Excellent Analysis of Democrat Health Care Reform

This is Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin explaining the cost problems with the Democrat's Health Care Reform - it's an excellent analysis showing that the bill will increase costs and increase deficits. Watch the whole thing (six minutes long)...

Or, if you prefer reading, here is a transcript (via PowerLine):

RYAN: Thank you. Look, we agree on the problem here. And the problem is health inflation is driving us off of a fiscal cliff.

Mr. President, you said health care reform is budget reform. You're right. We agree with that. Medicare, right now, has a $38 trillion unfunded liability. That's $38 trillion in empty promises to my parents' generation, our generation, our kids' generation. Medicaid's growing at 21 percent each year. It's suffocating states' budgets. It's adding trillions in obligations that we have no means to pay for it.

Now, you're right to frame the debate on cost and health inflation. And in September, when you spoke to us in the well of the House, you basically said -- and I totally agree with this -- I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future.

Since the Congressional Budget Office can't score your bill, because it doesn't have sufficient detail, but it tracks very similar to the Senate bill, I want to unpack the Senate score a little bit.

And if you take a look at the CBO analysis, analysis from your chief actuary, I think it's very revealing. This bill does not control costs. This bill does not reduce deficits. Instead, this bill adds a new health care entitlement at a time when we have no idea how to pay for the entitlements we already have.

Now, let me go through why I say that. The majority leader said the bill scores as reducing the deficit $131 billion over the next 10 years. First, a little bit about CBO. I work with them every single day -- very good people, great professionals. They do their jobs well. But their job is to score what is placed in front of them. And what has been placed in front of them is a bill that is full of gimmicks and smoke-and-mirrors. Now, what do I mean when I say that?

Well, first off, the bill has 10 years of tax increases, about half a trillion dollars, with 10 years of Medicare cuts, about half a trillion dollars, to pay for six years of spending.
Now, what's the true 10-year cost of this bill in 10 years? That's $2.3 trillion.

It does couple of other things. It takes $52 billion in higher Social Security tax revenues and counts them as offsets. But that's really reserved for Social Security. So either we're double-counting them or we don't intend on paying those Social Security benefits.

It takes $72 billion and claims money from the CLASS Act. That's the long-term care insurance program. It takes the money from premiums that are designed for that benefit and instead counts them as offsets.

The Senate Budget Committee chairman said that this is a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Now, when you take a look at the Medicare cuts, what this bill essentially does -- it treats Medicare like a piggy bank. It raids a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare, not to shore up Medicare solvency, but to spend on this new government program.

Now, when you take a look at what this does, is, according to the chief actuary of Medicare, he's saying as much as 20 percent of Medicare's providers will either go out of business or will have to stop seeing Medicare beneficiaries. Millions of seniors who are on -- who have chosen Medicare Advantage will lose the coverage that they now enjoy.

You can't say that you're using this money to either extend Medicare solvency and also offset the cost of this new program. That's double counting.

And so when you take a look at all of this; when you strip out the double-counting and what I would call these gimmicks, the full 10- year cost of the bill has a $460 billion deficit. The second 10-year cost of this bill has a $1.4 trillion deficit.

And I think, probably, the most cynical gimmick in this bill is something that we all probably agree on. We don't think we should cut doctors 21 percent next year. We've stopped those cuts from occurring every year for the last seven years. We all call this, here in Washington, the doc fix. Well, the doc fix, according to your numbers, costs $371 billion. It was in the first iteration of all of these bills, but because it was a big price tag and it made the score look bad, made it look like a deficit, that bill was -- that provision was taken out, and it's been going on in stand-alone legislation. But ignoring these costs does not remove them from the backs of taxpayers. Hiding spending does not reduce spending. And so when you take a look at all of this, it just doesn't add up.

And so let's just -- I'll finish with the cost curve. Are we bending the cost curve down or are we bending the cost curve up?

Well, if you look at your own chief actuary at Medicare, we're bending it up. He's claiming that we're going up $222 billion, adding more to the unsustainable fiscal situation we have.

And so, when you take a look at this, it's really deeper than the deficits or the budget gimmicks or the actuarial analysis. There really is a difference between us.

And we've been talking about how much we agree on different issues, but there really is a difference between us. And it's basically this. We don't think the government should be in control of all of this. We want people to be in control. And that, at the end of the day, is the big difference.

Now, we've offered lots of ideas all last year, all this year. Because we agree the status quo is unsustainable. It's got to get fixed. It's bankrupting families. It's bankrupting our government. It's hurting families with pre-existing conditions. We all want to fix this.
But we don't think that this is the answer to the solution. And all of the analysis we get proves that point.

Now, I'll just simply say this. And I respectfully disagree with the vice president about what the American people are or are not saying or whether we're qualified to speak on their behalf. So...
(LAUGHTER)
... we are all representatives of the American people. We all do town hall meetings. We all talk to our constituents. And I've got to tell you, the American people are engaged. And if you think they want a government takeover of health care, I would respectfully submit you're not listening to them.

