Sen. Max Baucus « Healthcare Horserace

HuffPo: Baucus to Blame for Health Care Overhaul Failings

Monday, October 12th, 2009

A recent blog entry at the Huffington Post highlights the progressives’ criticism of Senate Committee on Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) for the failings of the liberal health care reform agenda.

Blogger Chris Weigant complains that Sen. Baucus is responsible as being “almost as obstructionist as the Republicans in getting to the point we are at now. Meaning he is responsible for the dwindling amount of time we have left to get healthcare reform passed this year.” Indeed, this has been a common grievance of the far Left: leading Democratic lawmakers are to blame for not utilizing a hefty majority to make their dreams of a single-payer, universal health care system a reality.

Weigant worries that there is simply not enough time left in the legislative calendar to ensure the passage of an adequate, sweeping government plan that would overhaul the health care industry:

There are only two and a half months left in Congress’ legislative year. In this short period of time, Congress usually takes enormous chunks of time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas. So there just aren’t that many weeks left to pull this thing together. Reid, to his credit, has already cancelled a Senate week off for Columbus Day, but cancelling Thanksgiving and Christmas is a whole different ball of wax.

Weigant’s assessment is correct. There are plenty of procedural speed bumps that would mean that even if the bill is deemed favorable by a majority of Congress, an unlikely fate at best, the unavoidable legislative route would take plenty long enough and could disrupt Leftists’ ambitions for a speedy takeover.

The article isn’t shy about pointing the finger at Sen. Baucus, ultimately blaming the Finance Committee chair for what seems to be a likely doom for the hopes of progressives everywhere, thanks in part, Weigant argues, for his attempts at bipartisanship:

But whatever the chances are, and however it is handled by the congressional leadership, the point is we just wasted two and a half months. And by “we,” I mean “Senator Max Baucus.” Before August happened, the talk was all of “bipartisanship” (ah, those naive days of early summer…) and the “Gang of Six,” who were going to hammer out a bill that lots of Republicans would vote for. By the end of August, the Republicans were all but smirking into their sleeves on national television saying: “We were never going to vote for anything that would help Obama politically, and we just burned up a month proving that to the Democrats.”

But then, even after we got to that point, we then sat through another month and a half of delay. And that delay can be laid at the feet of Max Baucus. Is the bill the Finance Committee going to vote on tomorrow substantially different than what they had at the beginning of September? No, it is not. Is it substantially better? No, it is not. Is it going to win over any Republican votes (other than, perhaps, Olympia Snowe)? No, it is not. Were those six weeks wasted? Yes, they were.

Which gave time for the healthcare industry to mobilize against Baucus’ bill. Meaning Baucus is largely responsible for the attack coming now.

And while the far Left is busy demonizing Sen. Baucus, it’s pretty certain that the majority of American people are exhaling a large sigh of relief, thankful that the bill, as bad as it is now, is at least somewhat better than the deepest held hopes of progressives: a complete and utter destruction of the private sector to level the playing field by making health care equally as awful for everyone.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Baucuscare, Chris Weigant, health care reform, Huffington Post, Max Baucus, Obamacare, Olympia Snowe, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Committee on Finance
Posted in The Players | Start the Discussion

More Big Labor Angst over Obamacare

Friday, October 9th, 2009

It is often portrayed by the Old Media that Big Labor is lining up behind Obamacare with gusto. While many unions are doing just that, the not all unions are so happy with Congress’ current plans. We discussed this last month when we reported that the various propositions to tax so-called Cadillac healthcare plans has gotten some unions nervous.

Now, 157 House Democrats have sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi (D, Calif.) declaring their opposition to taxing high-end healthcare plans. One of those reasons is that many unions have given away pay raises in order to enlarge their benefits packages and such a tax will hit union members hard.

Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., who organized the petition, said the tax would hurt too many middle-class people in addition to the wealthier people it is intended to hit.

“This would have an impact far wider than just the Paris Hiltons of the world,” Courtney told reporters Wednesday.

Leading the charge against these tax plans is the AFL-CIO. As IBD reports:
(more…)

Tags: dailydose, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate, The Winning Line, unions
Posted in Opinion | 1 Comment »

Labor Unions Plan Advertising Assault on Baucus; Demand Employer Mandate

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

The United Auto Workers and Teamsters have partnered to publicly oppose health care legislation proposed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), claiming the bill to be “deeply flawed.” They have begun to develop an advertisement that criticizes the plan of Sen. Baucus and outlines what they believe is essential to achieving true reform.

