balance between citizen and government in this country.

As the American health care system is now the envy of the world, both in terms of innovation of new cutting-edge techniques and quality, and most world leaders come here for major health care for themselves personally, taking a giant step away from our present system via the massive new federal intervention into the health care industry in Obamacare can accurately be seen as risking America’s present dominance in the health care field internationally. Of course, Obama’s speech references none of these issues nor the 80% of Americans that presently approve of their personal health care arrangements.

Obama then moves onto a familiar rhetorical trick of framing all opponents to Obamacare as insurance industry hacks, stating that we cannot “accept a system that works better for the insurance companies than the American people” while “their lobbyists are stalking the halls of congress as we speak” and that “if this vote fails, the insurance industry will continue to run amok.” These arguments are substantially false as the health insurance companies will actually benefit in part from his bill as all healthy, young Americans who presently do not waste their money on pricey, unnecessary health insurance policies will now be forced to purchase same or face an IRS penalty and enforcement of same by IRS collection efforts. Of course, Obama’s speech does not reference this penalty on individuals, nor the additionally penalty on employers who do not provide benefits, in his speech today.

At this point, President Obama and Dems in Congress appear to have made more deals than Monty Hall ever did in "Lets Make a Deal"

Obama then makes a wildly inaccurate statement:

So the only question left is this: are we going to let the special interest win once again? Or are we going to make this vote a victory for the American People!

This claim, of course, ignores the fact that, at best, only about 35-40% of Americans support the passage of the President’s comprehensive health care plan into law, making its coming passage hardly a “victory” for the American people, 80% of which are presently satisfied with their medical care.  Also ignored by this Obama claim that his bill is being opposed by “special interests” is the fact that Obama himself has made backroom deals with the large drug companies (“Big Pharma”), American Medical Association, the hospitals, the AARP, the unions, and even some insurance companies as the past year of backroom dealmaking between the Obama Administration and special interest groups has unfolded. The level of “audacity” required to claim his bill is not backed by special interests while he himself made deals with essentially every major special interest in the health care industry during meetings in his White House is substantial and this Obama claim is quite jarring when compared to the above-referenced publicly available facts.

Obama then continues in his speech to claim, as he has many times since the summer of 2009, that “the time for reform is right now. Not a year from now, not 5 years from now not 10 years from now not 20 years from now” while noting that “we have had a year of hard debate, every proposal has been put on the table, every argument has been made, we have incorporated the best ideas from Democrats and from Republicans into a final proposal that builds on the system of private insurance that we have.” These claims, of course, ignore the fact that the Republican ideas to reduce health care costs via tort reform and allowing increased competition between insurers across state lines are ignored by his legislation and those issues also go unmentioned in Obama’s speech today.

Obama then denies that his plan is “radical change” (somewhat contradicting his earlier comments extolling the major changes to come from his bill) and states that “what we’re talking about is common sense reform, that’s all we’re talking about.” Now, Obama unleashes three of the greatest lies ever told about Obamacare:

If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you’ll be able to keep your plan. Because I don’t believe we should give the government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America. I believe it’s time to give you – the American people – more control over your health insurance.

Of course, the massive federal intervention into the American health care system will lead to many Americans having their present health care arrangements substantially altered, whether by a doctor who retires rather than face the increased costs of federal control, or by the new strict federal rules that require certain benefits to be covered, or by an employer who dumps their benefits coverage and just pays the fine to avoid the hassle, or by the elimination of nearly 10 million seniors “Medicare Advantage” coverage. amongst other ways such personal health care arrangements will be altered.

As for Obama’s claim that he does not want to “give the government or the insurance companies more control over health care” and instead wanting to give the “American people” “more control” over their health insurance, such a statement simply defies all logic and available facts known about Obamacare as many  new federal rules and regulations will be implemented and enforced on the American health care system, hence increasing federal government control of same, as intended by its authors. Of course, Obama’s speech avoids any discussion of the massive increase in the federal government’s bureaucracy in his remarks today and instead Obama implausibly denies that his bill will increase federal power over the health care industry, as it is written and intended to do.   Also unmentioned in Obama’s speech is the 15,000 new IRS employees to be hired to enforce the new Obamacare personal and company fines and taxes in Obamacare as well as cost of new federal health bureaucrats to “administer” Obamacare.

Obama then summarizes the parts of his nearly 3000 page bill that he wants to talk about, stating his Obamacare plan does three things: first, it “ends the worst practices of insurance companies” as implementing “a patients’ bill of rights on steroids”; second, “[f]or the first time, small business owners and others…will have the same kind of choice for private health insurance that members of congress give to themselves”; and third that it “brings down the cost of health care for families, businesses and the federal government.”

While the President does accurately state that insurers will be required to issue insurance policies to all those who have preexisting conditions that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions to treat every year at a cost that is not above a healthy person’s policy, the remaining two claims in his formulation are unequivocally false.   All Americans will certainly not have coverage like members of Congress after Obamacare passes, this is simply a lie.   Elite politicians will continue to receive gold-plated health care plans whether Obamacare passes or not, and the average American will either be fined for not purchasing such expensive coverage or the federal government will their own tax dollars (or borrowed dollars) pay to provide coverage made more expensive by Obamacare’s provisions.

Despite this reality, Obama makes this ridiculous claim during his discussion of his second main point that Americans will receive the same coverage as Congress:

“We will offer you tax credits to do so – tax credits that add up to the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history.”

President Barack Obama's speech today on Obamacare reminds some of concepts referenced George Orwell's classic book 1984

Amazingly, Obama terms his planned new spending, in his own words, of at least a “100 billion a year” on a new federal health care entitlement program via Obamacare, as the “largest middle class tax cut for health care in history.”  Such an explicitly misleading presentation of the new entitlement programs in Obamacare certainly recalls the works of George Orwell, such as the book 1984, and this Orwell quote in the aftermath of World War 2 in 1945:

People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. . . To appreciate the danger of Fascism the Left would have had to admit its own shortcomings, which was too painful; so the whole phenomenon was ignored or misinterpreted, with disastrous results…The most intelligent people seem capable of holding schizophrenic beliefs, or disregarding plain facts, of evading serious questions with debating-society repartees, or swallowing baseless rumours and of looking on indifferently while history is falsified.

Above and beyond the false and misleading claims above, President Obama’s ridiculous claim today that Obamacare is “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history” is definitely the most odious and explicitly false statement made by President Obama in his speech today, which in our view ranks as one of the most misleading Presidential speeches in American history. Of course, the giant new entitlement spending in Obamacare (at least 100 billion a year according to Obama today) will not reduce the yearly federal budget deficit, and Obama knows it. However, Obama and the Democrats keep repeating this claim, even claiming it is “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history” based on entirely misleading numbers from the CBO.