So what we simply want to do is start over, work on a clean-sheeted paper, move through these issues, step by step, and fix them, and bring down health care costs and not raise them. And that's basically the point.

UN Environmental Group Holds Meeting in Bali (again)

Wonder what the carbon footprint for this boondoggle will be?

The UN Environment Program, which is based in Nairobi, is convening a set of meetings this week – not in Nairobi, or New York, but at the same Bali beach resort (and convention center) where they sacrificed all that time for the greater good in 2007. Never mind the UN’s continuing campaign — in the face of its crumbling “climate science” — to restrict and control carbon emissions. Yet again, we are asked to believe the UN deserves special exemptions from its own preachings. Its conferees are jetting to Bali for the greater good of all the little folk, whose job is merely to pay the bills for such pleasures, and live with any resulting rationing and regulation. According to the Jakarta Post, some 1,500 people from 192 countries are expected to attend this shindig — where UNEP claims that envoys of some 140 governments will be present. The pre-session events (the UN goes in for a lot of those on Bali) have already begun.

Sicentists Say World May Not be Warming

See previous post on Climategate. More and more evidence is being unearthed that scientists and politicians have not been completely truthful with us on this issue.

"World may not be warming, say scientists" from the London Times, which has been doing a lot of research into this story. Read the whole thing.

Graph of Recent Federal Deficits

This is why I don't believe the White House when they claim they will fix the deficit "later."

Government Union Jobs Growing

While private industry continues to lose jobs, the number of government jobs continues to increase. This is a problem for several reasons:
1) you can't easily fire people from government jobs (even if they are incompetent or unnecessary),
2) government jobs are now paying more and giving more in benefits on average than the private sector (all of which are paid for by us), and
3) once you have a critical mass of people employed by the government, there is no incentive to reform or improve the efficiency of government.

While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession. (emphasis added)

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Public-sector-unions-bleed-taxpayers-to-help-Dems-83652517.html#ixzz0eyACifIL

Climategate

You may or may not have heard of "Climategate" -- a series of revelations about how scientific publications and government agencies have been trying to shore up claims of global warming by hiding or misrepresenting data, by not publishing scientific research that doesn't support global warming claims, and by "losing" data so that numbers can't be verified.

Two items that I remember hearing about when the original claims were made have been shown to be untrue:

• The Himalayan glaciers will not disappear by 2035. These claims were made by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2005 but the IPCC now admits they were not backed up by sufficient data.
  

• The IPCC falsely claimed that 40% of the Amazon rainforests would be wiped out if global warming continues - these claims were actually based on a study of logging and burning in forests, and had nothing to do with rainfall amounts or rising global temperatures*.

*Mean global surface temperatures have not risen since 1998, and, by some measures, have dropped since 2001.

If you would like to get up to speed on this issue, here is a good opinion piece that has lots of sources listed at the end.

Deficit Worse Than We Thought

A few days ago I posted on the record-breaking deficits for 2009 and 2010. Now the Obama Administration admits that the budget it is proposing will incur closer to a $1.6 Trillion deficit for 2010. This means that in two years of President Obama and Democrats in charge, our overall national debt will have gone up something like 30%. Here is some detail on action that Congress is likely to take this week.

The debt measure set for a House vote Thursday would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

Already, the accumulated debt amounts to $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations. Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.

To ease its passage, Democrats attached tougher budget rules designed to curb a spiraling upward annual deficit - projected by Obama to hit a record $1.56 trillion for the budget year ending Sept. 30. The new rules would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.

If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts to programs like Medicare, farm subsidies and veterans' pensions. Current rules lack such teeth and have commonly been waived over the past few years at a cost of almost $1 trillion.

Skeptics say lawmakers also will find ways around the new rules fairly easily. Congress, for example, can declare some spending an "emergency" - a likely scenario for votes later this month to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Health Care Reform Still Lives

Even though most Americans don't want either version of the Health Care Reform bills passed by the House and Senate last year, they are still trying to figure out a way to pass it. But, they don't want to take out the "backroom deals" that were used to get certain Senators and Representatives to vote for the bill!! Here is a short list of some of the deals that are still in play (and remember, when they give money to one group or state, the rest of us have to make up the difference):A $300 million dollar deal for Louisiana to pay for their Medicaid costs

• Exempting Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan from a 40 percent tax on insurers that provide expensive health plans (other insurance companies are not exempt, and any insurance company in any state except Michigan is not exempt)
  
• An extra $500 million for Medicaid funding in Massachusetts
• An extra $600 million for Medicaid funding in Vermont
• Exempting labor unions from paying the tax on "Cadillac" (very high benefit) health plans

These are just the most egregious ones....there are many other provisions that are in the 2000+ page bills. One of my favorites is "an item that allows people who have been exposed to asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Mont., to receive Medicare assistance." Glad we have Federal laws to handle Libby, Montana!!