Video- RNC Chairman Michael Steele calls CBO health care numbers "a lie"

Watch Steele dance. Via Think Progress.

Clyburn is "giddy": $940-billion estimate for healthcare cost clears way for House vote

By GottaLaff

Via an e-mail alert:

The Congressional Budget Office today estimated the cost of the proposed healthcare overhaul at $940 billion over 10 years, a scoring that clears the way for a House vote as soon as Sunday.

Democrats greeted the number with joy because it was less than the $1-trillion price tag that they were using as a ceiling. Republicans immediately pledged to fight the healthcare overhaul through its convoluted parliamentary route in the House and Senate.

"We're absolutely giddy over the great news we have gotten from CBO," Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the majority whip, told reporters.

The CBO scoring sets the stage for the Democrats' push to collect the 216 votes needed to pass the bill, scheduled to be publicly unveiled later today. Democrats have pledged to allow 72 hours for public study, meaning the soonest the vote could come is on Sunday, when President Obama is scheduled to fly to Asia.

More soon at: http://www.latimes.com

The vote is going to happen at noon on Sunday, per MSNBC.

Are you feeling a little giddy, too?

VIDEO: Rachel Maddow and her must-see deficit chart

By GottaLaff

Earlier, I posted a chart from the CBO that you must take a closer look at. It came straight out of this video, via the inimitable Rachel Maddow and all-around cool guy Will at Work. and what a chart it is!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Reconciliation Chart you saw on The Rachel Maddow Show

By GottaLaff

Rachel Maddow displayed this absolutely splendid chart on her show. I was linked to it by the equally splendid Will at Work, who works on The Rachel Maddow Show:

The first bar is the impact on the unified budget balance of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001. The second is the impact on the budget balance of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. The third bar is the CBO estimated impact on the deficit of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act proposed in the Senate on November 19, for 2010-2019.

'Nuff said.

More here.

I'll be posting the video segment as soon as it becomes available.

Tomorrow

By GottaLaff



Why, by my calculations-- let's see, carry the 3, divide by pi, times the square root of pre-existing conditions-- that's tomorrow:

Democratic leaders hope to reach broad agreement on the health care reform bill by Friday and send it to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring, Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday morning.

CBO: Health bill spends $871B, reduces deficit by $132B

Doesn't matter, they just move on to another gripe. I watched Fox for a bit after they announced the 60 votes, and it really was pretty shameful how "fair and balanced" it was.

Congress’s budgetary scorekeeper affirms that the Senate’s healthcare reform legislation adheres to President Barack Obama’s pledge to spend less than $900 billion and reduce the federal budget deficit through the bill, which would extend health insurance coverage to 31 million people.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the latest version of the legislation introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would require $871 billion over 10 years in new federal spending, most of which would take the form of health insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income people and expansions of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

(snip)

Those costs are more than offset during the 10-year budget period by $483 billion worth of spending reductions in Medicare and $614 billion generated from an excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans, taxes on healthcare companies, penalty fees paid by employers who fail to offer insurance coverage and individuals who fail to purchase it and other tax effects of the bill.

Democratic Senator Makes Threat to Health Care Reform

By GottaLaff

I couldn't find the video for this, but here you go:

[Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) ] said her vote will be determined by the Congressional Budget Office analysis of Harry Reid's new healthcare bill.

"Until we get the numbers back from the Congressional Budget Office we're all on hold," McCaskill told Fox News Sunday. "I have to be assured that this is going to bring down the deficit and is going to bring down healthcare costs for Missouri families."

She said she'd vote against the bill if the CBO report says the bill adds to the deficit (something President Obama said he would not accept) or doesn't cut costs.

To repeat, the CBO found that premiums go down under health-care reform

By GottaLaff

Dear Ezra Klein, thank you:

Commentary on the Congressional Budget Office report showing that a given health-care insurance policy will become cheaper under reform has gotten a bit confused. Fox News, for instance, summarized the report as saying, ‘CBO: HC Overhaul Likely Won’t Bring Private Premiums Down.’ [...]

First, the bottom line of the report is simple: The CBO says premiums will go down for the vast majority of Americans, and that the same insurance policy will cost less under reform.

