Politics or Poppycock A Look From the Left At Politics, Politicians, Policies and Issues of National Concern

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The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day.

CBO predicts Senate Finance health care bill will cut deficit $81B over 10 years, yet no Republican gets on board. W. Post: “White House budget director Peter Orszag applauded the analysis, saying the bill ‘demonstrates that we can expand coverage and improve quality while being fiscally responsible,’ … senior Republicans seemed only to harden in their opposition to the measure … [Sen. Olympia] Snowe said Wednesday that she was relieved to see that the cost of expanding coverage remained below Obama’s limit of $900 billion over the next decade. ‘But we have a lot to review,’ she said. She urged Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to wait until next week for a final vote. ‘It’s a critical vote. . . . I would rather have the comfort level of having had sufficient time to analyze it.’”

The Treatment’s Jonathan Cohn laments the savings derived from covering less people: “CBO estimates that, as of 2019, 94 percent of legal non-elderly residents and 91 percent of all non-elderly residents would have insurance. That’s significantly lower than the projections from the House bill, which would result in corresponding figures of 97 percent and 94 percent. In raw numbers, it’s the difference between 25 million people (Senate Finance bill) and 17 million (House bills) still uninsured ten years from now … the difference between covering people at the level of the Senate Finance bill and covering something close to all legal residents is maybe $150 billion over ten years. That’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things.”

Hospital lobby perturbed by the relatively weak coverage. NYT: “hospital lobbyists said Wednesday that the coverage was not good enough to meet the terms of an agreement they had reached with Mr. Baucus and the White House. The industry said it had agreed to accept $155 billion in reduced Medicare payments over 10 years, provided that 97 percent of all legal residents were insured. ‘They have not yet met the standard of our deal,’ said Charles N. Kahn III, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a trade group.”

HCAN’s Jason Rosenbaum reminds that the deficit reduction has nothing to do choosing co-ops over public option: “‘CBO estimates that of the $6 billion in federal funds that would be made available, about $3 billion would be spent over the 2010–2019 period.’ Co-ops are so ineffective you can’t even give away the start-up money.”

Yet another poll with big support for public option. Bloomberg: “The [Quinnipiac] poll found voters support a government-run plan to compete with private insurers 61 percent to 34 percent.”

Time’s Karen Tumulty raises concerns that weak individual mandate could increase premiums: “Some health experts say the latest version of the committee’s bill could actually put upward pressure on the cost of private insurance. That is because the committee weakened a provision that would require Americans who do not have coverage through their employer, or through government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, to go out and purchase it … that the new version of the bill would impose lower fines than the original draft on those who are not exempt from the mandate, but who choose not to buy insurance anyway.”

HuffPost’s Sam Stein reports Senate Dems are exploring public option “opt-out” compromise: “Senate Democrats have begun discussions on a compromise approach to health care reform that would establish a robust, national public option for insurance coverage but give individual states the right to opt out of the program … It was pulled out of an alternative idea, put forth by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and, prior to him, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to give states the power to determine whether they want to implement a public insurance option. But instead of starting with no national public option and giving state governments the right to develop their own, the newest compromise approaches the issue from the opposite direction: beginning with a national public option and giving state governments the right not to have one … ‘It is clearly much better than triggers and [Carper's] opt-ins,’ said Richard Kirsch, executive director of the group Health Care For American Now.”

FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher criticizes: “F*** those poor people who live in Republican states easily bought off by corrupt legislatures. They don’t deserve heatlh care anyway.”