It is true that the CBO issued a preliminary report on the latest nearly 3000 page long Obamacare plan today in which the CBO states the bill will cost about a trillion dollars over 10 years (only 6 years of benefits, but 10 years of taxes and Medicare cuts) while allegedly “saving” over a hundred billion in deficit spending over those first 10 years and over a trillion in deficit spending over 20 years. However, the CBO is forced to score the language and assumptions provided to it by the Democrats in charge of Congress, and cannot interject the CBO’s own opinion as to whether those assumptions will bear out or whether subsequent Congresses will change the language.

The first major misrepresentation in the CBO’s claim of deficit savings is the failure to include the “doctor fix” in the CBO’s scoring of OBamacare. The CBO’s claim of deficit spending assumes a 21% cut in doctor and hospital fees, as present law requires. That law, a 1997 act to reduce Medicare spending over time, has been waived every year since then by Congress under pressure from the AMA lobby and others. The Obama Administration, of course, made a little-publicized deal between Obama and the AMA in July 2009 to purchase their support for Obamacare by promising a long term “doctor fix” as a part of the comprehensive health care reform procedure, as reported by Politico then:

In the bill, Democrats provide $245 billion to eliminate an annual shortfall in payments to doctors under Medicare. Democrats resolved this annual headache, in large part, to win crucial support for the bill from the American Medical Association. That money currently counts against the overall costs of the bill, but Democrats have introduced legislation that would remove remove this obligation from federal deficit.

Whether you take the $245 billion dollar figure over 10 years quoted here by Politico, or the $371 billion dollar figure reported by Politico today (before they pulled the story under White House pressure) for the cost in federal spending of a long term doctor fix, the claimed $138 billion in deficit “savings” over the next 10 years completely disappears and Obamacare ends up being in the red, even putting aside all the other budgetary tricks we will outline below. Indeed, the CBO just issued an update to their report, in response to GOP Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) letter, admitting that Obamacare will add to the deficit once the doctor fix is in place, as promised by both President Obama to the AMA to buy their support and by Nancy Pelosi today in her news conference:

You asked about the total budgetary impact of enacting the reconciliation proposal (the amendment to H.R. 4872), the Senate-passed health bill (H.R. 3590), and the Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 3961). CBO estimates that enacting all three pieces of legislation would add $59 billion to budget deficits over the 2010–2019 period.

Of course, Obama was well aware of these facts regarding the lack of deficit savings when the doctor fix is factored into Obamacare, and Obama still explicitly stated today that his plan will be “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history.”  This Obama claim, a willful misrepresentation of the true cost of his program by not “counting” the doctor fix that Obama himself promised to the AMA to purchase their support for his program in July 2009, brings to mind the Orwell quote above that “most intelligent people seem capable of holding schizophrenic beliefs, or disregarding plain facts, of evading serious questions with debating-society repartees, or swallowing baseless rumours and of looking on indifferently while history is falsified. Sadly, the explicit misrepresentation of the President in claiming that Obamacare is “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history” is not solely based on the doctor fix lie, but many others as well.

Even the NYT, via its Obama-worshipping columnist David Brooks, admits that the Obama claim of deficit savings is an explicit lie, and the CBO report of deficit “savings” is simply the product of legislative gimmicks by the Democrats:

They’ve stuffed the legislation with gimmicks and dodges designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office but don’t genuinely control runaway spending.

There is the doc fix dodge. The legislation pretends that Congress is about to cut Medicare reimbursements by 21 percent. Everyone knows that will never happen, so over the next decade actual spending will be $300 billion higher than paper projections.

There is the long-term care dodge. The bill creates a $72 billion trust fund to pay for a new long-term care program. The sponsors count that money as cost-saving, even though it will eventually be paid back out when the program comes on line.

There is the subsidy dodge. Workers making $60,000 and in the health exchanges would receive $4,500 more in subsidies in 2016 than workers making $60,000 and not in the exchanges. There is no way future Congresses will allow that disparity to persist. Soon, everybody will get the subsidy.

There is the excise tax dodge. The primary cost-control mechanism and long-term revenue source for the program is the tax on high-cost plans. But Democrats aren’t willing to levy this tax for eight years. The fiscal sustainability of the whole bill rests on the naïve hope that a future Congress will have the guts to accept a trillion-dollar tax when the current Congress wouldn’t accept an increase of a few billion.

There is the 10-6 dodge. One of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn’t have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That’s 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits, something unlikely to happen again unless the country agrees to go without health care for four years every decade.

There is the Social Security dodge. The bill uses $52 billion in higher Social Security taxes to pay for health care expansion. But if Social Security taxes pay for health care, what pays for Social Security?

There is the pilot program dodge. Admirably, the bill includes pilot programs designed to help find ways to control costs. But it’s not clear that the bill includes mechanisms to actually implement the results. This is exactly what happened to undermine previous pilot program efforts.

When an Obama-loving NYT columnist who is literally in love with President Obama, for reasons such as his “his perfectly creased pant“, admits that Obama and the Democrats have stuffed Obamacare with no less than seven “dodges” to obtain a favorable, yet explicitly false, CBO scoring, centrists and independents know that such claims of deficit “savings” must be false. Finally, on top of the seven listed “dodges”, according to the CBO, and not included in the “scoring”, is the fact that the CBO “double counts” the Medicare cuts as both helping Medicare’s solvency and paying for new spending while another $50 billion in unscored costs are likely to administer the massive new federal entitlement programs and federal controls over the health care industry contained in Obamacare:

In its March 11, 2010, cost estimate for H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as passed by the Senate, CBO indicated that it has identified at least $50 billion in specified and estimated authorizations of discretionary spending that might be involved in implementing that legislation. The authority to undertake such spending is not provided in H.R. 3590; it would require future action in appropriation bills.

Finally, the President also plays misleading rhetorical games regarding the “cost controls” in Obamacare. The only significant cost control mechanism in the Obamacare package (as tort reform and interstate competition between insurers are omitted) is the “cadillac tax” on gold-plated health insurance policies, however, that tax was pushed off until 2018 because of pressure from unions who’s members have such insurance plans. Accordingly, in order to make the ridiculous claims of deficit savings referenced above, Obama pretends that Congress in 2017 will not waive the “cadillac tax” under political pressure, as he has just done with the delay until 2018 and as every Congress has done every year since the 1997 Medicare cost-cutting legislation (which is the source of the “doctor fix” problem in the first place).  Indeed, if Obama with a huge Congressional majority cannot enact a cadillac tax within the next 8 years, why should anyone have any confidence that Congress 2017 will do so? Obama, and everyone else in Washington, knows this is an unrealistic fantasy, but Obama still made these ridiculous claims in his historically misleading speech today.

