The Real Price of the Senate Health Bill

• DECEMBER 23, 2009, 9:12 P.M. ET

By KARL ROVE

By now Majority Leader Harry Reid's explanation for how he is getting his health-care bill through the Senate has pinged its way across the country. "I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said this week. "And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them." But take these comments two steps further and it becomes clear that how Mr. Reid reached unanimity in his caucus could hurt Democrats more than they realize.

First, taking Mr. Reid at his word means every Democratic senator got something. That implies there are even more howlers to discover that will dog Democrats next year.

After all, we now know Florida Sen. Bill Nelson got $3.5 billion to pay for seniors in his state to keep their Medicare Advantage policies when seniors in other states will be forced out of theirs. This wasn't a late add. It was just missed in the opaque language of the original Senate bill.

Second, any Democrat who assumes that it's OK to pass a bad bill because it includes a good deal for them is missing a larger dynamic of the Senate. When costs balloon, as they will, Congress will have to revisit health care. When it does, it will have little incentive to cut deals with individual senators when the public is clamoring about costs and there is no need to scramble for every vote.

Ah, a beam of light! And one that reveals the problem with getting short-term benefits for a state in exchange for long-term costs for the nation.

Consider that, thanks to senators from each state, Vermont gets $600 million for its Medicaid program and Massachusetts $500 million. But for the former the money runs out in six years and for the latter in just three.

Ben Nelson also won an exemption from the>>>

The Senate Postmortem

• DECEMBER 26, 2009

In the post-dawn hours on Thursday the Senate passed ObamaCare 60 to 39, in the first vote on Christmas Eve since 1895 and after the longest consecutive session in Congress since World War I. We are thus heading toward the first U.S. entitlement program dragged across the finish line on a straight partisan majority, a bill that even its most fervent supporters admit is "flawed" but better than nothing.

It is far worse than nothing. The bill itself is an unprecedented arrogation of federal power over one-seventh of the economy, and even its closest antecedents, Medicare and Medicaid, passed in 1965 with the support of both parties. Reflecting the political consensus that has always inspired durable social reform in America, those entitlements cleared the Senate with more than half of the GOP caucus voting in favor.

It takes hard partisan work to drive off Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, John McCain, Bob Bennett, Judd Gregg, Mike Enzi and the Senate's other Republican moderates or deal-makers who earlier this year were prepared to compromise. Some 18 Senate Republicans voted to more than double the size of the children's health insurance program in 2007 over the opposition of President Bush, and Mrs. Snowe and Messrs. Grassley and Hatch and others have long joined with Democrats for health-care subsidy expansions that most Republicans dislike. The GOP had no choice but to oppose this plan or completely abandon its principles.

Mrs. Snowe in particular genuinely wanted to>>>

Dependence Day

Posted 12/24/2009 06:50 PM ET

Legerdemain: Remember the $246 billion that Democrats were going to take out of Medicare to keep the program solvent as well as help fund their health care reform schemes? Turns out it was just a fantasy.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Democrats double-counted funds in their health care plans, drawing the savings for Medicare and financing for the new medical programs outlined in the Senate bill from the same source. The legislation, says the nonpartisan CBO, will increase the deficit, not reduce it as its supporters claimed.

The $246 billion was to come from a cut in Medicare benefits. This would supposedly delay that program's inevitable insolvency — now projected to be 2017— by as much as nine years. But CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said Wednesday that "the improvement in Medicare's finances would not be matched by a corresponding improvement in the federal government's overall finances."

The key point, according to Elmendorf, is that the Medicare savings "would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs."

Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama, who asked for the CBO analysis that revealed the chicanery, called the letter from Elmendorf a "game changer."

All it really achieved was to show that Senate Democrats are determined to reconstruct American health care no matter what's in the legislation. Early Thursday, the Senate passed a medical overhaul 60-39 along party lines despite the release of the Elmendorf letter the day before.

Budget chicanery is nothing new for Washington,>>>

Obamacare

10 Lumps Of Coal In The Health Care Bill

By BETSY McCAUGHEYPosted 12/23/2009 05:58 PM ET

For most Americans, the health reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing to pass will be worse than coal in their stockings. Herewith, the Top 10 List of Things You Don't Want From Health Care Reform This Christmas — But Will Get Anyway From Congress.

1. Higher premiums: If you pay for your own insurance, your premiums will cost 10% to 13% more than if the bill didn't pass, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Insurance won't be more affordable. Sixty percent of the newly insured are being enrolled in Medicaid, the public program for the poor.

2. A cost you can't afford and can't avoid: Though moderate-income families will get subsidies, buying insurance is mandatory. A family earning $54,000 will be expected to pay $9,000 (17% of pre-tax income) for the premium, co-pays and deductibles, according to the CBO. If you don't enroll, the IRS will find you and penalize you (Senate bill, p. 345).

3. A one-size-fits-all health plan: Your benefit package will be prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Whether you choose basic, silver or gold, and whether you pay for it yourself or qualify for a subsidy, your benefits are the same.

Gold plans simply collect more up front and give you a lower co-pay or deductible. It's unclear how possible it will be to buy supplemental insurance. The goal is to discourage health consumption and differences based on ability to pay.

4. A sin tax on your generous plan at work: This is another equalizer to discourage some people from getting more than others. The Senate bill puts a 40% tax on Cadillac plans (p. 1,980). About one-fifth of employer-provided plans fall into that "luxury" category. The CBO predicts that employers will downgrade your coverage to avoid the tax or reduce your take home pay.

5. Government controls on your doctors' decisions:>>>

Health Care Not In Constitution

Posted 12/23/2009 05:58 PM ET

Self-Evident Truths: Sen. Dianne Feinstein says it comes under the Commerce Clause. Rep. Steny Hoyer says it's mandated by the "general welfare" clause. Despite liberal wishes, health care is not a right.

The "living Constitution" that Democrats and their court appointees have given us may be the death of our freedoms. Their constitution adapts to the times and serves the whims of the elitists. The Constitution is supposed to limit government powers. It does not allow government to do anything it feels like doing.

Cass Sunstein, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is the author of "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever."

He writes glowingly of how President Franklin Roosevelt, unsatisfied with the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote, proposed a Second Bill of Rights in a speech on Jan. 11, 1944.

One of the new "rights" FDR envisioned was "the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health." If health care were a right under the U.S. Constitution, FDR would not have had to propose it as one to be added.

Yet liberals believe it should be, and some believe it is. Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was asked Tuesday by CNSNews on what constitutional authority the Senate and House bills are authorized. She responded, as others have, "Well, I would assume it would be in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. That's how Congress legislates all kinds of various programs."

Maybe so, but it's a power that has been grossly abused>>>

Louisiana Purchase And Omaha Stakes

Posted 12/21/2009 07:04 PM ET

Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson: Putting a price tag on principle? APView Enlarged Image

Politics: Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new "Louisiana Purchase." Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state's future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay.

Nelson, the 60th vote in the middle-of-the-night Senate party line vote on health care reform, will go down in American political history as the inventor of the permanent earmark.

His seemingly principled stand against including federal funding for abortion evaporated like the morning dew as he decided to take what was behind door No. 1.

The deal for Nelson includes special Medicaid funding for Nebraska, along with Vermont and Massachusetts, which has a special election to fill the seat of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy coming up in January. Under the Senate bill every state is equal, but some are more equal than others. The other states and their taxpayers — that means you — will pick up this tab.

This came just three days after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Neil Cavuto's Fox Business show that he was prepared to vote against the bill after the recent decision to strip the public option and the Medicare buy-in provision from the legislation to get the vote of Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

Nelson won a permanent exemption from the>>>