Softer Voices
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The Financial Times reports that the President has given the House of Representatives a deadline of March 18 to pass the health care bill.
Who knows how seriously to take this new deadline (I believe the first presidential health care deadline was last August?), but it suggests that some Democrats recognize that this issue is doing them no favors in terms of their electoral prospects in November, and want it over with, one way or the other. It also means that many House Members will be facing intense pressure to switch their votes from no to yes… Opponents of this legislation should be looking at a 10 day push to keep this bad bill from becoming law.
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National Review Online
It’s counterproductive to worry about why an organization opposes the president’s latest iteration of health-care reform. At least for now, anyone working to defeat this monstrosity is an ally.
The National Organization for Women (NOW), for example, has just released a new statement by their president, Terry O’Neill, which says that the White House reform bill “denies women’s basic rights” and is “a giant leap backward for women.” NOW supports a single-payer, Canadian-style health-care system. They’re disappointed current proposals don’t contain strong enough “public options,” and worry the bill restricts coverage for abortion. They also believe current proposals don’t go far enough in eliminating insurance companies’ ability to consider risk factors like gender and age in setting premiums.
I’d argue NOW has it exactly backwards. A single-payer system would be far worse for women because it would result in rationed care, lower quality care, and greater government control of what procedures are allowed. And that’s just a few of the “fundamental differences” the president has referred to.
Yet there’s another reason to reject this legislation that should unite NOW and free marketers: It would discourage companies from hiring lower-income workers, particularly those with dependents, which especially would disadvantage single moms.
Section 4980H (under Title 1, Subtitle F, Part II, Section 1513) of the Senate’s bill stipulates large employers that fail to provide employees and their dependents access to insurance meeting the government’s “minimum essential coverage” definition face penalties if at least one full-time employee obtains insurance using a government subsidy. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein explains (while calling the provision “the worst policy in the bill, and possibly in the world”), the penalties could be considerable, and will create disincentives for hiring poor parents.
Rather than a simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee, the free rider approach penalizes employers for hiring low-income workers who are eligible for subsidies. That will create an incentive to do one of two things: Don’t hire low-income workers (hire a teenager looking for a job rather than a single mother, or hire a housewife looking for a second job rather than an unemployed breadwinner), or hire illegal immigrants.
And it actually gets worse. The employer pays more if the low-income worker needs subsidies for his family as opposed to just himself. So it not only discriminates against low-income workers, but it particularly discriminates against low-income parents. Single mothers will get the worst deal, as they have lower incomes, and as you might expect, children who need health care.
Surely legislation penalizing the hiring of single moms meets NOW’s definition of “anti-woman.” Defenders could argue the intent is not to penalize hiring, but to encourage companies to provide benefits to employees. Yet these are the kinds of unintended consequences inevitable in a bill that tries to micromanage so many aspects of a very complicated system. Mandates are supposed to ensure adequate coverage, but inevitably drive up costs. Cost-cutting measures are supposed to encourage efficiency, but will inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of care that’s available. Expanding health-insurance coverage helps the uninsured, but means that as a nation we’ll be consuming more health care and paying more for it.
NOW has its own reasons for opposing the health-care bill, and that’s fine. A little more digging, though, and it might uncover other ways this legislation would — and big government regularly does — fail the women NOW claims to represent.
— Carrie Lukas is the vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women’s Voice and a contributor to National Review Online.
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What will happen if the health care reform bill becomes law? It will be a first step in the push toward a single-payer system. That’s what President Obama is suggesting to Progressives when trying to get their support for this bill, and I think we should take him at his word on this one…
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Can Speaker Pelosi gather enough votes to force the health care monstrosity to the President’s desk? That’s the real question that will decide the fate of this whole health care battle. There are a number of good analysis of where the House stands today. Slate has this run down, and Timothy Noah concludes that the Speaker has an uphill battle ahead of her. He writes:
…when the bill passed the House quite narrowly, 220-215, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has lost three votes. John Murtha, D-Pa., died; Robert Wexler, D-Fla., resigned to become president of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation; and Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, resigned to run for governor. Balanced against these yeas is one nay, Nathan Deal, R-Ga., who just resigned effective March 8 to run for governor. That narrows health reform’s victory margin from five votes to three (217-214). …We will assume, then, that Pelosi starts with a victory margin of three.
Take away from that three Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joseph Cao, R-La. Stupak is the author of a House amendment on abortion that has the imprimatur of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops…
Stupak and Cao aren’t the only pro-lifers in the House who will change their vote from yea to nay if health reform doesn’t include the Stupak amendment.
Take away a dozen votes and the House health-reform bill fails by a 25-vote margin before the special elections (203-228). …
Pelosi needs to pick up a baker’s dozen votes to pass health reform. Where will she get them?
It’s heartening to read the specifics of how difficult it will be to get this bill through the House, but it shouldn’t make anyone comfortable: All that stands between the passage of a bill that will fundamentally reorder one-sixth of the U.S. economy is a dozen House votes. You can be sure that Congressional leaders and the President are doing everything they can to pressure Democrats leaning toward voting no to change their minds. We need to make sure that there is equal pressure coming from our side.