Finally, just as Congress has waived the planned reductions in fees for doctors and hospitals every year since 1997, future Congresses in all likelihood will also waive the planned nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next 10 years to avoid a backlash by elderly voters who fear benefit cuts and pressure from medical provider lobbies. The cuts to Medicare are over half of the revenue Obama plans to use to fund the new health care entitlement spending of $100 billion a year, and everyone in Washington knows these cuts will never happen in full. Obama’s speech, of course, makes no reference to the “doctor fix” or the Medicare cuts themselves which form half of the revenue for his programs, but Obama certainly does claim that his plan is “one of the biggest deficit-reduction plans in history”, and all of his fellow Democrats are repeating similar claims all over the dial as this article is written. Such intentionally misleading statements by American leaders again remind centrist and independent Americans of the words of George Orwell as referenced above, reinforced by Obama’s ridiculous claim his “reduced” health care costs from Obamacare will mean that employers “can afford to give you a raise.”

A final Obama quote from today
sums up the fraudulent nature of his speech, as he claims “more than $1 trillion” in deficit savings, considering the facts noted above. This comment is the only reference to the $500 billion in cuts planned for the Medicare system, and of course Obama does not reference Medicare by name:

And by the way, if you’re curious, well, how exactly are we saving these costs? Well, part of it is, again, we’re not spending our health care money wisely. So, for example, you go to the hospital or you go to a doctor and you may take five tests, when it turns out if you just took one test, then you send an e-mail around with the test results, you wouldn’t be paying $500 per test. So we’re trying to save money across the system. (Applause.) And altogether, our cost-cutting measures would reduce most people’s premiums. And here’s the bonus: It brings down our deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next two decades.

The pure idiocy of Obama’s example of emailed tests as his primary cost-cutting mechanism to cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare speaks for itself.  Obama gave his speech to an auditorium of students at George Mason University, as such young college students are Obama’s last remaining base of support with his approval slipping underwater, as more Americans disapproving than approving of his performance in all major polls released this week. One can only hope that America does not have to find out the hard way, via renewed economic instability emanating from runaway deficit spending as envisioned by the actual provisions of Obamacare, not to mention the loss of medical innovation and job creation from the health care industry and the historical alteration of the relationship between American citizens and the federal government, that the claims made in Obama’s speech today are wholly false and that his speech was likely one of the most misleading speeches ever given by a sitting American President.

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OPINION: What America Needs: Centrist Health Care Reform

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

CentristNet Offers Its First Opinion Piece Regarding the Elements of Centrist Health Care Reform That President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans Can Agree Upon at the Health Care Summit

As the hours count down to the beginning of the vaunted health care summit in Washington, in our opinion, there are many areas in which President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans can agree to move forward with significant, yet incremental reforms to the American health care system.    Most, if not all on the left argue that only a comprehensive, federal government-centered health care plan, like Obama’s Health Plan as released Monday, can reduce the cost of health insurance, reduce the number of uninsured, improve patient outcomes and contain projected massive federal deficits from present health entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.   Indeed, as President Obama and many Congressional Democrats repeatedly state, a comprehensive federal health care reform plan has been the ultimate goal of the left for many decades. Some, but not a majority on the right argue that there is no need for health care reform at this time. The views of the left and the right, as outlined above, are incorrect and an pivot from the present trajectory of health care debate towards centrist health care reform is the appropriate policy choice, as we will detail below.

As the developments this week make clear, with President Obama planning to use reconciliation to push through his left-leaning Obamacare and Congressional Republicans calling for a fresh start to the bill writing process on a blank piece of paper, the prospects for a bipartisan deal from tomorrow’s summit look slim.  The just-leaked smaller Obama plan, if the leak proves accurate, could run into similar troubles, as a key concern of many Americans is the increased federal bureaucracy envisioned by each of his plans. Indeed, the actual overall cost of the Obama Health Plan and the various arguably misleading claims made on Obamacare’s behalf have not inspired confidence in President Obama’s handling of health care, which fell to a mere 35% approval (and 55% disapproval) in the last CBS/NYT poll. Instead of giving into pressures from party ideologues on both sides, we hope that President Obama and Congressional Republicans put aside partisanship and the zero-sum calculus of political warfare to actually consider some centrist health care policies that can be quickly passed, this year, with bipartisan support.

Obama’s present strategy to use reconciliation to pass Obamacare through the Senate after passing the present Senate bill through the House of Representatives has no guarantee of success considering the present bills’ massive unpopularity with the American public and the reluctance of House Democrats to make a career-ending vote for Obamacare.   Further, a new entitlement passed without bipartisan support would be difficult to maintain in years to come and could poison American politics for a generation.   With all that in mind, we offer several straightforward centrist policy prescriptions that the GOP and Obama can agree on. Each centrist incremental federal reform could be worked out between the parties in a matter of weeks, perhaps by fast-tracked policy commissions with an equal split in members between the parties and tasked with producing preliminary reports two weeks from the end of the summit.

1.  Federal Incentives To Encourage States to Decrease the Number of Involuntarily Uninsured Americans.

A large part of the issue that many Americans have with Obamacare is the central role of the federal government in the regulation and operation of the American health care industry, with numerous new federal bureaucracies, and attendant federal health bureaucrats to be added to the payroll, that is at the heart of the design of Obamacare.   We believe that instead of creating a giant new federal government structure, federal policy should focus on incentivizing the states into experimenting with new measures to reduce cost and the involuntarily uninsured.    New federal mandates to states, as are included in Obamacare, would inappropriately constrain the states and hamper the great “laboratory of democracy” from properly operating as it has throughout American history.

While we don’t agree with everything, or even most, of what the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (“RWJF”) advocates, RWJF’s recent report on the health care “State of the States” appropriately highlighted the key role of the states in finding health care solutions:

States play a critical role in advancing coverage expansions and other health reforms by testing new ideas, both politically and practically.  Because health care delivery is largely local, states are closer to the action when it comes to implementing some of the delivery and payment systems changes that are needed to truly transform the health care system. This proximity and flexibility in system redesign is a key strength for states.  In addition, states have first-hand knowledge of their local landscape and relationships with the stakeholders that will be necessary to change the system. Much of the work related to implementing insurance reforms, delivery system redesign, and public health strategies traditionally have been led by states.

Some say that the Massachusetts health care plan was a failure because health care costs are rising faster in that state than nationally since the reform passed, the cost overruns regarding projected state spending and the lack of attainment of true universal coverage. However, the State of Massachusetts passed a bipartisan plan with Republican Governor Milt Romney, a 90% Democratic Massachusetts legislature and a cheerleading Teddy Kennedy present for the signing of the bill by Romney. If Massachusetts desires to change or reverse its programs, the people of Massachusetts will make that happen. Every other state in the Union should have the same opportunity to decide how to proceed regarding its health care systems and the federal government should not straight jacket the states into a one size fits all federal mandate via Obamacare. Federal incentives could also be accessible to several states who wish to forum a regional health care system with uniform rules – but the decisions effecting Americans health care should not be left to a faraway bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

By maintaining the flexibility of states to engage in policy innovation, the probability increases that a health care policy that is proven to work by empirical evidence will emerge and spread around the country once the benefits of such policy are made clear by results. Creating a huge federal bureaucracy with many new mandates on state governments regarding health care policy will stifle this state innovation and risk damaging the present high quality of care provided by American medical professionals across the land. As 70% to 80% of Americans approve of their present health care arrangements, federal health policy must follow the medical maxim of “first do no harm” and avoid the risk of reducing the present quality of care with too much federal government control over states and medical professionals.

