http://www.liberalwhoppers.com/2010/04/27/hhs-buries-numbers-hhs-secretary-kathleen-sebelius-had-report-showing-obamacare-would-increase-insurance-costs-a-week-before-obamacare-vote/
HHS Buries numbers " HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had report showing Obamacare would increase insurance costs a week before final votes
It’s now being reported that prior to the final Congressional votes on Obamacare, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius buried a report detailing the devastating affects that Obamacare would have.
The American Spectator reports that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was given the analysis by the Medicare actuary, which showed that Obamacare would have many negative side effects.
Sebelius refused to review, and as a result publicize, the report, claiming she didn’t want to influence the vote. By not wanting to influence the vote, she meant she didn’t want to do anything to hurt the chances of Obamacare passing, even if that meant burying facts that Congress and the public should have had BEFORE the final votes were taken.
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.
Grace-Marie Turner of National Review Online summarizes the report that Sebelius buried until after the Obamacare vote:
Quote:But looking at the details of Foster’s report shows the many, many danger signs for Obamacare and how many of its promises will be broken:
1. People losing coverage: About 14 million people will lose their employer coverage by 2019, as smaller employers terminate their plans and workers who currently have employer coverage enroll in Medicaid. Half of all seniors on Medicare Advantage could lose their coverage and the extra benefits the plans offer.
2. Huge fines for companies: Businesses will pay $87 billion in penalties in the first five years after the fines trigger in 2014, partly because they can’t afford to offer expensive, government-mandated coverage and partly because some of their employees will apply for taxpayer-subsidized insurance.
3. Higher costs for consumers: Tens of billions of dollars in new fees and excise taxes will be “passed through to health consumers in the form of higher drug and devices prices and higher premiums,” according to Foster. A separate report shows small businesses will be hit hardest.
4. A program created to fail: The new “CLASS Act” long-term-care insurance program will face “a significant risk of failure,” according to Foster. Indeed, he finds, “there is a very serious risk that the problem of adverse selection will make the CLASS program unsustainable.”
5. Spending increases: Under the new law, national health spending will increase by $311 billion over the coming decade. And instead of bending the federal spending curve down, it will move it upward “by a net total of $251 billion” over the next decade.
6. “Free-riders”: An estimated 23 million people will remain uninsured in 2019, roughly 5 million of whom would be undocumented aliens; the remainder would be the 18 million who decline to get coverage and who will pay the penalty.
7. Spending reductions are fiction: Estimated reductions in the growth rate of health spending “may not be fully achievable” because “Medicare productivity adjustments could become unsustainable even within the next ten years, and over time the reductions in the scope of employer-sponsored health insurance could also become an issue.”
8. You can’t keep your doctor: Fifteen percent of all hospitals, nursing homes, and other providers treating Medicare patients could be operating at a loss by 2019, which will “possibly jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries.” Doctors are threatening to drop out of Medicare because cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates mean they can’t even cover their costs.
9. Coverage but no care: A significant portion of those newly eligible for Medicaid will have trouble finding physicians who will see them, and the increased demand for Medicaid services could be difficult to meet.
This is an objective report by administration actuaries that shows this sweeping legislation has serious, serious problems.
And there’s more: Joint Economic Committee Republicans explain in a new report the impact of a rarely mentioned $14.3 billion per year tax on health insurance, effective in 2014. They find this tax will be mostly passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage. It will cost the typical family of four with job-based coverage an additional $1,000 a year in higher premiums and will fall largely, and inequitably, on small businesses and their employees.
Whether you are for or against Obamacare and a move towards nationalized health care, it is hard to defend burying a report by the Medicare’s office of the actuary that detailed the negative impacts that passing Obamacare would cause. Anyone that watched the votes on C-SPAN or simply watched President Obama’s sales pitches leading up to the votes would know that the picture that Democrats painted was far different than what the Medicare actuary and the CBO stated. Obama and Congressional Demorats painted a picture of reduced costs, increased coverage, deficit reduction and so much more.
There is also a report that the White House Legislative Affairs office received a copy of the report prior to the Congressional vote. Ed Morrissey of Hot Air discusses this:
If the Obama administration had this information before the vote " and it should be noted that this comes from a single, anonymous source " then it deliberately misled Congress on the cost estimates. That may not be a crime, but it’s highly unethical at the least, and makes Barack Obama’s claims to operate with transparency absolutely laughable, if true. As the Prowler’s source points out, the entire reason CMS provided an analysis was to ensure that everyone knew the ramifications of passing this legislation. Deliberately withholding it would have stripped Congress of that transparency, if that’s indeed what happened.
The CBO, once you dug into the numbers, clearly showed that Obamacare would not reduce the deficit, but instead massively increase it. The CBO report stated that premiums would rise faster under Obamacare than if no legislation was passed. The HHS report, once Sebelius stopped burying it, showed the same, an increase in costs, and millions losing their coverage or being unable to find physicians willing to treat them.
Are the lies and Chicago style politics ‘really’ the change that American’s voted for in November of 2008?
