Saving our HEALTH

“So it looks as though we are going to get a health-care-reform bill. Now the question is whether it will be reform, or “reform”: whether it will improve the way we care for people in this country or, for the most part, be a taxpayer-funded boon to the warped and wasteful industry we already know. Call me naive or cynical—or both—but I can’t quite get my mind around the notion that the way to bring “change we can believe in” is to cut an upfront deal with Billy Tauzin.  (Click here to follow Howard Fineman).

Nothing against Billy, of course. At 66, Wilbert Joseph “Billy” Tauzin II is what he is: a Louisiana politician and former congressman with the Bayou-bred knack for cloaking brainpower and bare-knuckle tactics in bonhomie; a masterful mixologist of power and money; and, since 2005, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which he joined (for a reported $2.5 million a year) shortly after playing the key congressional role in enacting a Medicare prescription-drug plan that is a bonanza for the industry he now (officially) serves.”

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the speaker will not allow the final language of the health care to be posted online for 72 hours before bringing the bill to a vote on the House floor, despite her September 24 statement that she was “absolutely” committed to doing so.

House members are still negotiating important issues in the bill—whether it will provide taxpayer-funding for abortions, for example. Pelosi is pushing for a Saturday House vote, and a number of big changes will be introduced, likely less than 24 hours before the vote takes place (if in fact it does). The Rules Committee hasn’t yet released its resolution, or rule, that must be passed before the bill can move from committee to the floor. The rule will set the terms of debate and determine what amendments are in order.”

“The nation’s largest doctors’ group said Thursday that it is supporting health-care legislation due for a vote in the House this week, but it insisted that it must be paired with a fix of the Medicare physician-payment system.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama Thursday welcomed that support and an endorsement from the seniors’ group AARP as signs that his push to overhaul the health-care system is successfully moving forward…”

“Thousands of emboldened conservative activists converged on Capitol Hill for a midday rally Thursday, a last-ditch effort to kill the Democrats’ health-care reform legislation they called “Pelosi Care.”

Protesters from across the Eastern Seaboard waved flags, held signs and rang cowbells as their chants of “Kill This Bill” echoed across the Mall. Dozens of Republican lawmakers, led by  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), stood on the Capitol steps and pledged to do everything they could to defeat the health-care reform bill by Saturday, when House members plan to vote…”

“In a last-minute exercise of presidential hand-holding, President Obama plans to travel to Capitol Hill on Friday morning to meet with House Democrats, one day before they vote on his highest domestic priority: a bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Without any Republican support for the legislation, Mr. Obama and the House Democratic leadership must rely entirely on Democrats to get the bill passed. White House officials said the president wanted to address any lingering doubts about the legislation in the House, where liberal Democrats are concerned that the bill’s so-called public option — a government-backed insurance plan — is too weak, and where conservative Democrats are uneasy about whether the legislation would permit federal money to be used to pay for abortion…”

“House Democratic leaders, undeterred by delays in the Senate or this week’s Republican electoral triumphs, plan to call a vote Saturday on the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. health-care policy in four decades.

The House will move on the $1.05 trillion legislation that would cover 36 million uninsured people and create a government plan to compete with private insurers even after the election of Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia. President Barack Obama will go to Capitol Hill tomorrow to meet with House Democrats, as they seek the 218 votes they need to pass the bill, a Democratic leadership aide said…”

“Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) on Wednesday expressed his opposition to the House healthcare reform bill.

Skelton is not the only panel chairman who is planning to vote no. Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) has been highly critical of the legislation that could be voted on later this week…”

“Senior Congressional Democrats told ABC News today it is highly unlikely that a health care reform bill will be completed this year, just a week after President Barack Obama declared he was “absolutely confident” he’ll be able to sign one by then.

‘Getting this done by the by the end of the year is a no-go,’ a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News. Two other key Congressional Democrats also told ABC News the same thing.

This may come as an unwelcome surprise for the White House, where officials from the president on down have repeatedly said the health care bill would be signed into law by the end of the year…”

“After months spent criticizing Democrats’ health overhaul plans, House Republicans have produced a draft proposal of their own. It’s much shorter and focuses on bringing down costs rather than extending coverage to nearly all Americans.

A 230-page draft was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. A spokeswoman for Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said changes were still being made before the bill would be finalized in time to offer as an alternative when Democrats begin floor debate on their bill, possibly at the end of this week…”

“In a rational political world, this 1,990-page runaway train would have been derailed months ago. With spending and debt already at record peacetime levels, the bill creates a new and probably unrepealable middle-class entitlement that is designed to expand over time. Taxes will need to rise precipitously…”

“All of this is intentional, even if it isn’t explicitly acknowledged. The overriding liberal ambition is to finish the work began decades ago as the Great Society of converting health care into a government responsibility. Mr. Obama’s own Medicare actuaries estimate that the federal share of U.S. health dollars will quickly climb beyond 60% from 46% today. One reason Mrs. Pelosi has fought so ferociously against her own Blue Dog colleagues to include at least a scaled-back “public option” entitlement program is so that the architecture is in place for future Congresses to expand this share even further.

As Congress’s balance sheet drowns in trillions of dollars in new obligations, the political system will have no choice but to start making cost-minded decisions about which treatments patients are allowed to receive. Democrats can’t regulate their way out of the reality that we live in a world of finite resources and infinite wants. Once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, medical rationing is inevitable—especially for the innovative high-cost technologies and drugs that are the future of medicine.

Mr. Obama rode into office on a wave of “change,” but we doubt most voters realized that the change Democrats had in mind was making health care even more expensive and rigid than the status quo. Critics will say we are exaggerating, but we believe it is no stretch to say that Mrs. Pelosi’s handiwork ranks with the Smoot-Hawley tariff and FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act as among the worst bills Congress has ever seriously contemplated.”

“William Hsiao is a professor of economics at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the 2004 book “Getting Health Reform Right.” He served as a health care adviser to the Taiwan government in the 1990s, when officials decided to reform that country’s health care system and to introduce universal coverage. He spoke with Anne Underwood, a freelance writer…”

Towards the end of the interview—> “Third, in the legislative process, they rejected a provision to adjust the premium automatically when the national health system depletes its reserves. In every country, health care costs are increasing faster than wages. When that happens, the premium has to go up. But that provision wasn’t incorporated into the law. As a result, the system is running a deficit. National health insurance tries to cut the fees for hospital and physician services. But eventually these fee reductions will adversely affect the quality of health care.”

“Polls can measure many things, but one thing they have a hard time getting at is intensity: Yes, people will tell a pollster whom they prefer in a campaign, but do they feel so strongly about their choice that they’ll actually go out to vote?

Only elections can answer the intensity question, which is the most important factor in Tuesday’s off-year governor’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and, increasingly, a special election in a New York congressional district. Intensity, as much as outcomes, may provide the best insight into national trends heading into the much more meaningful election in 2010…”