Vegas Free-for-All - The new health care law, how's it working??

malibber

Jan 6, 2011
11:20am

Again why did the Republicans exempt it then from their special rule about new spending having to be offset by cuts? Again it’s because there is a significant expense to repealing this bill.

Don

Jan 6, 2011
12:04pm

Block User

Quote

Originally posted by: pjstroh

item i: Noone has said the CBO is 100% accurate in its measurements but it is the non-partisan agency used by both parties to score the future cost of ANY legislation. Perhaps Don DIego can give us another non-partisan agency that has scored the bill in its entirety...or just continue to say it costs more because Don Diego says so.

pjstroh and DonDiego agree ! So far as he knows, no one has said the CBO is 100% accurate. But that’s not the point; the point is that given bad guidance by Congress, the CBO will arrive at not an inaccurate estimate, but an incorrect one. F’rinstance, if the “Doc Fix” is included as a cost saving by the direction of Congress, and then the “Doc Fix” is not made, the CBO estimate will be wrong. It was.

Quote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
item ii: Don Diego says the CBO is not credible in item i...but then cites them as his source for item ii & iv. Um...yeah. But lets give the citation its due ..the new estimate still makes the plan budget neutral in the first 10 years and deficit-reducing in the following decade to the tune of a trillion dollars....Does DOn Diego remember the budget predictions of healthcare expenses on the government prior to this new law? Hold that thought....

DonDiego never said the CBO is not credible; see answer to item i., above.
The $115-billion is just added costs recognized since the CBO estimate. If pjstroh believes these costs will be off-set by Congress cutting expenditures elsewhere, DonDiego feels obligated to advise him that there is no tooth-fairy and there is no deficit-neutral Congress.

Quote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
item iii: the very article Don Diego provides tells of a 15 billion dollar increase because of the "Doc Fix" issue and it is entirely offset by other provisions in the bill...so Don Diego's outrageous 250-400 Billion dollar estimate is only off by about 250-400 billion dollars. I hope Don Diego doesn't make arithmetic mistakes like that when he does his taxes.

What bill? DonDiego knows the article references a promised Bill designed to make up some of the deficit and restore some health care provisions lost by the passage of ObamaCare and other stuff. But, . . . was this Bill passed in the lame-duck session? Or is it in the hopper of the new 112th Congress? Or, where is it? When will it be passed? Will it be passed?

Quote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
item iv: OMG - where to begin. THere is no penalty for Companies to drop insurance today...so it would be cheaper for them to get rid of the insurance today and PAY NO FINE ! Wonder why they dont do that then? Hmmmm. But suddenly companies will drop insurance when the penalty is implemented? Even as they are given tax incentives to offer insurance? Don Diego and Fortune's 160 Billion dollar estimate is only off by about 160 billion.... Oh, and those government exchanges that are right on the brink of a single payer system? Those are a collection of private insurance companies the compete in a free market exchange for customer's business. In case you haven't heard there was no public health insurance of any kind offered up in this new law. If that's your definition of a slippery slope towards a government-run-single-payer system..well...to each his own.

DonDiego is only reporting what companies say they may do. The future is not his to know.

Quote
Originally posted by: pjstroh
Conclusion: The previous system had many unfunded or underfunded elements to it but I only need to cite one:
the 100% UNFUNDED Bush Prescription Drug program which projected costs at over 500 Billion in its first 10 years alone. Perhaps Don Diego can chuck the numbers of the system his fiscal responsible leadership implemented (and is trying to revert to) and compare them to the new plan. The CBO already determined the new plan wins by a total of 250 billion dollars in the near term...but Don Diego has informed us the CBO is not credible in their projections ... except in the cases when they are.

DonDiego did not support the Bush Prescription Drug Program. It did, and does, indeed have lots of unfunded elements, . . . all the more reason to oppose it. In fact, the whole donut-hole provision in that legislation was intentional, and - perhaps not surprisingly – was in the Bill specifically to affect the costs reported by the CBO analysis, just as with, f’rinstance, the “Doc Fix” in the ObamaCare Bill.
"New Boss, same as the Old Boss."