The confusion comes in the CBO's analysis of the individual market, which serves about a tenth of the population. [...]

In other words, the change is driven by the subsidies, not offset by them.

To see this more clearly, imagine that the University of Florida decided to give incoming students who receive financial aid an $800 credit to purchase a laptop computer. You'd expect that the average computer purchased by students on financial aid would become a bit more expensive. But that wouldn't be because computers had become more expensive. It would be because people now had money to buy better computers.

So too for health-care reform. Premiums for the same policy in the individual market fall by 14 to 20 percent. But people in the individual market, who are largely low-income, will now have the opportunity to purchase better policies that cover more expenses and provide more security.

Ezra has a whole lot more to say here. Please go read, because, apparently, reading helps to clarify things, you see.

Budget office: Senate health care bill costs $849 billion

It's all just smoke and mirrors, but at least this time it's fakery that favors us.

Washington (CNN) -- The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate health care bill would cost $849 billion over 10 years, according to a senior Democratic source and an administration official.

The office projects that the measure would reduce deficit by $127 billion and insure an additional 31 million Americans, according to the sources.

Ninety-four percent of Americans would be covered under the bill, the sources noted.

The news came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, met behind closed doors with Senate Democrats to unveil the bill before a news conference later Wednesday.

New CBO Score Bodes Well For Public Option

By GottaLaff

Via Greg Sargent, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two:

In another step forward for the public option, I’m told reliably by a source that House leaders have been given a new Congressional Budget Office “score” finding that the evolving House bill — when you include a robust public option — reduces the deficit and is under the President’s cost goal of $900 billion. [...]

This is a step forward because it could make it more palatable to Blue Dogs to support a House bill with a robust public plan, meaning one that reimburses providers at Medicare rates plus five percent.

Me likey this news a lot. A whole lot.

CBO estimates Baucus bill at $829B

Hmmm, from what I'm hearing on the Ed Show, this crap ain't no where near over. I'm not even sure I understand all the in and outs, so here's one smart man's and one smart woman's take on it.

CBO to Blue Dogs: Medicare-Based Public Option Will Save $110 BILLION

By GottaLaff

110 billion. Dollars. Medicare-based public option. Understand Blue Dogs?

The Congressional Budget Office just said that a public option based on Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government hundreds of millions dollars in comparison to a public option that would have to individually negotiate reimbursement rates with medical providers. This goes against the Blue Dogs's so-called fiscal conservatism in opposing a robust public option. Here's more from this story below:

The Congressional Budget Office dealt Blue Dogs a blow Thursday by notifying House Democrats that tethering a public option to Medicare reimbursement rates would save the government $110 billion more than a public option in which the government has to negotiate rates with doctors and other health care providers.

The initial projections showed the difference between the two was $65 billion. But this shows it would cost the government a lot more money to heed moderate demands.

House Democrats need to trim as much as $200 billion from a bill that most estimates peg at $1.1 trillion in order to meet President Obama's $900 billion target.

Who's listening?

Dems boosted; CBO: Public option won't put private insurers out of buisness

By GottaLaff

Take that, Rushpublics:

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives pounced on a congressional budget analysis to bolster their plan for a government-run health insurance option on Monday, as party leaders said they were closer to agreement on healthcare reform.

The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the public option proposed by Democrats would not drive private insurers out of business and most people would still choose to get their medical coverage through employers. [...]

"We're moving closer to a point where we can hold insurance companies accountable," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, told reporters, repeating her frequent prediction that once a bill hits the floor for a vote "it will win."

Call your representatives. Keep pushing.

Orszag response to CBO report: Supports what Obama has said all along

By GottaLaff

Peter Orszag responds to the CBO report I posted about earlier. Ahem, not so fast there, Politico:

This morning, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analyzed proposals to shift more decision-making out of politics and toward a body like the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC) put forward by the Administration. CBO noted that this type of approach could lead to significant long-term savings in federal spending on health care and that the available evidence implies that a substantial share of spending on health care contributes little, if anything, to the overall health of the nation. This supports what President Obama has said all along: we can reduce waste and unnecessary spending without reducing quality of care and benefits.

