House Democrats...Hey Our Health Care Bill Is Cheap Too

A veritable bargain at 900 BILLION or so.

House leaders have been working to lower the cost of the $1.2 trillion health-care package they offered in July. The report from the Congressional Budget Office, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, puts the cost of one plan at $859 billion over the next decade and the other at $905 billion.

...Both packages are based on the original House framework, which proposes to extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans by expanding Medicaid eligibility and subsidizing private insurance for people who lack access to affordable coverage through an employer. Each would expand the ranks of the insured to more than 95 percent of Americans by 2019, and each would create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

Under the $905 billion version favored by liberals, compensation rates for medical providers in the government-run insurance plan would be based on Medicare rates, which are significantly lower than private rates. That idea, which Senate liberals also support, would hold down costs for the government, according to the CBO, but it would create a problem for providers in rural areas where Medicare rates tend to run much lower than the national average.

Under the $859 billion version, administrators would negotiate rates directly with doctors and hospitals, the option preferred by moderate Democrats from rural areas.

The 'smaller' of the new plans relys extensively on expanding Medicaid which, as Ace went through before, means shifting costs to the states and then back to the federal government when it comes time to bailout the states from these unsustainable costs.

It's simply a shell game.

The larger plan looks like a de facto take over of the health insurance and health care systems by the federal government. Democrats love to say there's no government take over but if the largest source of revenue in the system (the federal government) is setting prices for the whole system, who exactly runs it if not the federal government?

This is simply a house of cards designed to fall so that eventually, as in the Highlander, there can be only one...the Government Option.

Never forget, no mater what Obama and the Democrats say, that's the goal.

posted by DrewM. at 11:57 AM

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