The advertisement issues three key demands:

A public option.
Employer mandate.
Elimination of a proposed tax on high-end health plans.

Ryan Ellis, policy director at Americans for Tax Reform, offered healthcarehorserace.com a glimpse into why he believes the Teamsters and UAW have come out in favor of such a government overhaul of the health care industry and why he “wouldn’t be surprised if other unions followed suit”:

re: 1. A public option. According to Ellis, the public option is not so much a threat to labor unions if there is an employer mandate imposed on businesses (see re: 2). So, labor unions, like the UAW and Teamsters, can appear to be in favor of earnest reform, regardless of whether it’s true or not, in order to convince Americans that their hearts are true, without being detrimental to their true intention which is…

re: 2. Employer mandate. An employer mandate would require businesses to extend health insurance benefits to all employees or face a severe penalty. According to Ellis, the public option is only acceptable if an employer mandate exists. “Unions know that if you put a public option without an employer mandate, then employers would simply send their employees to the public option,” he explains. “Employer mandates put the unions in good positions to negotiate the best deals possible.”

re: 3. Elimination of a proposed tax on high-end health plans. As it stands now, Sen. Baucus’ plan taxes “Cadillac” health plans, where those whose employer provides more than $8,000 per person or $21,000 per family of coverage annually will be taxed at 40 percent for every extra dollar. The unions oppose this, as Ellis points out, because their control over workers comes from their ability to exchange union dues for cushy health care plans. If the tax on high-end plans exists, then there is less of an incentive for employers to provide luxurious plans, making it difficult for them to negotiate and in turn, provide less incentive for workers to unionize.

Bloomberg adds:

In addition to the autoworkers and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the proposed ad was sent to more than 30 unions. Among them were leaders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the United Steel Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the National Football League Players Association.

Tags: Americans for Tax Reform, Baucus, heath care reform, Max Baucus, Ryan Ellis, Sen. Max Baucus, Teamsters, UAW, United Auto Workers
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Dispute Continues Over CBO’s Scoring of Baucuscare

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Members of the mainstream media have claimed that the health care reform bill of Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) would cost American taxpayers $829 billion over the next decade, but apparently that just isn’t so.

The Washington Post: “The bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade.”

The New York Times: “The budget office analyzed the bill … its newly projected cost — $829 billion over 10 years.”

The Wall Street Journal: “The latest Senate health bill will cost $829 billion over a decade.”

According to blogger Donald Marron, the number is more like $904 billion dollars. And he has the facts to prove it:

“So let me once again implore everyone commenting on the health debate: There is a difference between the cost of the Baucus bill ($904 billion) and the cost of its provisions to expand coverage ($829 billion). It is understandable that most commentary focuses on the health insurance provisions. But we should not forget the other $75 billion in spending on other initiatives. Dollar-for-dollar they deserve as much scrutiny as the coverage expansions.”

Tags: Baucuscare, CBO, Congressional Budget Office, Donald Marron, Max Baucus, Sen. Max Baucus
Posted in Policy Alternative | Start the Discussion

Sen. Enzi: “Getting It Done Fast is Not as Important as Getting It Done Correctly”

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

Not long after Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced the creation of the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, a two hundred and twenty-three page health care reform bill with no bi-partisan support, at noon today in Washington D.C., Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) released a statement expressing deep disappointment “that deadlines took precedence over agreement between the two political parties.

Senator Enzi, a member of the Gang of Six, the name given to the bi-partisan group of senators (three Democrats and three Republicans) who have attempted to negotiate a compromise in passing a health care reform bill this year, praised Chairman Baucus and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in so strongly resisting the “calls for partisanship” within the often heated health care debate. At the same time, however, he said he would be remise in not articulating his acute dissatisfaction in the bi-partisan group’s failure to address major still left unresolved in the bill Sen. Baucus presented earlier today. With the nation facing the likely prospect of a nine trillion dollar federal deficit over the next ten years, it is totally unacceptable that the bill as it stands “still spends too much, and it does too little to cut health care costs for those with health insurance.” Rather then try to cover every single one of the forty-seven million the White House claims are uninsured, Enzi said, we “should target assistance to those in the greatest need without creating unsustainable new entitlement programs.”

