Reconciliation and Health Care Reform
Carl Hulse has a piece in today’s New York Times about House Democrats’ tentative plans — which Hulse (rather bizarrely) says are being kept very close to the vest — to pass health care reform legislation via reconciliation. The major obstacle to doing so, however, is something called the “Byrd Rule,” which limits the use of reconciliation to bills intended to fund existing legislation (h/t Steve):
To greatly oversimplify, what this means is that it’s almost impossible to use reconciliation to build something new. You can expand Medicare or shrink it, cut taxes or raise them. But to construct something that doesn’t already exist will inevitably require provisions that don’t in themselves have a significant budgetary impact: regulations, structures, guidelines, realigned bureaucracies. In particular, much of the structure of health insurance exchanges that are envisioned in the House and HELP Committee bills would not survive the Byrd Rule axe. Only the flimsiest outlines of a health reform bill would survive – the financing would be there, but not the structures to ensure that the money would be used properly. Further, reconciliation would give the Finance Committee – which controls the money – even more clout over the more liberal HELP committee.
Zandar has had it up to here (as have I) with conservative Democrats like Kent Conrad whining about the “evils” of reconciliation (emphasis is Zandar’s):
But here’s what really bothers me about the Times article: listening to Sen. Kent Conrad complain about reconciliation…a deal he signed on to back in April.
Mr. Conrad, who is one of the Democrats bargaining with Republicans, has been advising that fashioning a health care plan under byzantine reconciliation rules is a bad idea. From his perspective, a major impediment is the fact that the plans devised by the Senate finance and health panels would have to produce $2 billion in savings over five years and not add to the deficit after that.
Considering the upfront costs of trying to bring all Americans under the health insurance umbrella, and the fact that some of the structural health care changes that lawmakers are eyeing might not produce immediate savings, the deficit rules could severely limit the scope of a bill.
“You would have a very difficult time getting universal coverage in reconciliation,” Mr. Conrad said.
Here’s a question I have for the Senator: Why do we even need reconciliation in the first place when Democrats have a huge margin in the house and 60 votes in the Senate? There should be no need for reconciliation: none whatsoever.That is unless Democrats like Kent Conrad aren’t committed to getting the President’s goals into legislation and passing them in the bill. If that’s the case, then Democrats have a bit of an issue.
Not to tell Rahmbo, Orszag and the Axe how to do their job, but any Democratic senator yammering on about the evils of reconciliation in the Village Press should have a big ol’ target on them for some serious arm-twisting action over August. You want to know where to put those ad blitzes proclaiming ordinary Americans need health care reform?
Via Memeorandum.
3 Responses to “Reconciliation and Health Care Reform”
For months now since Health care reform suddenly become the main issue on the national agenda. We have been bombarded with the incessant accusation that the English/British form of the single-payer system is about unequivocal–RATIONING? YES! This is the truth now, but it wasn't always that way. It wasn't until the Globalist plan to take over the originally named Common Market, that health care in England started to suffer. In Jan. 1, 1973, original known to Brits as the Common Market. The “One Market” that was created in 1993 states that people, money, services, and trade can move freely within the European Union. Currently over 450 million EU citizens are provided with these special options.
The indigenous British people's lives had already been disrupted by the importation of cheap labor from Commonwealth countries to drive the buses and run British Railway. Then family unification started and illegal immigration and the beginning of spiraling crime. RATIONING AND REDUCED HEALTH CARE CAME TO ENGLAND WITH AN OVERLOAD OF LEGAL AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, SUDDENLY THE UNITED KINGDOM FOUND THEMSELVES IN A TERRIBLE QUANDARY OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSAND OF REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS. ALL PAID FOR BY THE BRITISH/ENGLISH TAXPAYER.
In spite of the restrictive immigration policies which have been in place since the 1970s in most Member States Of The European Union, large numbers of legal and illegal migrants have continued to come to the EU together with asylum-seekers and illegal labor. Taking advantage of individuals seeking an improved life, smuggling and skin trafficking networks have taken hold across the EU. The inception of these relative dates in when one of the greatest Universal Health care system, came to a grinding halt of quality.
The system was simple? You paid your insurance stamps and the employer paid his? End of story. The years I worked in the Mother country, I received three minor surgeries, teeth and dentistry, and eye care. WITH NO PREMIUMS, NO-PAYS, NO DEDUCTIONS AND CERTAINLY NO PRE EXISTING CONDITIONS? ONCE I SPENT THREE MONTHS IN EAST GRINSTEAD HOSPITAL WITH A BACK PROBLEM. MY COST–NOTHING! WE CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT SUPPORT THE MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL ALIENS AND FAMILIES WITH TRILLION DOLLAR HEALTH CARE. IT WILL LEAD TO RATIONING ON A GRAND SCALE! AS ALWAYS THE TAXPAYER WILL FOOT THE BILL FOR BUSINESS WELFARE.
CALL YOUR POLITICIAN IN WASHINGTON 202-224-3121 I Want a health care system–even government run. BUT IT”S SURE TO FAIL, IF TAXES ARE BEING EXTORTED TO PAY FOR FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS? Support for the bi-partisan E-VERIFY PART OF THE SAVE Act, which will expand E-Verify and protect American Workers! We must focus on the behemoth problem in terminating illegal immigrants-and the jobs that attract illegal aliens. WE WILL ALWAYS BE PAYING FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS, UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING NOW? Many GOP members are against a Path to citizenship for lawbreakers, so we mostly need the phones ringing in the ears of Democrats, who see the millions of illegal aliens as a positive voting block.
WE MUST STOP IT NOW OF SUFFER FROM IRREVERSIBLE POPULATION GROWTH.
DEMAND NO AMNESTY! NO FAMILY UNIFICATION KNOWN AS CHAIN MIGRATION! BUILD THE ORIGINAL FENCE! NO MORE HEALTH CARE OR ANY OTHER KIND OF BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE BORDER AND STATION THE NATIONAL GUARD. $2.5 TRILLION DOLLARS, JUST IN RETIREMENT BENEFITS? Learn uncorrupted facts at NUMBERSUSA.
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Go ahead, Kathy, throw another tantrum and insist on mindless support of a defective, destructive effort and its passage ASAP. But don't expect wiser people to confirm to your insistence or comply with your demands. The more the public learns, the less they are doing these things, which isn't (shouldn't be, at least) a surprise.
Being a Utah health insurance underwriter for http://www.BenefitsManager.net and http://www.DentalInsuranceUtah.net I have the opportunity to consult within many state insurance committee meetings. Some interesting changes took place in Utah with the passage of House Bill 188 that other states should pay attention to and perhaps the federal legislation. The bill created a state insurance pool requiring private health insurance carriers to come together and underwrite risk. Through governmental guidelines (which I have traditionally opposed in the past) they created a arena of underwriting rules that essentially guarantees the participating insurance carriers a ?no loss? or ?no gain? over each other. What this essentially means is that they pool the underwriting medical risk and spread it evenly among each carrier. All the sudden, we see guaranteed issued policies. We see rates drop by as much as 13% In Utah, our average monthly family rate is $867 for a $500 deductible plan. Some of the family rates within the ?Utah Insurance Exchange Portal? are approaching $700.00 now. To see more of HB 188 and see how Utah wrangled change without increasing taxes or rationing go to: http://www.prweb.com/releases/utah_health_insur…
The private insurance sector can be corralled into cooperation where they can meet their goals. You have to understand that health insurance carriers are only looking for a 4-5% administration fee. That is it and they are more efficient as compared to a governmental portal that will cost more money. Take a look at Utah folks!