The point of the proposal, however, was never to generate savings over the next decade. (Indeed, under the Administration’s approach, the IMAC system would not even begin to make recommendations until 2015.) Instead, the goal is to provide a mechanism for improving quality of care for beneficiaries and reducing costs over the long term. In other words, in the terminology of our belt-and-suspenders approach to a fiscally responsible health reform, the IMAC is a game changer not a scoreable offset.

With regard to the long-term impact, CBO suggested that the proposal, with several specific tweaks that would strengthen its operations, could generate significant savings. [...]

The bottom line is that it is very rare for CBO to conclude that a specific legislative proposal would generate significant long-term savings so it is noteworthy that, with some modifications, CBO reached such a conclusion with regard to the IMAC concept.

A final note is worth underscoring. As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. [...]

[I]t is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.

Read the whole thing here.

The headline of my earlier post was lifted from the Politico piece: "CBO deals new blow to health plan". Easy to understand, dramatic, and memorable. Now then, isn't that just like the Rushpublics?

Here we go again. We have the usual challenge: Refute, explain, repeat, and make it easy to understand, and hopefully, memorable.

H/t: Ellen

CBO deals new blow to health plan

By GottaLaff

UPDATE: Here is the actual CBO letter.

This is via Politico, the only source of this story I can find so far, so take it for what it's worth. But no matter whose article it is, it seems we have yet another Uh-Oh Moment:

For the second time this month, congressional budget analysts have dealt a blow to the Democrat's health reform efforts, this time by saying a plan touted by the White House as crucial to paying for the bill would actually save almost no money over 10 years.

A key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs. White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan "probably the most important piece that can be added" to the House's health care reform legislation.

But on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check would only save about $2 billion over 10 years- a drop in the bucket compared to the bill's $1 trillion price tag.

"In CBO's judgment, the probability is high that no savings would be realized ... but there is also a chance that substantial savings might be realized. Looking beyond the 10-year budget window, CBO expects that this proposal would generate larger but still modest savings on the same probabilistic basis," CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Saturday.

The proposal's meager savings are a blow to Democrats working furiously to bring down costs in order to win support from their party's fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, who have threatened to vote against the bill without significant changes. The proposal was heralded as a breakthrough on Tuesday after Blue Dogs and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman emerged from the White House with agreement on giving the independent panel, rather than Congress, the ability to rein in Medicare spending.

Research Firm Cited by GOP Is Owned by Health Insurer

By GottaLaff

Why, what have we here? This goes nicely with Paddy's video, in which Eric Cantor showed us how his tap dancing lessons paid off:

The political battle over health-care reform is waged largely with numbers, and few number-crunchers have shaped the debate as much as the Lewin Group, a consulting firm whose research has been widely cited by opponents of a public insurance option.

To Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, it is "the nonpartisan Lewin Group." To Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, it is an "independent research firm." To Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the second-ranking Republican on the pivotal Finance Committee, it is "well known as one of the most nonpartisan groups in the country."

Generally left unsaid amid all the citations is that the Lewin Group is wholly owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers.

More specifically, the Lewin Group is part of Ingenix, a UnitedHealth subsidiary that was accused by the New York attorney general and the American Medical Association, a physician's group, of helping insurers shift medical expenses to consumers by distributing skewed data. Ingenix supplied its parent company and other insurers with data that allegedly understated the "usual and customary" doctor fees that insurers use to determine how much they will reimburse consumers for out-of-network care.

Hmmm, that doesn't sound too kosher, now does it?

In January, UnitedHealth agreed to a $50 million settlement with the New York attorney general and a $350 million settlement with the AMA, covering conduct going back as far as 1994. [...]

Lewin Group Vice President John Sheils said his firm had nothing to do with the allegedly flawed Ingenix reimbursement data. Lewin has gone through "a terribly difficult adjustment" since it was bought by UnitedHealth in 2007, because the corporate ownership "does create the appearance of a conflict of interest."

Awww, poor wittle gwoup had twouble adjusting. Need a hug?