2.  Reform Medical Malpractice Laws:

There is no serious dispute over the need for substantial medical malpractice reform, or tort reform, on the federal level. Some on the right advocate Texas-style tort reform, which involves caps on damage awards and limiting “jackpot justice”, while some on the left wholly reject any tort reform and others advocate a system of specialized health care courts to replace the present courts of general jurisdiction that handle medical malpractice cases. Both policy approaches have pluses and minuses, and to that end the federal health reform effort should provide incentives to the states to attempt either systemic change. It may be that in the long term, specialized health courts, similar to the workers compensation system, are the better choice, but the states should be free to choose how to design their system, as they are in the workers compensation arena. The left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute outlines some benefits of health care courts:

A Better Way: Health Courts

There are many proposals for health care reform that are focused outside the medical justice system. All are well intentioned and some may be practical, but without legal reforms none will likely succeed in containing costs. Clearly, we need major reform, and we can achieve it in part by instituting a network of specialized health courts to replace the current medical justice system.1

Under health courts, malpractice cases would no longer be heard in civil courts. Instead, they would be handled in an administrative system overseen by the states. The system would be similar to the state-run workers’ compensation system. It would give more injured patients access to quicker and less expensive justice.

….

Health court rulings would establish new standards of practice to cover medical circumstances for which common standards have not previously been settled. The health court system would thus yield an essential benefit that our current system of medical justice fails to provide: consistent, rational rulings that send clear signals to health care providers about what constitutes good medical practice. In so doing, it would help eliminate the legal uncertainty that encourages doctors to practice defensive medicine and the silence among practitioners and patients that very likely contributes to medical errors.

It is possible that if even a few states chose to institute health care courts based on incentives in an incremental, centrist federal health reform plan, the benefits of such specialized courts could become empirically proven in a few years. Once proven successful, such a system may become the standard throughout the country; however, as far as a federal policy is concerned, a state should be free to try traditional tort reform, health care courts or any other solution they can create. A federal plan to incentivize the states in the tort reform arena could not be seriously opposed by either party and legislative language could be worked out relatively quickly by bipartisan negotiators.


3. Create a Federal/State/Insurance Companies Mechanism for Covering the Uninsurable with Preexisting Conditions:

The American public believes by a large majority that some federal action should be taken to assist those Americans who cannot obtain health care insurance because they have an uninsurable preexisting condition. Indeed, logically speaking, requiring an health insurance company to provide insurance to an individual that faces certain, and substantial, medical expenses is similar to requiring a car insurance company to provide insurance to an individual with an already wrecked car. It is simply not economically feasible for the private sector insurers to insure against an already existing condition. Because of this, federal government intervention in the health insurance market is appropriate in the instance of uninsurable individuals.

A centrist proposal to deal with uninsurable individuals is to set up comprehensive high risk pools jointly funded by federal and state governments to enable uninsurable individuals to purchase health insurance and a supporting, pro bono role for health insurance companies in administering the program. 31 States presently have high risk pools, and the inclusion of the federal government and insurers into a comprehensive risk pool policy could reduce the cost to the uninsurable while providing folks with care they otherwise would not have received. Both parties already support the use of risk pools, and the Senate version of Obamacare provides for high risk pools between now and 2013. Health insurance companies should be required to participate in this program as a consequence of the federal law, perhaps conditioning a continued exemption from antitrust laws on cooperation by the insurance companies with the risk pool program. This will be an expensive proposition, and many on both sides of the aisle could object to the high cost and some on the left are sure to argue that a comprehensive health care reform plan would be a cheaper alternative. However, as noted earlier, there is no chance of a bipartisan agreement on a comprehensive health care reform plan this year, but neither party could seriously oppose a serious risk pool program for uninsurable individuals and again, the details of this policy could be worked out in a matter of weeks.

4. Create Bipartisan Commission to Study Medical Billing Reform:

Anyone who has reviewed medical bills as provided by doctors and hospitals and then reviewed the payments actually made, and their variance, between insurance companies, government entities and cash-paying individuals knows that the present medical billing system needs substantial reform. Unfortunately, this issue has gotten little attention in the health care reform debate and does not figure prominently in the Obama Health Plan. A single procedure can be billed at $10,000.00 by a hospital to an individual, yet the same procedure could bring in only $4,000.00 from an insurance company and either more or less from a government entity. Greater transparency is needed in medical billing, and health care consumers need to be more involved and aware of what procedures cost and their various choices to create a more efficient and effective medical billing system. While this policy prescription may not be amenable to a quick bipartisan agreement on legislative mandates, neither party could seriously oppose the creation of a Bipartisan Commission to study the medical billing problem and issue recommendations for negotiations between the politicians in a few months.

5. Create a Medicare/Medicaid Sanctions Database and Act to Reduce “Waste, Fraud, and Abuse” in Medicare and Medicaid:

One provision proposed by the Obama Health Plan on Monday was originally proposed by the Republican Study Committee:

The President’s Proposal establishes a comprehensive Medicare and Medicaid sanctions database, overseen by the HHS Inspector General. This database will provide a central storage location, allowing for law enforcement access to information related to past sanctions on health care providers, suppliers and related entities. (Source: H.R. 3400, “Empowering Patients First Act” (Republican Study Committee bill))

Republicans will also likely sign off on some of the other provisions listed on this page by President Obama in his Health Plan, as some are geared towards cracking down on wrongdoers who abuse the payment procedures of Medicare and Medicaid. A good first step, and one that neither party could seriously object to, is the creation of the sanctions database to make sure wrongdoing individuals cannot continue to defraud the government under any circumstances. Again, bipartisan negotiators could work out legislative language on this issue in a matter of weeks.

Many seniors are understandably nervous about what exactly it means for them if Obamacare passes and over 400 Billion Dollars in reductions in Medicare spending occur over the next ten years. A more sensible, bipartisan policy would focus intensely on increasing efficiency in Medicare/Medicaid while reducing waste, fraud and abuse in this programs instead of cutting whole programs like Medicare Advantage, a program relied upon my millions of seniors. Another constructive step would be for President Obama to appoint a Medicare administrator to report to him and Congress about what kind of cuts are feasible or desirable beyond eliminating the improper, fraudulent spending via the sanctions database and stepped up enforcement.