The Republican senator said that Baucus’s bill does not go far enough in realizing the goals set down by President Obama who promised through his health care reform bill to “improve competition in the insurance marketplace and lower health care costs for those who currently have insurance.” He expressed the belief that “health care reform should be built on expanding the unsustainable Medicaid program, which 40 percent of doctors will not accept.” Having ‘universal coverage’ is no good to you if your doctor refuses to see you. “If you have Medicare Advantage,” Enzi notes, “this bill could reduce your coverage.”

Regardless of the expressions of exasperations produced by the Obama administration, in particular the president’s call last week in his speech before the joint-session of Congress that “the time for bickering has passed,” “getting it done fast is not as important as getting it done correctly.” The best way in which to reform the American health care system and gain the trust of the public, something this administration severely lacks especially after the failure of the Economic Stimulus Package, “is to do it step by step.”

Tags: America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, Gang of Six, health care reform, Iowa, Max Baucus, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, Montana, President Obama, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Finance Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, Senator Max Baucus, Senator Mike Enzi, white house, Wyoming
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Senate Finance Bill: Only Slightly Less Deadly

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Originated from Statehousecall.org

So you’ve seen the news. The Senate Finance Committee has come out with its version of a government takeover of health care. On the plus side, no “public option” (aka, government-run health insurance company).

But there are a lot of negatives.

First, it does have a “public option,” but it’s called a co-op, and given $6 billion. Free start-up money? So much for a level playing field.
There’s of course a huge cost to the whole package ($856 billion for 10 years) that will only increase exponentially over time.
Much of these subsidies are given to the middle class-up to 400% of the federal poverty level. (We’re all on welfare now.)
It creates an “exchange,” or heavily constricted “marketplace.” (If you want a true marketplace, strip away the built-in advantages that incumbent insurance companies have and let them go at each other, across state borders.)
It levies a tax on everyone who doesn’t have insurance–up to $3,800 per year; in effect, a tax on being alive.
An expansion of Medicaid, a program that already pays doctors so little that some people in it have a hard time finding a doctor.
A play-or-pay mandate on employers.
Requires insurance companies (and in turn, you) to sell insurance to people who’ve already come down with a “pre-existing condition.”
Forbids insurance companies from buying (and you from buying) policies with lifetime caps on benefits, thus making insurance more expensive for all.

How does the plan pay for all this? First there’s an excise tax on high-dollar insurance plans. This actually isn’t the worst feature of the bill. You can make the case that some high-dollar plans are actually very expensive pre-paid forms of medical care that the tax code should not underwrite. And any plan to create a personal tax credit so that people can buy insurance on their own would likely affect the same people as this excise tax would.

But the second income stream is worse; it would tax pacemakers and other pieces of medical hardware that improve lives every day.

Like Mr. Obama, Sen. Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, doesn’t tell the whole truth. He says it wouldn’t add to the deficit. That’s likely to go the way of other promises regarding government plans, such as a promise that Medicare would not become the fiscal monster it has become.

Medicare Advantage, which enrolls about 1 in 5 seniors, also gets a whack. So much for “if you like your insurance, you can keep it.” No, the plan doesn’t outright ban Medicare Advantage, but it’s likely to drive companies to drop their participation.

All in all, the bill isn’t that much better than the House bill. It’s like getting shot in the head with only five bullets instead of six.

Tags: Medicare Advantage, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee
Posted in Policy Alternative | Start the Discussion

Stacking the Deck for the “Public Option”

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Originated from Statehousecall.org

By Merrill Matthews, Jr.

Over the weekend Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) proposed a new tax on health insurance premiums — about $6 billion a year — as a way to help pay for the Democrats’ health care reform legislation.

If anyone wants to know why the government-run public option will be a stacked deck, just look at this proposal.

Any economist will tell you that a $6 billion annual tax would increase private sector health insurers’ administrative costs and eventually filter down in the form of higher premiums. Which, of course, leads to our elected representatives complaining about how much more expensive private health insurance is than some public option run by the government.

Would the public option also pay the tax? Of course not. Would it pay the premium tax that states already assess on health insurers operating in the state? Of course not. Oh, and does the tax apply to all the nonprofit health insurers?

But can’t health insurers just take that tax out of their profits? Despite all the harangues about windfall profits, health insurance is one of the least profitable industries — about 2.2 percent. According to a recent article on CNBC’s Jim Cramer’s The Street, “If business stayed the same during the last three months of 2008, it’s likely that [health insurers'] net income dropped to less than $11.6 billion for the year, compared with $17.1 billion in 2007.” So a $6 billion new tax would cut profits in half, to perhaps a little over 1 percent.

