Wading deep into documents available from CBO and the House and Senate Budget Committees reveals that the claim that Obamacare, in the form of the Senate health bill Democrats are now trying to deem through the House, would reduce the deficit is based on the assumption of an immediate 21% cut in payments to doctors and hospitals under Medicare.  But that is just the beginning.

The growth of these payments would be arbitrarily limited over time, so this cut would effectively become bigger and bigger.  For the second 10 years, the claim that Obamacare would reduce the deficit by close to a trillion dollars is based on assumed Medicare cuts over those years of over $2 trillion.

This would cause havoc and chaos in health care for America’s seniors.  They would often not be able to find doctors, specialists and hospitals to provide needed health care.  Most enjoying superior coverage from Medicare Advantage plans would lose that coverage, as indicated by the Chief Actuary for Medicare.  Investment in new health care technology, new breakthrough medical treatments and services, and new miracle cure drugs would dry up, which has already started.

But if Congress does not allow those cuts to go into effect, Obamacare will further explode the deficit.  The new CBO score regarding the House reconciliation bill does not change any of this.

America today suffers the spectacle of a President of the United States, and Democrat Congressional leadership, proclaiming to the nation that their socialized medicine plan will reduce budget deficits, based on fantastic assumptions of trillions of dollars in intractable cuts to Medicare that would leave that program unworkable in delivering health care to the America’s seniors.

Medicare already suffers an unfunded liability of $38 trillion according to Medicare’s own government actuaries.  What Obama and Congressional Democrats are proposing is to loot $2.5 trillion from Medicare over the next 20 years to spend on new entitlements under Obamacare, and leave Medicare with that overwhelming unfunded liability.

In an earlier generation, when the Washington establishment enacted another health care abuse they were so certain America would love, called catastrophic coverage under Medicare, seniors protested by climbing all over the limousine motorcade of then House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski in Chicago.  That led to repeal of that abuse the very next year by a Democrat controlled Congress.  Just an historical note.

]]> http://biggovernment.com/pferrara/2010/03/19/the-obamacare-deficit-fraud/feed/ 87 http://biggovernment.com/pferrara/2010/03/03/stopping-the-runaway-congress/ http://biggovernment.com/pferrara/2010/03/03/stopping-the-runaway-congress/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:02:24 +0000 Peter Ferrara http://biggovernment.com/?p=83398 The recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court.  The New Jersey Constitution expressly provides for the recall of members of Congress representing the state in a provision adopted by a 75% favorable vote of the people in 1995.  The New Jersey state legislature then expressly provided by statute for the procedures for such a recall.

The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez filed papers for the circulation of their petitions to begin last September.  But the Secretary of State, who has no authority to issue rulings on constitutional questions, nevertheless refused to approve them on the grounds that her own New Jersey state constitution must be unconstitutional under the federal constitution, which she said did not allow such recalls.

The three judge appellate panel considering yesterday whether the recall should proceed expressed reluctance to declare a provision of their own state’s constitution duly adopted by the people null and void.  They also seemed receptive to the argument by the recall committee that they were only asking the court for an order for the circulation of petitions to proceed, and there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits that.  To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution protects the political expression involved in signing a petition calling for the recall of an elected official, and the petitioning of government for the redress of grievances.

If the recall committee gets the required signatures from over a million citizens calling for the recall of Senator Menendez, and the majority of citizens vote to recall him in a recall election, and the Senator decides to thumb his nose at the will of the people anyway, then the issue of whether state recalls of members of Congress are constitutional under the U.S. Constitution would be presented to the courts.  But until then all that the New Jersey recall committee is asking for is the freedom of political expression involved in gathering recall petition signatures, and the U.S. Constitution protects rather than prohibits that.

Based on the oral argument yesterday, the recall effort in New Jersey stands a good chance of getting the go ahead for now.  That could have a powerful political effect in Washington right away.  The law in 9 states provides for the recall of members of Congress, and those states include 12 incumbent Democrat Senators who are not otherwise up for reelection this year. So if the New Jersey courts allow the recall there to proceed, that means all 12 of these Democrat incumbents could be added to the ballot this year, putting majority control of the Senate even more in play.

That could cause Congressional Democrats to be more reluctant to follow Barack Obama off a political cliff.  The 12 Democrat Senators potentially on the hook for a recall election will be more likely to decide they better spend more time listening to their voters than to Barack Obama’s ideological entreaties.  That could be the final straw that stops Obamacare, in accordance with the will of the people.