A personal note:
From the tenor and content of pjstroh’s response DonDiego detects what he believes to be an erroneous assumption on pjstroh’s part.
DonDiego is not a die-hard Republican partisan. He is a Constitutionalist and, so far as he can determine, he shares a lot of beliefs with libertarians. He often votes Republican, because the Republican Party is closer to these principles than the Democrat Party. But he does not support everything Republican and he does not oppose everything Democrat.
DonDiego certainly hopes there is no one that partisan posting on LVA.

wispitfire

Jan 6, 2011
12:25pm

Block User

While I don't believe freeloaders should have no buy in on this I also don't believe that this statement is the best foot forward for what i believe is the best country in the world to live. "If all these people now have coverage they will actually want to go to the doctor creating a shortage" Does that not tell us there is a doctor shortage already right now? Or because they simply can't go to the doctor we don't want to see or believe because it does'nt affect us? The response that all these docs will retire rather than help out tells me the hypocratic oath is crap and they're all in it for the money. By the way its alot. Personally I think it is time to take the fat out of both the medical system and the government, too many people running around doing nothing. Before anyone thinks I am a bleeding heart liberal, I work for myself and pay taxes most on this board don't know exist. On a tangent the reason you can't get rid of SSI is there are too many people who would whistle the money away requiring a public bailout anyway. The way to make it solvent again is to cut back the eligibility to the sustainable level it was intended. And I don't have a problem requiring health insurance from everyone, for the same reason we have SSI because when the gamblers lose we get to pay for their healthcare anyway just in a different way ie higher premiums. By the way AZ just cut back its public assistance money and a couple of people died because they did not get transplants so is it possible the so called death panels are in the senate and congress?There is some sort of rationing coming only because we are not smart enough to do it ourselves. It is human nature to sustain as long as possible.

BobOrme

Jan 6, 2011
12:55pm

Block User

Quote

Originally posted by: malibber
Again why did the Republicans exempt it then from their special rule about new spending having to be offset by cuts? Again it’s because there is a significant expense to repealing this bill.

The better question would be how and why it would cost the quoted $230 billion to repeal the bill. Details about where this supposed $230 billion would go, who would get it, and why.

chefantwon

Jan 6, 2011
1:44pm

Block User

Quote

The expense of repealing the bill is a rather large misnomer as 98% of it isn't even in effect yet.

You are also missing the point as the ENTIRE bill (debacle, mess, call it the nightmare you will) is going to COST more than $1 trillion dollars. So the point of the argument is......

You are using DC speak to have us think the $230 bil is an actual cost, when the actual funds haven't even been spent yet, just allocated. Please show me some of the cancled checks that actually purchased something concerning this bill. You can't.

As I expressed before, the "cost" aspect of this bill hasn't happened as of yet. No real dollars have been spent. Numbers have been bantered around but until checks are written, the numbers are just that. Little people with no real purpose until they get picked to actually come in and play in the game, which hasn't even started yet. Hell, the damn pre game show is still months/years away. Kinda like watching the 6 to 8 hours of coverage before the Superbowl. Nothing is really happening, just a bunch of hype. Your getting a boatload of DC "hype". I would wait until the teams actually step foot on the field before I got really excited.

So the main point here is that the "costs" you are complaining about are not in fact real money, just projections. I can project all I want and call it a "cost" in DC because I am supposed to spend this money some time in the future, just not this very second.

Lets put this another way...I project Al Gore to win the state of Florida....er wait I mean George Bush.....uh it's too close to call. Nothing really happened as nothing was decided, the battle had just begun and NOTHING was actually resolved that very second. So please wait until all of the dimpled, pregnate, and hanging chads are debated and people keep trying to change the rules admid stream. There's no real money, just talk of it. I can say I'll have enough money to pay my hospital bills off, however until I actually put the money down on the table, it's nothing but talk, and talk doesn't pay the bills.

pjstroh

Jan 6, 2011
10:34pm

Block User

To politely address some of Don Diego's points:

1) Don Diego and pjstroh do agree the CBO is not always accurrate...however, Don Diego presumes they only error on the side deficit inflamation. And Don Diego does a good job of cherry picking some variables the CBO may not have considered in their formula that may inflate costs. Allow me to do the same on the other side of the equation.

