From the Washington Times:
President Obama and his Democratic allies, scrambling to broker a health care deal Monday, finally got an upbeat assessment from Congress' official scorekeeper when it said the plan for government-run coverage would not force out private insurers.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer trumpeted the report from the Congressional Budget Office, Congress' nonpartisan budget analyst, that said private insurers could survive competition from a government health insurance option - contradicting a chief criticism from Republicans.
"Now we've heard that the reform will represent a government takeover of health care. A point of fact: The opposite is true," said Mr. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat.
Republicans have said the public health insurance option, which would likely have low reimbursement rates, would drive private insurers out of business. They argue that once private insurers are gone, the public option would be the only health insurance option.
Republicans touted a report from the Lewin Group, a health research firm owned by an insurance company, that predicted 100 million people out of the 160 million now covered by employer-sponsored insurance would go to the government coverage.
But the CBO estimates about 12 million people would opt for the public plan. The wide difference in estimates is the result of drastically different assumptions about the price of the plans. CBO estimated the public plan would cost 10 percent less than private plans, compared with the Lewin Group estimate that it would be 20 percent cheaper.
The CBO has been a source of partisan angst in the health care debate, with recent reports undermining the Democrats' plans by determining they would not cut costs and result in unsustainable growth in government spending.
That verdict helped cement resistance from the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House and bolstered Republican criticism that the country can't afford the $1 trillion price tag.
It also prompted Mr. Obama last week to summon CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf to a White House meeting - a somewhat unusual move that Republicans warned smelled of playing politics with a nonpartisan entity.
I would like to know what happened at that White House meeting with CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf.
What did Obama and the Enforcer, Rahm Emanuel, do to get this new "upbeat" assessment?
Chicago politics has seeped into the White House and it's dirty.
Hoyer, of course, immediately latched on to the report. I suppose he was expecting its arrival.
This doesn't smell right at all. I don't trust the claim that private insurers will survive, and I don't want my family to be subjected to inferior government-run health care.
From Fortune:
In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
...[T]he Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
I believe ObamaCare is anti-choice.
It's un-American.
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