Freedom Line Blog

Okay, so maybe the cost-control bureaucrats under ObamaCare wouldn’t directly kill people forced into a national health plan. However, a sobering article in today’s Wall Street Journal shows how a key element of every health reform bill now in Congress could cause death(s) by a thousand denials.

As envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee, the commission—all 15 members appointed by the President—would have to meet certain budget targets each year. Starting in 2015, Medicare could not grow more rapidly on a per capita basis than by a measure of inflation. After 2019, it could only grow at the same rate as GDP, plus one percentage point.

The theory is to let technocrats set Medicare payments free from political pressure, as with the military base closing commissions. But that process presented recommendations to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Here, the commission’s decisions would go into effect automatically if Congress couldn’t agree within six months on different cuts that met the same target. The board’s decisions would not be subject to ordinary notice-and-comment rule-making, or even judicial review.”

So, absent a congressional override, there is no appeal for a denial of care made in the name of cost-benefit analysis. Of course, the “costs” and “benefits” will be considered as collective values interpreted by government administrators – not individual patients and taxpayers.

The State of Washington already has a similarly functioning “independent commission” that is actively denying care like the types mentioned above. While the consequences could be deadly, the creation of prolonged pain in the interim borders on unconscionable. Such decisions will become a reality when the public “option” becomes a public “mandate” forcing all but the wealthiest to suffer under a rationed health care system. Let’s hope there is enough push-back from Congress and the country to guarantee similar types of “pain panels” don’t take up residence in the nation’s capitol.

In one of the best critiques of action without regard to consequences, celebrated chaos theoretician Ian Malcolm said about overzealous experts that they were “so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

From bio-ethics to evidence-based public policy, it is astounding that the 220 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and at least a score of senators who support the Obama Administration’s health care “reform” plan cannot answer the following question:

It’s one of the most basic, kitchen-table questions of the entire reform debate: Would the sweeping $900 billion overhaul actually lower spiraling insurance premiums for everyone?

No one really knows.”

And it’s not just that people haven’t read the bill, or studies analyzing its impact on the cost of health care. It’s that the data doesn’t exist.

At a recent Senate health committee hearing, two health care rivals – Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, and Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor whose work is cited often by the White House – agreed comprehensive, objective evidence wasn’t available for small and large businesses.

“It’s insane,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Agreed. Thankfully, at least one Democratic Senator thinks information – not just assurances – is needed before committing American taxpayers to a trillion dollar decision.

The lack of data prompted Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) to request a broad analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on premiums, which he said was “a basic, bottom-line question that we have to have answered before we can decide if this is an intelligent thing to do.”

Now we see why Senator Bayh didn’t make the cut to be Vice President. He likes to consult factually-based, non-partisan research before voting in favor of the largest expansion of federal social services in 40 years.

Characteristically, top Obama advisors have a different view – one that chooses the devil we don’t know instead of the devil we do.

“I think you could always use more data,” (White House Health Czar Nancy-Ann) DeParle said, but added that “we have plenty of data on where things are and where things are headed without reform.”

Did you catch the barely concealed contempt for “business as usual” and the stifled urge to blame the previous administration?

All this would be comical if there weren’t a $787 billion stimulus package in circulation, the consequences of which still defy an ability to be measured or predicted. To their credit, some Democratic caucus members are joining Senator Bayh’s (belated) rush to judge the health care “reform” bill on its merits.

Lawmakers say they are hungry for data that assures them they are not voting for a bill that does the opposite what they have intended.

“I want to see an objective, third-party analysis from people who don’t have a conflict of interest,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I like evidence.”

Good. So do the people being asked to finance health care “reform” unto the nth generation.

You can read the entire article from Politico here.

Over on National Review, Stephen Spruiell gives an in-depth look at how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is helping President Barack Obama remake America into a much more liberal place, one piece of legislation at a time. The excerpts below offer a powerful wake-up call to anyone thinking that the stimulus bill, health care reform, and card-check are anything other than massive redistributions of wealth.

