CBO Steps Up Again

Brushes back Baucus and Obama's bullying: Budget chief contradicts Obama on Medicare costs

New Gallup poll, Cost Is Foremost Healthcare Issue for Americans
But public largely skeptical that healthcare reform will bring relief

More: Pelosi Kills Deal with Blue Dogs. The Hill. Mean-spirited Baucus will be known as Mad Max. Peter Ferrara, TAS:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has finally achieved broad bipartisanship with his new health overhaul plan. Nobody else has been able to unite 99 Senators behind any idea in health reform. But Baucus has managed to do just that, with 99 Senators unified behind the idea of NOT supporting his plan.

The plan is carefully crafted to scare away anyone interested in good public policy or just good politics (read re-election). The Baucus bill is grossly underestimated to cost almost $1 trillion in new spending, all financed by higher taxes on health care and health insurance, particularly union health plans, and Medicare cuts for senior citizens, while still leaving at least 25 million uninsured according to the CBO. It still provides for a government takeover of health care and the bureaucratic structure for government rationing of health care, increasing rather than lowering health costs overall.

More:

The Baucus bill also includes $6 billion in start-up funds "to establish health care cooperatives that would provide insurance coverage and operate as non-profit organizations," as the CBO explains. This is in service to the left-wing notion that insurance company profits are the problem in health care. But such profits are a negligible factor in health costs. As economist John Lott explains, "The Kaiser Foundation estimates that self-insured companies covered about 75 million out of 137 million workers in 2008." In the remaining market, Lott continues:

[T]he dominant players…are non-profits….In state after state, Blue Cross and Blue Shield hold the largest market share. On average, the largest non-profit holds over half of the "full" market share in…29 states. Why add another non-profit to the mix? Getting rid of profits would not make costs go down. They would go up, because without profits there would no longer be the same incentive to hold down costs. Profits are the reward firms get for figuring out what consumers want.

And we saw in the case of North Dakota where a non-profit can lead to laziness and corruption, emphasizing the need to give insurance companies the ability to compete across state lines. Enough of the double talk. Watch.

How to Insure Every American: We don't need radical change. Subsidies and high risk pools can get the job done. Congressmen John Shadegg (R-AZ) and Pete Hoekstra (R-MI).