After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate’s health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.

Read the rest: House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it.

In the Wall Street Journal former federal district judge Michael McConnell points out that this is not Constitutional.  Investor’s Business Daily says the “self-executing rule” procedure has been used before on minor issues, and could be struck down by the Supreme Court.

Comments by Cato’s Michael Cannon make us realize this should not surprise us:

Democrats have already hidden 60 percent of the cost of the Senate bill, effected an obscenely partisan change in Massachusetts law to keep the bill moving, pledged more than a billion taxpayer dollars to buy votes for the bill, and packed the bill with an unconstitutional individual mandate and provisions that violate the First Amendment. It’s almost as if, to paraphrase comedian Lewis Black, Democrats spent a whole year, umm, desecrating the Constitution and at the last minute went, “Oh! Missed a spot!”

Insurance providers will be required to offer contraceptive coverage in all policies and maternity care in a majority of policies under a bill that received final approval from the Colorado Senate Friday.

House Bill 1021, sponsored by Reps. Jerry Frangas, D-Denver, and Beth McCann, D-Denver, now heads back to the House for concurrence on Senate amendments and then is expected to go to Gov. Bill Ritter. Ritter, a Democrat, has not stated a position on the measure yet. …

The bill passed on a party-line vote, with 20 Democrats supporting it and all 14 Republicans opposing it. Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, was not present for the vote.

Questions:

1. To politicians who voted for this: Why not quit your jobs and start your own insurance company that offers the policies that you think people want?  Or just get a controlling interesting in an existing company. It can be called “Democrat health plans,” or “Canadian-style health plans”, or whatever.  In a free-market for insurance, people could have a health plan modeled after the country of their choice. Well, except that they could not force people to enroll.   Or is compulsion an essential part?

2.  Is right to make someone’s insurance policy illegal?  If someone does not want a policy that covers maternity care and contraceptives, and an insurer is willing to sell that product, why is it OK to prohibit this transaction?

3.  Colorado politicians forbid Coloradans from buying insurance available in other states. If we could, we’d be more likely find a policy more to our liking.  Why oppose this? No, such competition would not be a “race to the bottom.”

4. If someone breaks up a robbery or an assault (or calls a police officer to do so) - that’s admirable, right?  But if you call in law enforcement to break up a voluntary transaction between consenting adults, is that admirable?

5. Will mandating maternity coverage increase premiums?  A typical mandates increases premiums by about 0.4%.  The Council for Affordable Health Insurance estimates a 1-3% increase.  Colorado’s Chief Medical Officer told the Washington Post that 2,500 Coloradans lose insurance for every one percent increase in premiums.

1. The bill coddles insurance companies with the individual mandate, the employer mandate,subsidies, regulations and limits on competition. [1]

2. So-called “reform” is a national version of Massachusetts’ “Romney Care”, which has failed. [11]

3. The Democrats’ Health-Care Proposals Promise To Entrench The Status Quo. [13]

4. Health care is not a right, or is it a privilege.  We have the right *to seek* health care.[3]

5. Health care reform will increase your insurance premiums. [2]

6. Middle-class taxes will increase.  [2]

7. Many people will not be able to keep their current insurance. [2]

8. It will not reduce the budget deficit. [2]

9. It’s wrong to force people to pay for other people’s health care or insurance. That’s what charity is for.

10. Insurance price controls hurt the sick [4]

11. It’s wrong to force people to buy a product.

12. It’s wrong to make people’s current insurance policy (or any insurance policy) illegal - espcially HSA-qualified policies, which encourage prudent spending.  [12]

13. Mandating employer health care is more poison, not an antidote. [5]

14. Mandatory insurance punishes low-wage workers with high marginal tax rates, which keeps them poor. [6]

15. Medicaid is a fraud-ridden poverty trap that provides lousy care and increases everyone’s insurance premiums. [7] Don’t expand it. Why not let taxpayers *choose* which charities their tax dollars fund? [8]

16. Coverage is NOT care: Having insurance does not mean you get needed medical care. [9]

17. Doctors will quit, or substitute the judgment of government bureaucrats for their own medical expertise [10]

18. Expanding political controls on medicine and medical care will stifle innovation of new medical technologies and medications.

