They KNEW, and HID the Report!

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/26/what-lies-beneath

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote -- the review by the secretary's office reportedly took less than three days -- and bore a note that the analysis was not the official position of the Obama administration.
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This is like something you would expect out of the Nixon administration! The report we were led to believe came out last week, actually came out a week before Congress voted, and they SUPPRESSED IT!

If the Bush administration had pulled something like this, we would be holding impeachment hearings by now! Congress had a right to know this bill would RAISE cost of health care, BEFORE they voted on it!
 
would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers
The total or per capita?

Since this brings a lot more people into the health system, I'd naturally assume it to increase the total. The increased demand could possibly effect per capita costs, although the effect wouldn't be permanent. Do you think that a better solution would be to just let them die?
 
The total or per capita?

Since this brings a lot more people into the health system, I'd naturally assume it to increase the total. The increased demand could possibly effect per capita costs, although the effect wouldn't be permanent. Do you think that a better solution would be to just let them die?

If they are too stupid to obtain Medicaid, then yes... let them die!
 
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If they are too stupid to obtain Medicaid, then yes... let them die!

You can't get Medicaid just by being poor. That is, until this bill expanded medicaid to anyone below 133% of the poverty line (which happens in 2014). I'm guessing you don't know much about medicaid.


Even when that happens, there will still be a huge donut hole in which people are too poor to afford insurance and too rich to get medicaid. Which is where the subsidies come into play.

I swear, conservatards opposing this is going to be their historical waterloo.
 
Well, well. Whodathunk that anonymous reports from the American Spectator critical of the Obama Administration would be something less than accurate?

The Chief Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, called "completely inaccurate" a report that the Department of Health and Human Services buried a report on health care in the days before a crucial vote.

"Consistent with the Office of the Actuary’s longstanding independent role on behalf of Congress, we did not seek approval or clearance from HHS (or anyone else) before issuing our analysis," he said in response to a question from POLITICO.

The report in the American Spectator has gained some traction on the right, but First Read's close look at the timeline suggests the report would have been unlikely to make it out in time for the passage of the legislation.

Foster backs up that reporting, and his denial carries a good deal of weight: He's an independent figure who testified, damagingly, in 2004 that the Bush Administration had -- in not dissimilar circumstances -- delayed the publication of a report on the cost of the Medicare prescription drug plan; last year, he delivered a report on Medicare cuts that sharply challenged the Obama Administration's claims that they were holding senior citizens harmless in health care legislation.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0410/Actuary_denies_delaying_report.html

Also:

Earlier this morning, Republican aides seized on this potentially explosive charge: that the Obama administration swept under the rug an independent score on its health-care bill -- a week before passage -- that showed the legislation would actually increase health spending.

The conservative American Spectator reported:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

A little back story: While the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the health-care legislation (Senate bill, plus reconciliation bill) would reduce the deficit by $138 billion over 10 years and $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, the Office of the Actuary at HHS said last week that the new health-care law would raise health costs $311 billion from 2010 to 2019.

But after some digging, it's pretty clear that the Spectator report isn't accurate.

1. The Office of the Actuary didn't receive the language of the reconciliation bill until March 18 (when the legislation was posted), so the Spectator's assertion that HHS had a copy of the Actuary's score a week before congressional passage -- on March 22 -- doesn’t make sense.

2. Past scores from the Office of the Actuary came out AFTER passage of the legislation. For the House bill that passed on Nov. 7, 2009, the Actuary's score came out on Nov. 13. And for the Senate bill that passed on Dec. 24, 2009, the Actuary's score came out on Jan. 8, 2010. This most recent Actuary report is dated April 22.

3. Given points #1 and #2, it's hard to see how the Actuary's score was available before the CBO's, which came out on March 18.


http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/27/2280410.aspx
 
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