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The Galen Institute just launched their latest radio ad airing on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, Grace-Marie Turner highlights the taxes, mandates and regulations in the current health reform proposals, and how Congress must start anew to enact meaniful health reform.
Transcript of the radio ad:
“I’m Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute.
“President Obama is missing an opportunity to embrace a genuinely fresh approach to health reform. Instead, after a year of debate in Congress and the Blair House summit, we’re left with the same partisan proposals that are hugely unpopular with the American people, involving:
- hundreds of billions of dollars in tax hikes
- job-killing mandates on individuals and businesses
- and onerous government regulations
“According to independent experts, if the bills before Congress were to pass, health spending will continue to rise, premium costs will increase, people will lose the coverage they have today, and access to quality care will suffer as doctors and hospitals become insolvent.
“Congress would be better off scrapping these plans and starting anew on a smaller, targeted bipartisan plan to address the real problems in our health sector.
“For more information and commentary on the health reform debate, visit our website at HealthReformHub.org <http://www.HealthReformHub.org> .”
Check out the Galen Institute’s Web site www.healthreformhub.org for the latest information on the heath care debate.
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I’m glad yesterday’s health care summit went well for Republicans. Democrats hogged the time, used too many anecdotes that say nothing about the merits of their proposals, and did little to assuage the many concerns that Americans have about their trillion-dollar health care legislation. Republicans were able to show that they aren’t just the party of no. They want to improve the health care system, and have real ideas about how to do so. The President must have hoped to make Republicans look like ogres so barely-paying-attention Americans would root for health care’s passage; he failed.
But what does that mean for the prospects of health care reform? Probably very little. Here is what the WSJ’s Kim Strassel says about the effect of the summit and coming political battle to pass a bill.
The Summit Show was designed by Democrats for Democrats, to give Mr. Obama an all-day stage to inspire and exhort his party to charge once more into the health fray. It’s about “altering the political atmospherics,” admitted one senior Democrat. Yet for all the talk of “jump-start,” there’s little to suggest the ugly politics of passage have changed. …
The strategy is somewhat bully for Mr. Reid, who can afford to lose eight of his own members. It’s meaningless for Mrs. Pelosi. If the speaker had the votes post-Brown to pass the Senate bill, we’d be living under ObamaCare. She didn’t have them then, and yesterday’s summit was a sideshow to the problems she has getting them now.
A few numbers: Mrs. Pelosi passed her health-care bill in early November, with three votes to spare. The one Republican yes has since bailed. On the Democratic side, one vote has left Congress, one has died, and one retires this week. A smaller Congress means Mrs. Pelosi only needs 216 votes. If all were equal to November, she’s at 216.
Only it isn’t November. It’s nearly March, and the speaker is being asked to pass a bill vastly different from her own, in the wake of a crushing electoral defeat and in light of dire public-opinion polls.
While it’s heartening that the road looks tough for Pelosi and Reid, no one should take for granted that they can’t put enough pressure on wavering Members to get this done. That’s why those Members need to keep hearing from us to remind them that voters—their real bosses—don’t want this health care bill to become law.
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IWV Director Heather Higgins discusses the healthcare debate.
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IWV Director Heather Higgins talks about her experiences with the healthcare debate.
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The potential use of the reconciliation process continues to hit road bumps: this bump is the very important Budget Committee Chairman, Senator Kent Conrad. As Politico reports:
Conrad, who has been open to reconciliation as long as the fixes are limited, said the order must be reversed. The House must pass the Senate bill first — before either chamber considers the reconciliation package, he said.
“I don’t know of any way, I don’t know of any way where you can have a reconciliation bill pass before the bill that it is meant to reconcile passes,” said Conrad, who would be a central figure on the Senate floor if Democrats embark on the complicated process. “I don’t know how you would deal with the scoring. I don’t know how I could look you in the eye and say this package reduces the deficit. It’s kind of got the cart before the horse.”
When reminded that House Democrats don’t want to do health care in that order, Conrad said bluntly: “Fine, then it’s dead.”
We can only hope he’s right. (Hat Tip: Critical Condition)
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CQ Politics Blog
With Democrats poised to enact something, opposing forces are in full battle gear.
- “We’re trying to go gangbusters this week,” said Carrie Lukas of the conservative Independent Women’s Voice.
- “We’re going to try to make Members profoundly uncomfortable if they were going to vote for it,” said Ryan Ellis of the Americans for Tax Reform.
- “We’re trying to bring the energy level and engagement level of our activists back up to where it was last year,” said Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity.
- The Chamber of Commerce, a powerful opponent of the Democrats’ proposals, sent the President a letter asking him to drop the House and Senate bills in favor of “a fresh approach.”
- “There’s really not a lot of time to reboot before elections,” said Brian Burgess of the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.
For more, see “Activists Step Up Health Care Fight” by Congress.org’s Ambreen Ali.