The lack of a clear safety net for the uninsured is what gives Democrats the political lift to keep coming back for socialized medicine.  Republicans should advance the modest reforms necessary to establish a true safety net that will ensure that no one will be denied essential health care.  Only that will permanently protect the health care of the American people from government takeover and control.  Republicans should trumpet this point at the health care summit tomorrow.

Reform should start with Medicaid, which already spends over $400 billion a year providing substandard coverage for 50 million poor Americans.  Congress should transform Medicaid to provide assistance to purchase private health insurance for all who otherwise could not afford coverage, ideally with health insurance vouchers.

This one step would enormously benefit the poor already on Medicaid.  The program today pays doctors and hospitals only 60% of costs for their health care services for the poor.  As a result, 40% of doctors and hospitals won’t take Medicaid patients.  This is already a form of rationing, as Medicaid patients find obtaining health care increasingly difficult, and studies show they suffer worse health outcomes as a result.  Health insurance vouchers would free the poor from this Medicaid ghetto, enabling them to obtain the same health care as the middle class, because they would be able to buy the same health insurance in the market.

Ideally this would be done by changing Medicaid financing to provide the federal assistance to the states for the program through finite block grants, which would not vary to match increased state Medicaid spending as today.  States that innovate to reduce costs can then keep the savings.  States that operate programs with continued runaway costs would pay those additional costs themselves.  Such reforms worked spectacularly in stopping the runaway costs of the old AFDC program when Congress adopted welfare reform in 1996.

The block grants should provide states with increased federal funding sufficient, counting state Medicaid funds, to give assistance to all who truly cannot afford health insurance.  The voters of each state can then decide how much assistance for the purchase of health insurance to provide families at different income levels.  This would rightly vary with the different income and cost levels of each state.

Done right, this would ensure that no one would lack health insurance because they can’t afford it.  But to ensure a complete safety net, federal funding should also be provided for each state to set up an uninsurable risk pool.  Those uninsured who become too sick to purchase health insurance in the market for the first time, perhaps because they have cancer or heart disease, would be assured of guaranteed coverage through the risk pool.  They would be charged a premium based on their ability to pay.  Federal and state funding would cover remaining costs.

Such risk pools already exist in over 30 states, and they work well at relatively little cost to the taxpayers because few people actually become truly uninsurable.  This works far better than forcing insurers to cover everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions, or regulations such as guaranteed issue (requiring insurers to cover everyone who applies regardless of health condition) or community rating (requiring insurers to charge everyone the same regardless of health condition).  Such regulation naturally causes health insurance premiums to soar.  That is because it is like requiring insurers to provide fire insurance for houses that are already on fire.  With the above reforms, such cost increases would be avoided, while ensuring that everyone has somewhere to go to get essential coverage and care.

The law already provides that insurers cannot cut off existing policyholders, or impose discriminatory rate increases, because they become sick while covered.  That would be like allowing fire insurers to cut off coverage for houses once they catch on fire.  If this law needs to be modernized, it should be.

With these reforms, those who have insurance can keep it, those who can’t afford it are given help to buy it, and those who nevertheless remain uninsured and then become too sick to buy it have a back up safety net in the risk pools.

This completely solves the problem of the uninsured without any individual or employer mandates, which are burdensome, unnecessary gateways to enormous trouble.  There is also no need whatsoever for any new health care bureaucracy.  Also not needed is any sort of health care rationing, such as fixed health care budgets, accountable care organizations, pay for performance, comparative effectiveness dictates, or “cost effectiveness” regulations.  Republicans should vociferously object to all of this unnecessary socialized medicine baggage at the summit tomorrow.

President Obama and the Democrats are using the uninsured as a foil for the massive expansion of government power and control over health care involved in socialized medicine.  Solving the problem of the uninsured through the above means takes away that foil.

Ideally this would be done by amending the state constitution to provide for such recall elections.  But it can be done through statute as well, with the New Jersey Uniform Recall Election Law as a good model.

The greatest opportunity is in the states that already provide for citizen initiatives to put state constitutional amendments or proposed statutes on the state ballot for a vote of the people for adoption.  In these states, the citizens can act directly, without depending on the politicians to adopt a check on their own power.

The right of recall is desirable because it maintains democratic accountability to the people throughout the entire term of elected officials, rather than just at election time.  This is more relevant now because increasingly we see an attitude among elected officials that they know best and the people are ignorant yahoos who should be ignored until they need to be fooled again at election time.  The people need a right of recall to remove officials who display this anti-democratic attitude after they are elected.