The largest cost saver in the bill is speculated to be the transition to a preventative care health system. What is the cost savings of catching millions of cases of cancer in the early stages as oppossed to the latter stages? Most experts say it is immense - and is one of the primary reasons why many countries in Europe spend less than half as much money per capita on healthcare as we do. But this variable (arguably the biggest variable) is completely ignored by the CBO because there is no rational way to forecast a dollar figure to it.

2) Don Diego might be pleased to know that Obama signed the "Doc Fix" extension. And its costs are offset without the assistance of the tooth fairy.
Obama signs Doc Fix extension

3) Don Diego says he does not support the Bush Prescription Drug Program and I believe him. But note that the repeal of the Obamacare law does not also include a repeal of the Bush Prescription Drug program. So whether Don Diego likes it or not the measure of repeal he supports will again implement the (completely unfunded) 1/2 Trillion dollar drug program instituted in the prior administration. Just because Don Diego doesn't like it doesn't mean it would go away. There are many things about the new law I do not agree with or support but I do not discount their existance or their cost simply because I dont like them

shlomo

Jan 6, 2011
10:36pm

Block User

DonDiego, your analysis was spot on, and a welcome injection of facts into this debate, thanks.

Most people, as Chef suspects, don't really follow how the money gets counted. The 'cost' of repealing Obamacare would represent the non-passage of both DocFix and SGR, both of which were assumed to happen in the bill, and both of which have been aborted by Congress the last 3 and 5 times respectively they came up for implementation.

As part of standard Medicare cost controls, they always try to do this, and it always get shouted down (for good reason: as others have said, this bill will almost certainly increase demand for healthcare by lowering the cost to the user, and reduce supply by restricting money to docs.... this means more shortages are virtually guaranteed with Obamacare, including implementation of SGR and DocFix).

As for the prescription drug program, I was also against it, it's an entitlement we can't afford. But a note to the squishy lefties out there: stop calling the programs you don't like 'unfunded' (Part D, the Iraqi wars, etc...) When you are running a deficit, everything is unfunded to an extent, if it doesn't have a dedicated revenue stream - examples of such are tobacco taxes to fund S-CHIP or gas taxes to fund the Highway Trust Fund.

Don, FWIW, you and I have the exact same politics.

malibber

Jan 7, 2011
2:13am

Block User

A significant savings in Obama care were the cuts to Medicare. Most of the cuts went to a program called Medicare advantage. Repealing Obama care would result in restoring funding to Medicare Advantage at a huge cost and all of the money in that program goes to private insurance companies in a special no risk deal for them funded by the taxpayer.

Anyway this whole debate is rather academic as the Republicans have no chance of repealing Obama care as it will go nowhere in the Senate. Indeed if they were serious about repealing it they would have broke it down into specific parts and put up each part for a vote. For instance if they wanted to they could get the mandate repealed. Instead what we get from republicans are show stunts that even they know won’t go anywhere, and they are spending millions of dollars to put on a show.

Quote

Originally posted by: chefantwon

Quote
Originally posted by: malibber
Again why did the Republicans exempt it then from their special rule about new spending having to be offset by cuts? Again it’s because there is a significant expense to repealing this bill.

hoops2

Jan 7, 2011
2:20am

Block User

"A significant savings in Obama care were the cuts to Medicare."

There are 2 problems with this. The democrats and cbo are double counting. They have taken the cuts $500b? and reduced the projected medicare deficit. At the same time they took the money and counted as savings in obamacare. They have done the same with saving money in medicare/medicaid fraud.

THe second problem is that congress did not need a 2,000 page bill to do this

chefantwon

Jan 7, 2011
2:28am

Block User

A few things Mail, the Medicare Advantage program could still be around as we have as yet to see any opposing program by the Republican's.

By taking this before the House and Senate, folks will have the public record as to who wants the Obama mess or not. Just in time to start working on getting rid of the folks who won't listen to the voters and chop this program into pieces.

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