CONCLUSION

The five point plan listed above is no panacea, and will not solve all the problems in the American health care system. However, these above-enumerated centrist health care reforms could not be seriously opposed by either party and compromise legislative language could be worked out in a matter of weeks. Instead of acrimony about Obama’s planned use of reconciliation and the GOP’s obstructionism, one can only hope that the participants in today’s health care summit put aside the pressures of party ideologues on both sides and decide to forge real consensus where it is actually possible: centrist, incremental health care reform.

Update: The initial speeches by President Obama, GOP Senator Lamar Alexander, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid show little sign of true bipartisan negotiations.

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Shocker: Obama Surrenders, Substantially Scales Down Plan on Eve of Summit; UPDATED 2X: White House Furiously Denies WSJ Story, Hoyer Confirms WSJ Story

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

A Pensive Barack Obama Looks On As the White House's Plans to Advocate Scaled Down Health Care Plan Leak, Detailing a Smaller 250 Billion Dollar Health Care Plan as Monday's 950 Billion Dollar Proposal Looks Unlikely to Pass Congress on the Eve of the Health Care Summit

In an incredible development literally hours before the much-hyped health care summit is to begin between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, the Obama Administration signaled its intent to move forward with a much smaller, scaled back health care plan spending perhaps 250 Billion Dollars over 10 years instead of the near Trillion a year proposed by the present Obama Health Plan as released on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health-care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.

His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.

It would do that by requiring insurance companies to allow people up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ health plans, and by modestly expanding two federal-state health programs, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, one person said. The cost to the federal government would be about one-fourth the price tag for the broader effort, which the White House has said would cost about $950 billion over 10 years.

Officials cautioned that no final decisions had been made but said the smaller plan’s outlines are in place in case the larger plan fails.

Such a move would disappoint many Democrats, including Mr. Obama. They have worked for more than a year to pass comprehensive legislation like the plan the president unveiled Monday, which would cover the bulk of the 46 million uninsured people in the U.S., set new rules for health insurers and try to control spiraling health-care costs.

The last reporting from the WSJ above could be the understatement of the decade, as many Democrats will be much more than disappointed. The left is already disappointed by the White House’s declaration yesterday that the public option was dead, and this scaled back, much smaller plan leaked just hours before the health care summit is sure to infuriate those on the left who have been agitating tirelessly for a comprehensive health care reform package along the lines of Monday’s Obama Health Plan. Indeed, should Obama actually fallback on the smaller plan as the WSJ suggests, such a development is certain to lead to questions about the consistency and effectiveness of Obama’s strategy on health care reform and much consternation in the left wing new media about the incompetence of his execution since the health care debate began in the Spring of 2009.

Looking back, if Obama had been agreeable to the type of plan he’s apparently contemplating now back in the Spring of 2009, health care reform would have passed with 80 votes in the Senate and Obama would have done a lot to prove his bipartisan bona fides. Instead, after nearly a year of advocating a strongly partisan health plan, Obama may now be signaling he will take what he can get in a scaled down bill, yet the damage to the Democratic Party and the Obama brand as inflicted since the Spring of 2009 by the health care debate will remain.

UPDATE:  The Washington Post’s Obama advocate Ezra Klein and the Huffington Post report that the White House is furiously denying the Wall Street Journal’s report that a scaled back plan is under consideration. Klein’s report:

The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House’s plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.

Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you’d expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.

At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that’s all this is. A vestigial document that’s being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They’re furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House — not even anonymously — raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There’s no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.

UPDATE #2: Ed at Hotair picks up this Hill piece quoting House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer stating this morning before the summit that a scaled back bill along the lines of the one described by the WSJ last night is on the table:

Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, said the president would have to look at a fallback proposal if the current proposals before Congress weren’t able to muster the votes to pass.

“I think the president’s open to that,” Hoyer said during an appearance on CNBC, cautioning that the president would clearly prefer to see the comprehensive bills pass…

“Obviously, the president has indicated he wants to have a comprehensive bill,” Hoyer said. “But the president, like all of us, understands that in a democracy, you do the possible.”

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CNN: 73% Say Start From Scratch (48%) or Stop Work Completely (25%) on Health Care Reform; UPDATE: 52% Oppose Use of Reconciliation

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid May Want to Review CNN's Finding that 73% of the American Public Oppose Passing the Health Care Reform Bills before Congress now or Something Similar

This afternoon CNN released some troubling findings for the Obama Administration: Just 25% of the American public wants Congress to follow the lead of the newly released Obama Health Plan and pass a health care reform plan similar to the plans now before Congress. An overwhelming majority of Americans, 73%, prefer that Congress either start from scratch (48%) or stop work completely on health care reform (25%). Obama’s Health Plan contains essentially the same policies as the bill passed by the Senate, with the addition of price controls for health insurance premiums.

CNN buries the lede in its article accompanying the release of its findings, never mentioning that an overwhelming majority (73%) of the American public disapprove of passing a bill similar to the one before Congress, including four in ten Democrats who want the President and Congress to start over. CNN does manage to state that “nearly three quarters” of Americans want some kind of reform, including in that figure the 48% who want Congress to start over in that grouping in a somewhat dishonest fashion:

Washington (CNN) – Although the overall health care reform bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate are unpopular, many of the provisions in the existing bills are extremely popular, even among Republicans, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that only a quarter of the public want Congress to stop all work on health care, with nearly three quarters saying lawmakers should pass some kind of reform.

Twenty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform.

…..

The poll’s release comes one day before a critical televised health care summit hosted by President Obama that will include top Congressional Democrats and Republicans.

The survey indicates nearly half of all Democrats say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with nearly 4 in 10 Democrats saying Congress should start from scratch and just 1 in 10 saying lawmakers should stop all work on health care.

A majority of Republicans questioned, 54 percent, want Congress to start from scratch, with just under 4 in 10 saying lawmakers should halt work on health care reform and just 6 percent saying Congress should pass into law the current legislation.

Fifty-two percent of Independents want Congress to start work on a new bill, with 27 percent saying lawmakers should stop all work, and 18 percent saying that the current legislation should be passed into law.

The final finding noted above in the CNN excerpt is truly incredible: a full 79% of Independents reject passing the current bills before Congress or something similar and only 18% of Independents favor moving forward with the present bills as advocated by the Obama Health Plan. That’s a 61 point gap between approval and disapproval, running against the plan initiated by the release of the Obama Health Plan last Monday and subsequent advocacy of the reconciliation process to circumvent the filibuster and push through Obamacare by the President and his Democratic congressional allies. With the mood of the country so clearly opposed to moving forward with the present bills or something similar in Congress, Obama must provide an incredible performance tomorrow to move public opinion back his way to convince nervous Democrats in Congress that proceeding with pushing through Obamacare now is in their best electoral interest.

UPDATE: Hotair points out that a new USAToday/Gallup poll taken yesterday shows the public opposed to Obama’s possible use of reconciliation to pass Obamacare by a 52%/39% margin and that only 22% of the public thinks the health care summit will result in a bipartisan deal.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs indicated Monday that, if necessary, the White House was open to using a parliamentary maneuver known as reconciliation to bypass a prospective filibuster in the Senate. That means a measure could pass the Senate with a 51-vote majority rather than the 60 votes needed to end debate.