Instead, try some free-market reforms.  For example, read “Yes, Mr. President: A Free Market Can Fix Health Care” at healthcare.Cato.org or “Real reform: free-markets” at PatientPowerNow.org.

=== References ===

[1] Insurers Gone Wild, Jacob Sullum, Reason.com

[2] “Five Health Reform Whoppers” by Michael Tanner at AOLnews.

[3] Health Care Is Not a Privilege … Nor Is It a Right, Brian Schwartz; Is Health care a right?, by Walter Williams; Health Care is Not a Right, by Leonard Piekoff

[4] http://www.patientpowernow.org/2010/01/15/insurance-price-controls-hurt-sick

[5] Denver Daily News, Aug 21, 2009, Brian Schwartz

[6] “Individual Mandate Would Impose High Implicit Taxes on Low-Wage Workers,” Michael Cannon at Kaiser Health News

[7] <http://www.patientpowernow.org/2009/10/30/medicare-medicaid-fraud-exceeds-insurance-company-profits/>,
<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6841>,
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137487987962873.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>,
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aeGBzglj2iyY>

[8] Taxpayer Choice: A Solution to the Crisis of the Welfare State, by John Goodman

[9] http://www.patientpowernow.org/tag/coverage-is-not-care

[10] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-your-doctor-getting-ready-to-shrug

[11] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamacare-a-national-version-of-romneycare

[12] http://www.patientpowernow.org/tag/illegal-insurance, Congress Declares War on HSAs by Ron Bachman, and this video: http://www.patientpowernow.org/2009/06/25/obama-care

[13] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/24/opinion/main5109914.shtml

[14] http://www.patientpowernow.org/2009/11/27/health-reform-medical-technology-innovation,
http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/30/obama-drug-medicine-oped-cx_ch_1031hooper.html

Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens. …

Professor Obama, who will seek reelection on the 100th anniversary of Wilson’s 1912 election, understands, which makes him melancholy. Speaking to Katie Couric on Feb. 7, Obama said:

“I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant, academically approved approach to health care, and didn’t have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it, and just go ahead and have that passed. But that’s not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately, what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people.”

Note his aesthetic criterion of elegance, by which he probably means sublime complexity. During the yearlong health-care debate, Republicans such as Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee have consistently cautioned against the conceit that government is good at “comprehensive” solutions to the complex problems of a continental nation.

F.A. Hayek put it well:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Frederic Bastiat is more biting. He wrote in The Law (1850):

Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations. This is so true that, if by chance, the socialists have any doubts about the success of these combinations, they will demand that a small portion of mankind be set aside to experiment upon.

The popular idea of trying all systems is well known. And one socialist leader has been known seriously to demand that the Constituent Assembly give him a small district with all its inhabitants, to try his experiments upon.

In the same manner, an inventor makes a model before he constructs the full-sized machine; the chemist wastes some chemicals—the farmer wastes some seeds and land—to try out an idea.

But what a difference there is between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his elements, between the farmer and his seeds! And in all sincerity, the socialist thinks that there is the same difference between him and mankind!

It is no wonder that the writers of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial creation of the legislator’s genius. This idea—the fruit of classical education—has taken possession of all the intellectuals and famous writers of our country. To these intellectuals and writers, the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.

(Will’s article via Lyndsi Thomas)

[T]he governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. …

The result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless. …

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever-expanding number of government jobs will be statists – sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life …

Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.OK, then what? You’ll roll it back – like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel’n'dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter?

Read the whole article: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats.

(Via FIRM)

When you think of low-paying jobs, doctor doesn’t usually come to mind.But with a 21% cut in Medicare payments slated to take effect later this month, physicians who say they are making an OK living may be reduced to income levels that no longer make their profession viable.

… [Dr. William Schreiber of Syracuse NY] expects the cuts to take away $3 out of every $5 he currently earns. And, as a primary care physician, he already wasn’t earning anything near the salary of a specialist.