You have to sit back and marvel at the hubris of elected officials complaining about the high price of health insurance even as they consider new taxes on health insurers that would make premiums even higher.

And when even more people who can’t afford the higher prices imposed by the politicians decide to drop their coverage, those same politicians will say: “I told you so; that’s why we need the public option.”

Tags: CNBC, Jim Cramer's The Street, public-option, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate Finance Committee
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Far Left Want Sen. Baucus(’s Chairmanship) Wacked

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Well, so much for President Obama’s commitments toward Congressional bipartisanship and unity within the Democratic Party itself. Just toss those on the pile along with the rest of the broken promises he made on the campaign trail. If the legislative progressives have their way, Senator Max Baucus’s chairmanship on the Senate Committee on Finance and quite possibly his legislative career could very well be on top before this whole health care reform battle is over.

It’s no secret on Capitol Hill that the Democratic senator from Montana isn’t exactly a favorite among his more liberal colleagues. Many of them feel he takes a stand with conservatives on a variety of issues, such as gun rights, the death penalty, and offshore drilling just to name a few, way too often. What really has them riled up this time, however, so says The Hill, is that not only has Baucus been “negotiating for weeks with Republicans over healthcare reform without producing a bill or even much detail about the policies he is considering,” he and the rest of the members of the Finance committee have reportedly “tossed aside the proposal to create a robust government-run insurance program.”

This does not sit well at all with more progressive legislators like Tom Harkin of Iowa – Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry as well as a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee – who want a strong public option. Baucus, on the other hand, is aligning his support with a more modest co-op program. Some liberal senators, The Hill reports, are privately suggesting that Baucus “might be more open to persuasion if his chairmanship is subject to regular vote.”

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, speaking on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, openly chastised Baucus’s attempts to convince Republicans of reform as misguided and essentially squashed any-and-all hope for ‘bipartisan cooperation’ in the legislator as President Obama had promised:

“I go back to 40 years ago when the Medicare bill passed. People like Bob Dole, Strom Thurmond, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford, as Members of Congress, they all opposed it. The fact is, in those days, the Democrats moved forward, they didn’t worry about “we have to have X number of Republicans,” their mission was: we’re going to get a good Medicare bill. … That needs to be our charge, not “we need a bipartisan bill.”

Still, there are key factors that work to Baucus’s advantage. First, unlike Republican senators who are limited to only three full terms as chairman of a panel, Democrats have no such restraints. Being only sixty-seven years old, a relatively young age for a legislator, he could be influential for some time to come. More importantly, however, in spite of the uproar from progressives, including far-left political blogs like Think Progress, Baucus still retains the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Like or not, Senator Max Baucus has “emerged as a lead negotiator in a landmark policy debate, and some lawmakers think he will end up defining healthcare reform.”

Tags: bipartisan, Bob Dole, Donald Rumsfeld, Gerald Ford, government-run, Harry Reid, health care reform, HELP, HELP Committee, Huffington Post, Iowa, Keith Olbermann, Max Baucus, Medicare, Montana, MSNBC, Nevada, Ohio, public-option, Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Sen. Tom Harkin, Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Finance Committee, St. Petersburg Times, Strom Thurmond, The Hill, Think Progress
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Congressional Democrats Offer Health Care Reform Bill; Schedule Committee Meetings for Mark-Up

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

HCHR’s Christopher Lagan reported that Congressional Democrats offered their own health care reform bill today. What’s next?

HOUSE MARK-UP SCHEDULE

Wednesday, July 15, 2009: 3 p.m., Education and Labor.
Thursday, July 16, 2009: 9 a.m., Ways and Means Committee; 10 a.m., Education and Labor; 2 p.m., Energy and Commerce.
Friday, July 17, 2009: 10 a.m., Energy and Commerce.
Monday, July 20, 2009: noon, Energy and Commerce.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009: 10 a.m., Energy and Commerce.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009: 10 a.m., Energy and Commerce.

Tags: Affordable Health Care Choices Act, Christopher Lagan, Congress, Ellen Carmichael, Energy and Commerce, health care, HELP, Kennedy, Max Baucus, Obamacare, Sen. Max Baucus, Senate, Senate Committee on Finance, Senate Financial Services, socialized medicine, Ted Kennedy, universal healthcare
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Articles Tagged ‘Sen. Max Baucus’