On getting a union-friendly stimulus bill:

The stimulus bill was a top priority for SEIU because it contained massive bailouts for state governments and Medicaid. As mentioned above, states such as California, New York, and New Jersey have expanded their social-welfare systems beyond what they can afford, in response to pressures from SEIU and other public-sector unions. At the same time, their progressive income-tax structures have made them especially vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. When the credit bubble burst, these states were looking at massive deficits, layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts. The stimulus bill included a $50 billion slush fund for state governments and $90 billion in Medicaid expansions, helping the states avoid a necessary round of belt-tightening and tax reform.”

A bit surprisingly, California came in for particularly rough treatment:

The most illustrative example of SEIU’s clout during this process came when the Obama administration threatened to withhold stimulus funds from the state of California if it went ahead with a planned reduction in payments to home health-care workers. The administration set up a conference call with state officials to discuss whether the cuts violated the terms of the stimulus, and state officials were surprised to learn that the administration had invited SEIU representatives to join the call. “This was really atypical and outside any norm I am familiar with,” California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times. The administration backed down from the threat, but only after the story had leaked and caused significant blowback.”

On getting a union-friendly health care reform bill:

SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats’ bill. “We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform,” Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. “The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers,” explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,” Wilson says.

And finally, supporting card-check legislation:

As important as the Democrats’ health-care plan is to SEIU, the union’s top priority remains the Employee Free Choice Act, otherwise known as the card-check bill. Under SEIU’s preferred version of the bill, employers would have to recognize a union once a majority of its employees had signed petition cards. This process would allow union organizers to identify holdouts and pressure them into signing up. The bill would also require business owners to allow union organizers to hold meetings with employees on the business’s property, while forbidding the owners to hold mandatory meetings to discuss unionization.

Finally, the bill includes a binding-arbitration provision that would allow the NLRB to impose a union contract on a business if negotiations with its union broke down. SEIU loves this provision, because Obama just named one of its lawyers, Craig Becker, to the NLRB. Businesses negotiating with the SEIU would have two choices: accept SEIU’s demands voluntarily or have the SEIU-friendly NLRB accept them for you.”

You can read the entire article here.

As health care reform sprints towards the finish line, one can’t help but wonder what repercussions the triumph of Obamacare might have for the White House staff.

I speak specifically of Nancy-Ann DeParle, the President’s “health reform” czar. One hopes that, in fidelity to his promise of good government, Obama would demand Deparle’s letter of resignation immediately upon signing health care reform into law.  After all, what’s left for the reform czar once the sole objective of her employment is achieved? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is probably “a taxpayer-financed salary and all the perks of White House employment until President Obama heads back to Chicago.”

Some people have a knack for recognizing a decisive moment before it occurs. Even fewer have the insight to choose (or guess) which way is best when it happens. Count Martin Heinrich, freshman Democrat from New Mexico, as one of the folks who didn’t migrate from column A to column B. When discussing his support for comprehensive health care “reform” over the weekend, Congressman Heinrich said:

This is an opportunity to do something as big Social Security,” he added. “And me, personally, I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”

Regrettably, far too many liberal politicians think being first (or biggest) is the same as being right. With this in mind, replicating the biggest social welfare boondoggle in American history becomes not only historic, but right, and voting for it ensures supporters of their implied inclusion in whatever laudatory blurb finds its way into next decade’s high school civics books.

However, there is another way to interpret the “historic” moment facing the nation and the Democratic Party. In the aftermath of World War II, England voted for a weaker presence abroad, and a much enhanced social safety net at home. The plan came to be known as the “post war consensus” and can be characterized as:

…a belief in Keynesian economics, a mixed economy with the nationalization of major industries, the establishment of the National Health Service and the creation of the modern welfare state in Britain. The policies were instituted by all governments (both Labour and Conservative) during the post-war period.” (Emphasis added)

Sound familiar? Much like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the leader of the consensus, Clement Attlee, was an unremarkable politician except for the fact he helped create the National Health Service. This put Britain on the path of unsustainable spending and deficits all in the name of a health program that expands coverage while castrating care.

Welcome to infamy, Rep. Heinrich. Here you’ll find no end to self-indulgent paternalism and the undying belief that free people need “free” services from government.