“After the costs of my own benefits are deducted, that will leave me with the equivalent of a minimum wage job,” he said.

Unless Congress acts to adjust Medicare payments without considering the impact of rising health care costs, Schreiber said he could be forced into bankruptcy or shut his practice. …

Overall, Medicare pays between 63% and 72% of the costs for one of Schreiber’s patients — although the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services applies different payment rates in different states.

(Via Mark Steyn’s reference in the Orange County Register, via FIRM)

“We allow the insurance industry to run wild in this country,” President Obama declared on Monday. “We can’t have a system that works better for the insurance companies than it does for the American people.”

Yet Obama’s plan to tame health insurers would boost their business, protect them from competition, and guarantee their profits, all at the expense of consumers and taxpayers. It is therefore not surprising that the insurance companies, while they object to the president’s rhetoric and quibble over some of the details, are happy to be domesticated. Here are five ways in which Obama would help insurers while pretending to fight them.

Sullum lists the following:

• The individual mandate.
• The employer mandate.
• Subsidies.
• Regulations.
• Limits on competition.

Sullum continues:

As [Obama] himself notes, “they’re going to have 30 million new customers” thanks to the government’s mandates and subsidies. …

… Obama’s plan would use money forcibly extracted from taxpayers and policyholders to keep insurers healthy. He says this arrangement means “insurance companies would finally be held accountable to the American people.”

The collectivist language is telling. I don’t want insurance companies to be “accountable to the American people”; I want them to be accountable to me, as a consumer.

Read the whole article; it’s great: Insurers Gone Wild! Why health insurers welcome Obama’s plan to tame them.

(via the Institute for Health Freedom)

The key is Obama’s declaration, “I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right.” Ultimately, Obama and his liberal base believe that government-guaranteed health care is a “moral imperative” — i.e., “it’s right.” And that will also be the key to defeating it.

As Leonard Peikoff once wrote, “So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan — not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it — to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.”

Read the whole article in Pajamas Media: “Can the Moral ‘Narrative’ of ObamaCare Be Defeated?”

The second event is a health care policy roundtable co-sponsored by the Heartland Institute. This event will be taking place at the Denver Public Library from 2 to 5pm. Click here for the agenda including speakers and topics. If you’d like to join us for the health care roundtable, please call Mary MacFarlane at 303.279.6536 or RSVP online here.

The blog post also has info about Wednesday’s Taxpayer Day at the Capitol.  Read more here.

Summary of arguments against health care “reform” (& for free-market medicine)
For the latest in political machinations:

• Google News search results on “health care bill.”
• Politico’s “Live Pulse: Breaking news from the health care fight”
• Washington Times’ politics section

On to predictions…from Intrade.com:

‘Obamacare’ health care reform (see contract rules*) to become law before midnight ET 30 Jun 2010:

The above shows the previous day’s closing price, not the most recent trades.  If anyone has a reference to how accurate InTrade’s prediction markets are, do link them in the comments.

* Here are the contract rules mentioned above:

This contract will settle (expire) at 100 ($10.00) if a healthcare reform bill is passed into law before midnight ET on the date specified in the contract.

The contract will settle (expire) at 0 ($0.00) if if a healthcare reform bill is not passed into law before midnight ET on the date specified in the contract.

Expiry will be based on the official passage of a healthcare reform bill into law, as reported by three independent and reliable media sources.

For purposes of this contract a healthcare reform bill is considered one of the following:

- The Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962)
- The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590)
- A bill reconciling the differences between the two bills named above

If any of these bills are passed into law the contract will expire at 100. If none of these three are passed into law the contract will expire at 0.

Due to the nature of this contract please also see Contract Rule 1.7 Unforeseen Circumstances.

The Exchange reserves the right to invoke Contract Rule 1.8 (Time Protection) if deemed appropriate.

Any changes to the result after the contract has expired will not be taken into account - Exchange Rule 1.4

I thought I’d read about the InTrade ObamaCare prediction market on EconLog, but could not find it. Then, after writing this post, I read one of John Stossel’s posts from last week, where he mentioned it.