Lewin's clients include the government and private groups with a variety of perspectives, including the Commonwealth Fund and the Heritage Foundation. A February report contained information that could be used to argue for a single-payer system, the approach most threatening to private insurers, Sheils noted.

But not all of the firm's reports see the light of day. [...]

In testimony last month to a House committee, Lewin disclosed its affiliation with UnitedHealth and Ingenix in its written submission, but in his oral testimony he did not bring it up until asked, according to a transcript. [...]

Lewin produced one of the most widely cited statistics of the health care debate: That, under a particular version of a public option, the number of people with private, employer-sponsored coverage would decline by more than 100 million.

Opponents of the public option have invoked the finding as proof that offering a government-run health plan would not just create competition for private insurers -- it would deprive people of their existing employer-sponsored coverage and lead to a government takeover of the health care system.[...]

Since then, adjusting its analysis to reflect the latest version of legislation drafted by House Democrats, Lewin has estimated that 88.1 million workers would shift from private, employer-sponsored insurance to the proposed public plan.

The Congressional Budget Office came to a different conclusion, saying that enrollment in the House Democrats' proposed public plan would total about 11 million to 12 million people. [...]

Though the millions of people Lewin was describing would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage, they wouldn't be forced into a government-run health plan, Sheils said in an interview. Rather, they would be able to choose between the government plan and other private options.

"People would indeed lose what they have, but they might very well be better off," he said.

Bus. Ted.

H/t: Shoq

Open Thread

I've got nothing, and apparently (again) all the cablers can find to yak on their teevee machines are Republicans. Seems like the CBO took the time to look over the new Senate Stimulus Bill, and they liked what they saw-

CBO- 78% of the $884 billion will be spent during the first 18 months

I'm sure that won't stop the R's from finding something else to bitch about. Also, Jim DeMint is an asshat, as such and.

Report: TV Media Cited Disputed CBO ‘Report’ At Least 81 Times In Past Six Days

By GottaLaff

What. Does. It. Take? Certainly not facts or honest reporting:

ThinkProgress has found that since the AP’s report last Tuesday, the CBO report has been cited at least 81 times on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, the Sunday shows and the network newscasts in order raise questions about Obama’s recovery plan. Here are a few examples:

– “There’s a Congressional Budget Office report out today that suggests that the $825 billion stimulus proposal from Democrats, which is supposed to be timely and temporary, actually offers most of its spending a couple years from now,” — Carl Cameron [Fox News, 1/20/09]

– “Even the Congressional Budget Office is very skeptical about the rapidity with which that stimulus, this set of proposals, can move through, and that it could be four years before we see the results,” — Andrea Mitchell [MSNBC, 1/21/09]

– “Well that was another question raised in this Congressional Budget Office study. It was suggesting that a lot of the spending proposals in the original plan would not really take effect for a couple of years, so it wouldn’t clearly help create jobs in the first two years of the president’s administration,” — Ed Henry [CNN, 1/23/09]

– “There was a report out earlier this week from [the] Congressional Budget Office pointing out that the appropriated funds, that portion of the stimulus package that, you know, less than half of that was really going to be spent even within the next two years,” — Karen Tumulty [CNN, 1/24/09]

I linked you to another example, including a video, in the first four words of this post. Oh look! What's this? I don't recognize it. Could it be... real reporting?

The full CBO report is now available here. It finds that roughly two-thirds of the plan's recovery investments will come in the first 18 months after it is enacted.

In a blog post, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf notes that the full report is "the first cost estimate that CBO has prepared" for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "in its entirety."

Factual enough for you, "liberal media"? Try it sometime.

VIDEO: John King and Mike Pence Cite Nonexistent CBO Report on "State of the Union"

By GottaLaff

John King and Congressman Mike Pence citing the nonexistent CBO report debunked by the Huffington Post here.

Debunked, guys. De. Bunked.

Paddy tells me: Mark Green was on "In the Money" and he didn't dispute it when it was brought up by Amy Holmes. If the owner of Air America doesn't stand up for us....

Either these talking-asses don't read, or they're shortsighted invertebrates who enjoy making idiots of themselves and/or their parties on international television. Either way, they don't deserve to be hosting and/or opining to a woefully ill-informed, gullible public.