We have seen this problem in particular in the health care battle, where Congressional representatives have displayed the attitude that the people are too gullible, confused and misled to understand the issue, and should be ignored by the wise elected officials who know better.  Elected officials have responded to citizens voicing their objections with name calling, labeling them Nazis, racists, and tea baggers.  These officials are still threatening to adopt a thorough government takeover of health care on the idea that the people will never be able to unscramble the mess.  The right of recall is needed to shortcircuit this tactic.

Another increasing problem is candidates who campaign as conservatives to get elected, and then once they get in office they join with the far left to pass their agenda instead.  With the right of recall, voters who feel they were snookered in this way can act to remove their representative once this pattern becomes apparent.  With this power in place, candidates would be less likely to try to get elected on false pretenses in the first place.

The right of recall would also counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters feel there were too many shenanigans in a vote count, and don’t trust the result, they can act to provide for a new election.  A perfect example is the recent extended vote count for Sen. Al Franken in Minnesota, which was based on a developed art form of focusing the recount on districts that heavily favor one party, where votes can be manufactured.  With this success, rest assured that this will be tried again and again.

A recent example of recall in action was the 2003 removal of then recently reelected California Gov. Davis.  The people voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election, and replaced him with current Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This example shows that the recall process is practical and not counterproductively disruptive.

But anyone who wants to pursue such a recall, or the process of initiative to adopt recall for their state, should realize from the start that this is a time consuming process requiring the collection of likely millions of signatures on petitions, all in strict compliance with the letter of the law.  You can bet that opponents will be looking for any legal variance to deny the whole effort.  Therefore, the effort needs to be organized from the beginning with sufficient resources and experienced input to be successful.

We are getting the same attitude on other issues, from global warming regulation, to taxes, government spending, deficits, federal debt, energy policy, welfare, corporate bailouts, and beyond.  Too many of our elected Members of Congress are making behind-closed-door deals and ignoring their constituents, calling them “yahoos,” “Nazis”,“and “tea-baggers.”

This isn’t American democracy — this is a shop-worn, elitist, authoritarianism closer to abuses we see in countries like Venezuela.

So, what would happen if the people could change this rotten situation?

Actually, there may just well be a mechanism within our political system to do so — the Right of Recall.  Nine states already have laws on the books providing for Recall of members of Congress: Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin.  These 9 states suffer 12 incumbent Senators who are members of the runaway Congressional majority, who are not already standing for reelection in 2010, but potentially could be.

For example, the New Jersey state constitution provides, “The people reserve unto themselves the power to recall, after at least one year of service, any elected official in this State or representing this State in the United States Congress.”

Tea party activists in New Jersey have already filed to circulate recall petitions regarding Sen. Robert Menendez.  Their recent Secretary of State took the position that such recall of members of Congress is not authorized under the U.S. Constitution.

Grassroots activists in Louisiana have similarly already filed for recall of Senator Mary Landrieu, and the circulation of recall petitions there has been authorized.

Exercising this existing statutory right of recall in these 9 states could potentially reverse the control in the Senate this year by placing 12 Senators not currently up for re-eectionion this year on their state ballots.  (For more information on this Right of Recall, see www.RecallCongressNow.org).

We have seen the recall process work in California in 2003 when citizens in that state, disgusted with recently reelected Democrat Governor, Gray Davis, voted overwhelmingly to remove him from office in a recall election.

Another nine states provide language in their constitutions to recall only state officials. The other states without recall provisions for members of Congress can change their laws to adopt it.  In states with the right to initiative, this can be done by a vote of the people after circulating petitions to put the change on the ballot.

Too many in Congress today are showing us that our representatives can no longer be trusted with 2-6 years in office without ongoing popular accountability.  Today’s Congressional majority is threatening to dump a load of bad legislation on the country despite the public’s opposition, daring us to try to “clean it up” later.  Only a Right of Recall can prevent such abuses in the future.

The Right of Recall would also help counter the growing problem of voter fraud.  If voters felt that an election were subject to too many irregularities in its conduct or in how the votes were counted, they could circulate Recall petitions for a new election.

Every state should adopt the Right of Recall to protect its voters.  The constitutionality of recalling members of Congress adopted under state law would ultimately have to be decided in the courts.  Or the people could definitively decide the issue themselves through voting to adopt a constitutional amendment, or by electing a Congress that would adopt a federal statute authorizing each state to adopt such a Right of Recall.