Americans are opposed 52%-39% to using that device to get a bill through.

The poll of 1,009 adults nationwide, taken by landline and cellphone Tuesday, has a margin of error of +/—4 percentage points.

UPDATE: Ace at Ace of Spades and Allahpundit at Hotair link over, thank you guys. Readers of Ace and Hotair please take a look around and leave a comment or three.

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GOP Demands Obama Invite Dissenting Dem. Stupak on Eve of Summit

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

House GOP Leader John Boehner Threw Obama a Curveball With a Demand for an Invite for Democratic Dissenter Bark Stupak to the Health Care Summit Tomorrow

In an attention-grabbing move on the eve of tomorrow’s day-long health care summit between Obama and the GOP, House GOP Leader John Boehner has issued a demand, via letter, that Obama invite Democratic House Member Bart Stupak (D-Mi.). Stupak yesterday called the Obama Health Plan, as released on Monday, “unacceptable” because the “President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion.” A key portion of Boehner’s letter:

I write today to respectfully ask that you invite Rep. Stupak to participate in the February 25 health care summit so that the will of the American people – and that of a bipartisan majority in the House – on the critical issue of life will be appropriately represented during the discussion.

Regrettably, millions of Americans are already deeply skeptical about the February 25 summit. They have noted with disappointment the decision by the White House to use the existing legislation as the starting point for the discussion – despite the fact that the current bills are opposed by a majority of the American people – rather than starting the discussion with a clean sheet of paper. They have noted with consternation the White House decision to exclude governors and state legislators representing states that will bear the heaviest burdens if the current legislation is enacted. Including Representative Stupak in the February 25 discussion, by contrast, would send a signal that the White House respects the views of a majority of Americans and a bipartisan majority of the House on the critical issue of life.

Boehner’s letter also mentions the GOP’s request earlier this week that Governors be invited to the health care summit, and such request was also denied by the White House according to Politico today:

The White House has denied a request by Hill Republicans to include governors at tomorrow’s Blair House health care summit, according to a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

“The White House has apparently decided not to allow any of America’s governors to attend the health care ‘summit’ tomorrow,” wrote Boehner spokesman Michael Steel in an email.

“We are disappointed to announce that the White House has advised Leader Boehner that its expectation is that congressional leaders will appoint only Members of Congress as their representatives at the summit, on the grounds that the discussion is ‘about legislation.’ … [H]e is disappointed the White House has excluded our nation’s governors and state legislators from the summit.”

A White House spokesman hasn’t responded to a request for comment.

Obama faces a difficult choice in whether to agree to the GOP’s desire for Stupak’s attendance. If Obama denies the request, part of the narrative over the next twenty four hours will be the White House’s exclusion of Stupak. If Obama accepts the request, than Stupak’s “unacceptable” comment and likely more comments from Stupak about abortion will be part of the media reporting. As Obama has already denied the request for Governor attendance, our guess is that Obama will simply ignore this latest GOP demand regarding Stupak and hope the issue of abortion funding via Obamacare gains little traction in the coming days.

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Obama Reconciliation Strategy Rallies Moderate Democrats

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Democratic Senators are Rallying Around Obama's Health Plan and the Use of the Reconciliation Process

In the wake of the release of the 11 page Obama Health Plan, which clearly envisions the use of the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation, moderate Democratic Senators who are on record opposing the use of reconciliation for Obamacare are now reversing themselves. Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Ne.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who all previously stated their opposition to the reconciliation procedure, are signaling that their opposition to reconciliation is now waning. Additionally, some House Democrats who previously opposed the Senate bill are also softening their opposition. Both House and Senate Democrats appear both impressed by Obama’s release of his own plan as well as accepting the Obama Administration’s argument that a bad bill is better than no bill for Democratic electoral prospects in November 2010. Obama’s strategy to paint the GOP as obstructionists is also helping garner Democratic support for the use of reconciliation. Indeed, as Thursday’s health care summit approaches, the continual White House assertions of GOP intransigence on health care appear to be paying off by providing moderate Democrats political cover to abandon their prior anti-reconciliation stances.

Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown reports:

An idea that seemed toxic only weeks ago — using a parliamentary tactic to ram health reform through the Senate — is gaining acceptance among moderate Democrats who have resisted the strategy but now say GOP opposition may force their hands.

The implications of the subtle shift among this small group of centrist senators could mean the difference between success and failure for health care reform — giving Democrats a potential road map for passing a bill that had been left for dead after the Massachusetts Senate defeat.

That mood in the Senate was matched Tuesday by a growing momentum for President Barack Obama’s health care proposal in the House, where Democrats were beginning to coalesce around the view that passing a flawed bill is better than passing none at all.

These shifts couldn’t come at a better time for Obama ahead of Thursday’s health care summit. The White House has signaled he’s prepared to use reconciliation, which would require just 51 votes to pass health reform.

The comments also seemed to reflect the early soundings of a Democratic strategy for selling the public on the tactic, especially if no Republicans sign on to Obama’s plan after the summit: The GOP made us do it.

“Obviously, if the minority is just frustrating the process, that argues for taking steps to get the public’s business done,” said Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who was one of the leading voices against the procedure after the Massachusetts election, calling it “very ill-advised.”

“At the same time … Republicans would probably shut the place down, but you could argue they are doing that anyway,” Bayh said.

Bayh’s remarks Tuesday came a day after Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) cited Republican obstructionism as a reason why she could embrace the parliamentary maneuver to pass health care reform. Last month, she said she was leaning against reconciliation.

“I’m staying open to see how these negotiations go forward,” Landrieu said. “I’ve not generally been a big supporter, but the Republican Party, the leadership, has really been very, very, very disingenuous in this process.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said he doesn’t prefer reconciliation, but it may be the only way.

“I’d like to see as many votes as possible,” he said. “But at the end of the day, with the obstructionism going on at the level that it is, I’m more interested in what’s in the package than I am in the process of how many votes it takes to get it through.”

To be sure, the hints on reconciliation do not signal any kind of ironclad commitment. Democrats remain hesitant about using the procedure, fearful that Republicans will be successful in convincing voters that it is an end-run around the normal legislative process.

However, it is a mixed bag for Democrats in the past few days, as shown by Steny Hoyer’s comments earlier today that “[w]e may not be able to do” a comprehensive health care reform bill. Some moderate House Democrats also voiced disapproval with Obama’s new strategy, including Blue Dog leader Heath Shuler (D-Pa.) and Jason Altmire (D-Pa.). Considering today’s shift of moderate Democratic Senators towards supporting Obama’s plan to use reconciliation, the tougher battle for Obama may now lie with finding 218 votes from the House of Representatives, especially as perhaps as many as 60 Democratic House members are facing defeat in November 2010. The Associated Press outlines the importance of Thursday’s summit and the uncertainty of House passage:

If Obama fails on a comprehensive health care overhaul where Bill Clinton and other presidents failed before him, the chance won’t come around again anytime soon.

