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Before the links, a quick note: in yesterday’s post about drop-off voters and the 2010 elections, I should have been a bit clearer in attributing Page Gardner’s quote about voters who “chose hope over anger” as specifically related to the 2008 election and not any particular issue like health care. Moving on…
• There’s more on the excise tax on high-end insurance policies I discuss today from Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. None of these people or groups wrestle with the plain political fact that no politician would allow the tax to hit middle-class benefit plans. They say that the tax bends the cost curve, and that most people and plans would not be affected, when both cannot possibly be true, since over time, as premiums rise faster than inflation, more plans would be captured. The natural policy result would be to raise the threshold, and as a result the tax would not be the deficit reducer assumed by supporters.
• While the CBPP report does note that the Senate Finance Committee already raised the threshold on the excise tax, significantly for older workers and those in high-risk professions, they added a great idea for a fix that would seemingly make everyone happy:
Collectively Bargained Plans. Workers covered by collective bargaining agreements have given up cash wages, pension contributions, or other fringe benefits in exchange for more generous health insurance coverage. When these agreements come up for renewal, health benefits above the tax threshold can be converted into additional wages or pension benefits if the workers so desire. Although many current labor contracts will expire before 2013, Congress should exempt collectively bargained plans that are now in place from the excise tax until the labor contract is renegotiated.
Right now, people don’t support this tax, so satisfying unions would go a long way to getting out a public message explaining it better.
• Charlie Crist, worried about a primary challenge in the Florida Senate race with arch-conservative Marco Rubio, is starting to move hard to the right and in the process rewrite history about his prior support for the federal stimulus package. Meanwhile, another sitting Senator has sided with Rubio over Crist – in this case, James Inhofe (R-OK).
• The media has appeared to circle the wagons and side with Fox News and criticized the White House for going after the news network. Eric Boehlert makes quick work of Ruth Marcus’ representative sample in this sub-genre. You need a willful blindness to hold Fox News harmless in this skirmish.
• What’s gotten into right-wing Congressman “Crazy” Dana Rohrabacher (D-CA)? First he attacked his House leadership for constantly playing “political games,” then he joined with Barbara Lee, of all people, to oppose further troop increases in Afghanistan. In that case, maybe he just doesn’t want his pals in the Taliban to get hurt.
• The bill to audit the Federal Reserve, with over 290 co-sponsors in the House, has a companion bill now in the Senate, with two bipartisan co-sponsors, Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Bob Corker (R-TN).
• The Interior Department has asked the Attorney General to investigate George Bush’s last-minute deals to oil shale producers.
• Marcy Wheeler has the latest on a House effort, led by John Conyers, Jerry Nadler and Bobby Scott, to reform the Patriot Act and FISA. A similar effort completely crashed in the Senate Judiciary Committee, so I’m not hopeful on this one.
• California Attorney General Jerry Brown, now seeking the Governor’s mansion in Sacramento for a second time, has sued State Street Bank on behalf of the state’s two largest pension funds for fraud and overcharging. Brown’s office successfully sued Countrywide recently.
• New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg has called for a Justice Department investigation into those reports today about Chris Christie having the US Attorney’s office in New Jersey used for his political benefit.
• Those two South Carolina county chairmen who compared Jim DeMint favorably to penny-pinching “Jews” have apologized. Glad that’s all cleared up!
• Um, Sarah Palin on Oprah. No further comment needed.
• And in the latest from the Silvio Berlusconi follies – he’s actually inspired unity among Italian women, as 100,000 have signed a petition condeming the Prime Minister for calling a female member of Parliament “more beautiful than intelligent”.
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About FDL News Desk
Roundup of news from Iraq:
More BuschCo Misery. Baghdad’s prestigious Mustansiriya University now overrun by murderous, raping, torturing gangs.
Meanwhile, greedy hands are being rubbed together in anticipation of making money off the left-overs of misery. This week, the U.S.-Iraq Business and Investment Conference gets underway in D.C. (oh, why not in Baghdad?)
I’m sure Iraqis can’t wait to pick themselves up from the war rubble and move in: A new five-star hotel is being constructed in Baghdad.
And corruption continues. A State Department employee has been charged with bribes and kickbacks in Iraq reconstruction projects.
Good news: CBO scoring shows the House bill with public option “reduces the deficit and is under the President’s cost goal of $900 billion.”
Thanks dday, and you too fatster.
I enjoy this feature, nice resource.
cost to fed gov is not total cost. how much does the house bill increase total national health expenditure (includes costs to households, employers, state and local gov as well)? we don’t know the answer to that.
Better news! Apparently, Pelosi is going to push the House bill with public option given the CBO scoring linked @ 2 above.
Isn’t it the greatest? I’m concerned about David, though, as in: When does he sleep?
You’ve raised a huge question, selise. Think of all the dollars being wasted right now on insurance premiums that keep escalating, as well as co-payments, deductibles, etc., while too many insurance companies scrounge around to deny or inhibit access to services, cancel policies for changing “pre-existing conditions” and so on. That’s a huge amount of money right there, though I don’t know if a reliable price-tag has been placed on it, the situation is so fluid. Think also of the huge ER charges for people who can’t pay but end up in horrible emergency situations requiring care. Those costs get passed along to the rest of us in the form of higher charges since the money has got to come from somewhere–and what’s a better source than us? Then there are the costs of people putting off getting care because they can’t afford it while their problem worsens with each day. And then there are the costs of people who have underlying, undiagnosed chronic conditions, such as high blood pressure, which will take their toll eventually in major crises that, once again, will cost all the rest of us. In addition, there is indigent care which absorbs state and local dollars as local governments try to keep up with the worst of the demand (and availability of those state and local dollars is shrinking, so suffering is increasing). And the list goes on and on. I don’t know of a comprehensive study which places an exact dollar amount on these, and other, “hidden” costs (loss of work due to illness, premature death due to lack of care of a primary breadwinner in the household, etc.), but, as you can imagine, they are quite large.
hi fatster, thanks for the reply.
i wasn’t referring to the hidden costs, just the big stuff — for example, for household costs: premiums and out of pocket expenses (deductibles, copays, coinsurance).
this kind of analysis has been done previously (i think it was done during the ’90s clintoncare era). and since the cbo does the analysis that congress asks for, i blame the congressional leadership, not the cbo. my guess is that they know obamacare (in it’s various forms in the bills now underconsideration by congress) is going to increase total costs ALOT. and they don’t want us to know about that.
i tried to outline the basic issues in two diaries earlier this year:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/5899
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/5900
oops. sorry mods, don’t know how that happened, but my comment got caught by the filters.
No problem, something about the links.
Your comment should be in the clear now.
thanks lurk! you rock!
Oops. I’m responding to you, selise, just forgot to click on the reply thingy. Anything done in the ’90s needs to be updated since the situation has gotten way more out-of-hand since then. I was trying to illustrate that we pay. No body else does. It’s all on us. How much better to put it all into one pot rather than draining us dry through premiums, co-pays, costs of those who can’t pay (including indigent care which, in CA partially comes out of vehicle license fees) and yadda yadda yadda.
completely agree. first dollar coverage (no deductible, no copay, no coinsurance). people shouldn’t have to go without healthcare because they can’t afford the out of pocket expenses. i’m pretty sure this is not an issue for the people in dee cee writing the bill.
Couple of good studies here, updated to 10/15. Hope this helps.
i like their comparison even if i hate the bills.
and still pissed the cbo is doing bogus cost scoring.