$12,680: Annual family health care insurance premium in 2008, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. If employer-based, a 70/30 employer/employee cost split is typical.
$9,827: The annual hidden tax imposed by defensive medicine on a typical family of 4 in the US.
$43 Million: Total contributions by attorneys to the 2008 Obama for president campaign.
1300%: Increase in TV ad spending by Malpractice attorneys from 2004 to 2008.
1,300 Percent. That’s the increase in TV ad spending by malpractice attorneys between 2004 and 2008, according to a new study conducted by the Institute for Legal Reform. The number of ads over the same period skyrocketed from about 10,150 in 2004 to more than 156,000 in 2008.
An earlier blog post – Tort reform will lower costs, improve access, quality of care – discussed the annual $10,000 hidden tax imposed on a family of four by the defensive medical strategies doctors employ to avoid malpractice suits. So why is there little or no mention of tort reform in the current health care proposals? Read more »
That moment in The Great Obamacare War arrived yesterday, when the Speaker of the House stood firm on the public option, essentially telling the White House to go pound sand.
In effect, Speaker Pelosi just called in an air-strike on her own position.
This is not going to be pretty.
It will likely cost her the Speakership. After the 2010 elections.
Matt Frei’s commentary on the BBC News website, titled Washington diary: Obama’s slump, is so full of BS I don’t even know where to begin. Granted, it’s an opinion piece, but millions of people around the world watch or listen to BBC News every day, and the line between reporting opinions and facts is increasingly blurred, especially at the BBC.
Let’s skip by the “redefining the relationship with the rest of the world” – after all, it looks like Gitmo won’t be closed anytime soon and Iran hasn’t backed down on its nuclear threat. Instead, let’s start with Frei’s supposed neighbor, “Republican Dave”, who voted for Obama because “he could not stomach the thought of Sarah Palin being one heartbeat away from the Oval Office”. How big a factor in President Obama’s election were voters like Dave? According to CNN, 9% of self-identified Republicans voted for Obama. Referring to President Obama, Frei states: “It is the wobbly Obama Republicans – like my friend Dave – that he really needs to worry about.” Read more »
The nonsurprising factoid in the latest Rassmussen poll is that 57% Would Like to Replace Entire Congress. In addition to the headline two interesting trends are highlighted in the release.
First trend- Increasingly partisan approval ratings.
…the number of Democrats who would vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of Democrats were ready to throw them all out…While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators, voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected politicians in the House and Senate.
According to Rassmussen Republican voters are disenchanted with congresspeople from their party, but this situation remains unchanged.
Second trend – An increasing mistrust of Congresspeople’s motivations and their true concern for constituents.
Just 14% give Congress good or excellent review for their overall performance, while only 16% believe it’s Very Likely that Congress will address the most important problems facing our nation. Seventy-five percent (75%) say members of Congress are more interested in their own careers than they are in helping people.
Ballooning deficit projections, the intransigence of Speaker Pelosi and others about health care reform’s public option, and the Democrats’ (such as Carol Shea-Porter) handling of the so-called town hall meetings have cost House members dearly:
…most voters say they understand the health care legislation better than Congress. Just 22% think the legislature has a good understanding of the issue. Three-out-of-four (74%) trust their own economic judgment more than Congress’.
For a democratic congressperson, increased partisanship combined with broad-based “throw the bums out” discontent has to be a nightmare. On the one hand, there’s the pressure to conform to the party line; on the other, there’s the risk of losing re-election. The few who represent “safe” seats can afford to back the President, but the remainder who support the public option will – at the least – have to prove to independent constituents that they understand the legislation and have solid reasons for backing it. Best guess is that most of them have a lot of work to do to convince voters to return them to Washington, and the ones who rode the anti-Bush wave (like Rep Shea-Porter) will be the most vulnerable.
That’s the opinion of Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, according to the Washington Times. Apparently the updated 10 year budget projections, while trending towards the CBO’s $9.1 Trillion deficit estimate, selectively include and exclude the impacts of proposed legislation:
Holtz-Eakin said that said the Obama administration wrongly assumes it will receive $640 billion in revenue from the creation of a cap-and-trade system for polluters, which would rely on the passage of an energy reform bill that many Democrats oppose, plus another $200 billion from a controversial proposal to tax international businesses. The Obama administration is also counting on the idea that health care reform will not increase the deficit, which some believe is impossible.
What’s more stunning about this? Counting in contributions from Cap and Trade, or trying to pass off projections that the proposed health care reform package will actually lower the budget deficit? A public option that extends benefits to uninsured Americans while creating a massive new bureaucracy is simply unaffordable. Targeted incentives to make health insurance more affordable combined with meaningful tort reform would be more practical and lead to more probable deficit reductions over the longer term.