Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Baucus Bill

The Senate Finance Committee has passed chairman Max Baucus's pet bill out to conference. Now a small group of politicians will try to bring about a resolution between this and HR 3200 and whatever ideas that Obama and his White House cabal see fit to bring to the table.  What do these proposals portend for the people of the country?
 
Here's a quote for your consideration:
"Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class? That dream began to unravel this past summer when Congress proposed a bill that failed to include any competition-based reforms that would actually bend the curve of health-care costs. It fell apart completely when Democrats began papering over the gaping holes their plan would rip in the federal budget.
 
As it now stands, the plan proposed by Democrats and the Obama administration would not only fail to reduce the cost burden on middle-class families, it would make that burden significantly worse."
Here's another line from this Wall Street Journal editorial:
"The Joint Committee on Taxation indicates that 87% of the burden would fall on Americans making less than $200,000, and more than half on those earning under $100,000.
 
Industry fees are even worse because Democrats chose to make these fees nondeductible. This means that insurance companies will have to raise premiums significantly just to break even. American families will bear a burden even greater than the $130 billion in fees that the bill intends to collect. According to my analysis, premiums will rise by as much as $200 billion over the next 10 years - and 90% will again fall on the middle class."
It is amazing to me that seemingly intelligent people will ignore evidence such as this and still believe that they will benefit from this massive  new entitlement program.  Read the entire article here.