The whole endeavor will now rise or fall on Obama’s ability to sell his plan at the summit Thursday, and the reaction from lawmakers and the public in the days ahead.

Some rank-and-file Democrats were openly skeptical that the White House and congressional leaders could pull it off. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., a moderate who opposed the health legislation when it passed the House, questioned whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi could hang on to the votes that allowed her to get the bill through 220-215 in November. Since then a couple of Democrats have left the House, and Pelosi may also lose votes from anti-abortion Democrats who oppose the less restrictive abortion language in the Senate bill, which Obama kept in his plan.

“Is she going to be able to hold everybody that was for it before?” Altmire asked. “What about the marginal members in the middle who got hammered over this vote and would love a second chance to perhaps go against it?”

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Progressives Turn on White House Over Public Option: “Loser Mentality” – UPDATED

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Top White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs Sparked Infighting with the Progressive Left by Pronouncing the Public Option Dead Today

Tensions have been running high between the progressive left, which is agitating for the inclusion of the public option in Obamacare if passed via reconciliation, and the White House, which omitted any reference to the public option in the 11 page Obama Health Plan issued yesterday. This afternoon, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs sparked an escalation of those tensions with his comment confirming the death of the public option as ““[t]here isn’t enough political support in the majority to get this through.” This is the most explicit the White House has ever been about the lack of hope for the public option under any circumstances, as notes former TPM lefty blogger, now WaPo blogger, Greg Sargent:

At the press briefing just now, Robert Gibbs made the White House’s most expansive comments yet about the push for a reconciliation vote on the public option — and, to put it mildly, supporters won’t find them encouraging.

Gibbs said flatly that the White House doesn’t believe there’s enough support in Congress to get it passed.

Asked directly whether the President’s failure to include the public option in his proposal means he views the public option as dead, Gibbs didn’t exactly dispute this interpretation.

“There are some that are supportive of this,” Gibbs said. But he added: “There isn’t enough political support in the majority to get this through.”

“The President took the Senate bill as the base and looks forward to discussing consensus ideas on Thursday,” Gibbs added, presumably meaning that the public option is not a consensus idea.

It’s unclear why Gibbs is deciding in advance that there isn’t enough support to pass this idea. Momentum has been gathering for days. It’s also very likely that it would continue to gain steam if Obama racks up a victory at the summit and Dems press forward with plans to pass reform themselves via reconciliation.

But Gibbs’s statement seems likely, willfully or not, to slow that momentum in advance
.

The progressive left has been pushing Democratic Senators to sign a pledge to vote for the public option in recent days, with blogs such as TPM and Daily Kos leading the way alongside political groups like the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (“PCCC”). PCCC’s reaction to Gibbs’ comment was swift condemnation of the White House as having a “loser mentality – but America rallies around winners.” PCCC Spokesman Adam Green’s statement, via Sargent:

The White House obviously has a loser mentality — but America rallies around winners. Polls show that in state after state, voters hate the Senate bill and overwhelmingly want a public option, even if passed with zero Republican votes. More than 50 Senate Democrats and 218 House Democrats were willing to vote for the public option before, and the only way to lose in reconciliation is if losers are leading the fight. That’s why Democrats in Congress should ignore the White House and follow those like Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez who know that the public option is a political and policy winner.”

As the Obama Administration struggles to paint the GOP as ideological obstructionists who refuse to compromise, this burgeoning fight between the progressive left and the Obama Administration is an unwelcome distraction. Indeed, as the White House is now active disagreement with the over 20 Senate Democrats who have signed the public option pledge and the progressive left, the credibility of Administration to attack the GOP as obstructionists could be declining as even the Democrats themselves cannot agree upon what their health care package should consist of. Indeed, Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid’s comment today that the GOP should “stop crying” over the use of reconciliation could perhaps be better applied to the progressive left regarding the public option. Centrists around America remain hopeful that a true bipartisan compromise can be reached between the parties instead of the use of reconciliation on the largest health care reform package in American history.

UPDATE: The New York Daily News picks up on the “loser mentality” slam on the White House by the PCCC:

Liberals took a brutal whack at the White House this afternoon — suggesting “losers are leading” the health care fight — after President Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs declared “there isn’t enough political support” to pass a public health insurance option.

“The White House obviously has a loser mentality — but America rallies around winners,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the group Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

“Polls show that in state after state, voters hate the Senate bill and overwhelmingly want a public option, even if passed with zero Republican votes,” Green said. “More than 50 Senate Democrats and 218 House Democrats were willing to vote for the public option before.”

Green and company have mounted a surprisingly effective campaign over the last week to get Democratic senators to to sign on to a push to pass a public option through the 51-vote budget reconciliation loophole. So far, 23 senators have backed it, including New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer and New Jersey Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg.

“The only way to lose in reconciliation is if losers are leading the fight,” Green fumed about Gibbs and the White House. “That’s why Democrats in Congress should ignore the White House and follow those like Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez who know that the public option is a political and policy winner.”

Ouch.

UPDATE #2: Hotair points out that, putting aside the public option debate, the Number 2 House Democrat, Steny Hoyer, is publicly stating he’s not sure the House can pass Obamacare. AP has Steny’s comment:

“We may not be able to do all. I hope we can do all, a comprehensive piece of legislation that will provide affordable, accessible, quality health care to all Americans,” Hoyer said at his weekly media briefing. “But having said that, if we can’t, then you know me — if you can’t do a whole, doing part is also good. I mean there are a number of things I think we can agree on.”

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Key Democratic House Member Stupak on Obama’s Health Plan: “Unacceptable” – UPDATED 2X

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak today rejects the Obama Plan, calling it "unacceptable"

In a dramatic statement this morning reported exclusively by Ben Smith at Politico, Democratic House Rep. Bart Stupak rejected yesterday’s 11 page Obama Plan as “unacceptable”:

I was pleased to see that President Obama’s health care proposal did not include several of the sweetheart deals provided to select states in the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the President’s proposal encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion. The Senate language is a significant departure from current law and is unacceptable. While the President has laid out a health care proposal that brings us closer to resolving our differences, there is still work to be done before Congress can pass comprehensive health care reform.

While most of the media’s focus in the past few days has been on whether Obama and Harry Reid can find 50 Democratic Senators (with VP Biden as tiebreaking vote) to push Obamacare through the Senate using reconciliation, little ink has been spilled regarding whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi can again find 218 Democratic votes for Obamacare. It may be that the more difficult task will be finding the 218 House votes, and Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak’s “unacceptable” comment this morning brings that difficulty into focus. Dick Morris recently wrote about the coming battle to find 218 votes in the House:

We don’t believe that there is any chance of stopping Obama’s renewed push for his horrible health care changes in the Senate. Harry Reid is going to use the reconciliation procedure to jam it through with 51 votes — and he will get them. All the hype about how difficult it will be is to distract us from the real battle which will come in the House.

