True North

Steny Hoyer's op-ed uses all of the Democrats' discredited talking points, which is why his op-ed is a disaster to people with common sense.

Reform will mean security and stability for the middle class. Insurance companies will never again be able to deny you coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" that can range from asthma to pregnancy. They will never again be able to decide that you've gotten too sick for the coverage you've paid for.

Americans will be able to have affordable insurance through a new Insurance Exchange, a competitive marketplace, if they change jobs, lose a job, or strike out on their own as an entrepreneur. In fact, an analysis from MIT recently showed that the Insurance Exchange will significantly reduce premiums, by $1,260 per year for a family with an income of about $90,000, up to $9,050 in savings for a family with an income of $38,590.

For seniors, reform protects access to their Medicare doctors, creates incentives for physicians to cooperate on higher-quality care, and closes the prescription drug "donut hole" that leaves drugs unaffordable for millions.

For small businesses, reform can help control rising premiums that put them at a competitive disadvantage against foreign companies and big businesses. They will also be able to access the Exchange to buy coverage at lower rates only available today to the biggest companies.

To believe old Steny tell it, you'd think that Pelosi's Abomination fixes everyone's complaints with our current system, lowers health insurance premiums and reduces the budget deficits to boot. Actually, that's Steny's claim:

Finally, reform is good for our budget. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the Democratic bill will reduce our deficit by $104 billion over 10 years, and won't increase deficits in the years after that.

To use George Will's favorite line: WELL!!!

There's just one problem with Steny's claims: they' don't have anything to do with reality. For instance, I'll give Democrats the option to either admit that the Medicare cuts are illusionary intended to prevent this bill from having a huge deficit or they can admit that they're cutting Medicare Advantage to the bone and that they're forcing inferior coverages on those seniors currently enrolled in MA. They can't have it both ways.

Noticeably missing from Steny's op-ed is the mention of tax increases. Why, old Steny didn't even mention taxing "the rich" to pay for Pelosi's Abomination. Why would old Steny have us believe that they can make all these changes without raising taxes while balancing the budget?

Might this op-ed be a Peter Orszag bait-and-switch special? You don't know what a Peter Orszag bait-and-switch special is? Here's the definition of a Peter Orszag bait-and-switch special:

Obama budget director Peter Orszag laid the groundwork for this feat. While director of the CBO in 2007 and 2008, he fostered a more collaborative relationship between the CBO and members of Congress, which enabled the agency to provide behind-the-scenes guidance to Democrats crafting their mandate. That's why the cost of the Democrats' individual mandates appears nowhere in the half-dozen or more "preliminary cost estimates" the CBO has completed on various Democratic health-care bills.

In Massachusetts, which has enacted what is essentially the Democrats' health plan, mandatory premiums account for about 60 percent of overall costs, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. On-budget government spending is just 40 percent. By my count, mandatory premiums accounted for a similar share of the Clinton health plan's projected cost.

So while the CBO estimates that the coverage expansions in the House Democrats' legislation would trigger about $1 trillion of new federal spending over ten years, the actual cost of those coverage expansions is more like $2.5 trillion.

It isn't difficult to game the system. First, you start with telling CBO you plan on cutting $426,000,000,000 from Medicare even though there's no proof that you'll ever cut that money. Next, you raise taxes, everything from excise taxes on so-called Cadillac plans to taxes on medical devices to fines against companies for not offering health insurance to its employees and fines against individuals who refuse to purchase health insurance.

Finally, you phase in the coverages over a 4-5 year period but you start all of the taxes immediately. Like Michael Cannon said, the true cost of the bill is $2,500,000,000,000 for the first 10 years that it's fully implemented.

Another thing that Old Steny must've missed was his explaining how Pelosi's Abomination cuts health care costs when every moving target gets hit with a tax increase. Is Old Steny telling us that those companies will just eat the cost of those tax increases rather than passing them onto consumers?

I wouldn't read anything into all these omissions. It's not like Speaker Pelosi would tell Old Steny to intentionally omit these things. Just because Madame Speaker has accused the CIA of consistently lying to Congress while they're under oath doesn't mean she'd tell the Majority Leader to lie about what Pelosi's Abomination. i'm sure that it's all a misunderstanding.

Who am I to question their voracity or their patriotism?

Comments welcome at LFR.