There, where every member faces re-election, it will be a lot harder for Pelosi to round up the vote she needs. Last time she passed health care by 220-215. This time, a lot of the Democrats who voted for health care are going to be so worried about re-election that they might be induced to jump ship.

Stupak previously led the fight to conform the prior House version of Obamacare to existing law regarding federal funding of abortion and succeeded in forcing through an amendment in the House with tough language disallowing any federal funding of abortion through Obamacare. The Senate bill has much more permissive language regarding such federal abortion funding, and Stupak’s “unacceptable” statement this morning highlights the importance of the abortion policy in Obamacare and could be a sign that the House of Representatives will not pass the Obama Plan without the insertion of Stupak’s prior restrictive language.  The key question in days and weeks to come is whether liberal Democratic House members will buckle under and support the restrictive abortion language Stupak is advocating or risk the defeat of Obamacare in the House of Representatives.

UPDATE: Hotair links to an interesting analysis by Philip Klein on the issue of House passage of Obama’s Health Plan:

Of the 39 Democrats who voted against the House health care bill [in November], 31 of them were elected in districts that went for John McCain in 2008, according to a TAS analysis. One of the Democratic “no” votes, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, has subsequently switched parties. Given that a Republican who campaigned on being a vote against the health care bill was just elected to fill the Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy in a state that went for Obama by 26 points, it’s hard to see why anybody in a McCain district who already voted “no” would decide switch their vote to “yes.”

While Obama won the districts of the remaining eight “no” votes, in six cases, he won by only single digits, making them potentially competitive races this time around. And a closer look at several members who represent these areas are not very encouraging to proponents of Obamacare…

The biggest problem she faces is that President Obama’s proposal maintains the abortion provision in the Senate bill, rejecting Rep. Bart Stupak’s more restrictive language. When the bill passed the House the first time around, 41 Democrats voted for the health care bill only after voting for the Stupak amendment. Any of them could explain switching to a “no” vote on a final bill by citing abortion funding. Stupak himself has said there are at least 10 to 12 Democrats who voted for the bill the first time who would vote against it if it didn’t include his amendment (he reiterated Tuesday morning that the Senate abortion language adopted by Obama was still “unacceptable”). One of his co-sponsors, Rep. Brad Ellsworth, said at the time that he was only able to vote for the bill after the Stupak language was adopted, and he’s now running for Senate in Indiana, where a Rasmussen poll taken last month shows voters oppose the health care legislation by a 23-point margin.

UPDATE #2: CBS News reports on Stupak’s statement calling the Obama Health Plan “unacceptable” and notes Politico’s reporting that Obama and the Democrats do not have the votes to pass Obamacare now.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, who opposes abortion rights, has released a statement saying the White House health care reform plan is “unacceptable” because it “encompasses the Senate language allowing public funding of abortion.”….

The House health care bill would likely not have passed without the Stupak amendment, which attracted the support of 64 Democrats when it came up for vote.

While the Senate and White House plan bans direct funding of abortions, it allows subsidized individuals to pay for covered abortion services with personal funds.

Meanwhile, according to Politico’s Mike Allen, there are currently not enough votes in the House or Senate to pass a health care reform bill.

“Moderate and endangered lawmakers want the spotlight off comprehensive health reform,” he writes. “Instead, it’s about to take center stage.”

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White House Spokesmen Lie, Claim No GOP Health Care Plan Exists

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer writes this morning that "Will the Republicans Post Their Health Plan… and When?" despite the GOP's posting of a health plan in October 2009

Despite the indisputable fact that the Republican Party posted its health care plan on gop.gov in October 2009, and the fact that the White House website itself has a link to the GOP plan, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer authored a blog post at 5am this morning smearing the GOP for not providing a health care plan prior to the vaunted health care summit set for Thursday. Yesterday, lead White House spokesman made a similar statement, imploring the GOP to post their plan online.

One can only wonder if Pfeiffer and Gibbs planned this one-two misleading punch in advance or if it is just a comedy of errors. Politico’s Chris Frates sets the record straight yesterday, after Gibbs’ comment, regarding the availability online of the GOP health care plan, entitled “Gibbs may need to read the White House website more closely”:

During today’s press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said he hoped that Republicans would post their reform plans online.

“The president posted ideas of his on the White House website today. We hope Republicans will post their ideas either on their website, or we’d be happy to post them on ours, so that the American people could come to one location and find out the parameters of what will largely be discussed on Thursday,” Gibbs said.

Turns out the House Republicans’ plan has been online since October and already has its own link on the White House website. The White House encourages readers to “read more about House and Senate ideas from both parties on their websites.” The link sends readers to a House GOP website that includes a one-page summary sheet and the legislative text of their proposals.

Pfeiffer’s headline is truly Orwellian, considering the fact that the GOP plan has been online since October 2009: “Will the Republicans Post Their Health Plan… and When?” The mainstream media, other than this lone article by Frates at Politico, appears to be giving Pfeiffer and Gibbs a pass on their explicitly false and misleading statements about the alleged lack of a posted GOP health care plan. Instead, ABC’s Rick Klein calls Pfeiffer’s post a “dare” while ignoring the false and misleading statements, and Time’s Mark Halperin simply notes that the White House “pounces” with the Pfeiffer post.  The Hill.com’s Michael O’Brien goes so far as to spin the obviously false and misleading statements by Pfeiffer and Gibbs on behalf of the White House (Dems “forced GOP Leaders’ hand” to submit the House bill, the GOP Senators “never crafted” a plan because it relies on “series of piecemeal bills and amendments submitted by different senators”). Of course, no Republicans are sought out and quoted in response to the Gibbs or Pfeiffer false and misleading claims by the mainstream media authors listed above.

Not a single article by any mainstream media organization (besides Frates’s article above) notes that the GOP has had a health care plan posted online at gop.gov since October 2009, let alone mention that the Whitehouse.gov website has posted a link to it. Instead, the media is pushing the narrative that the the White House has instructed them to push: The GOP has no plan, and the White House desperately wants to cut a bipartisan deal, but cannot because of the GOP’s lack of a plan. It is amazing to see the American media so compliant and agreeable to repost Obama’s talking points, especially considering the indisputable facts disprove those talking points explicitly.   This failure of the media to report facts (GOP plan posted since October 2009, White House site has link to same), and report of talking points instead (Pfeiffer and Gibbs: Where’s the GOP plan?), on this issue is likely foreshadowing of the coverage we’ll see of Thursday’s health care summit, as it appears the establishment media is fully on board with Obama in his last ditch push to ram Obamacare through Congress.

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