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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3226898/posts

FLASHBACK: MIT analysis backs Obama (Gruber provided new ammunition Senate Dems)
POLITICO ^ | 11/28/09 | Mike Allen

A new analysis by a leading MIT economist provides new ammunition for Democrats as the Senate begins formally debating the historic health-reform bill being pushed by President Barack Obama.

The report concludes that under the Senate’s health-reform bill, Americans buying individual coverage will pay less than they do for today’s typical individual market coverage, and would be protected from high out-of-pocket costs.

So Democrats will argue that under the Senate bill, Americans would pay less for more.

The new document arms Democrats with a response to the contention of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the bill would mean “higher premiums, higher taxes, and massive cuts to Medicare.”

The “microsimulation” analysis is by Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Treasury Department official under President Bill Clinton. Gruber used data from the Congressional Budget Office.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/rahm-orders-health-care-article-be-must-read-for-staffers?ref=fpblg

Rahm Orders Health Care Article Be Must-Read For Staffers

ByCHRISTINA BELLANTONIPublishedNOVEMBER 24, 2009, 3:35 PM EST
When President Obama likes a magazine article, White House staffers had better read it.

Obama’s must-read is Ron Brownstein’s Saturday blog post “A Milestone in the Health Care Journey” at the Atlantic’s political Web site.

Politico noted today that Obama found the article, which lauds Max Baucus’ approach to health care, a good summary of the cost controls in the health care bill.

An administration official tells TPMDC that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned the article as homework during a recent meeting.

According to the official, Emanuel told senior staffers “not to come back to the next day’s meeting if they hadn’t read the article.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/11/a-milestone-in-the-health-care-journey/30619/

A Milestone in the Health Care Journey

RONALD BROWNSTEINNOV 21 2009, 11:29 AM ET

When I reached Jonathan Gruber on Thursday, he was working his way, page by laborious page, through the mammoth health care bill Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had unveiled just a few hours earlier. Gruber is a leading health economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulted by politicians in both parties. He was one of almost two dozen top economists who sent President Obama a letter earlier this month insisting that reform won’t succeed unless it “bends the curve” in the long-term growth of health care costs. And, on that front, Gruber likes what he sees in the Reid proposal. Actually he likes it a lot.

“I’m sort of a known skeptic on this stuff,” Gruber told me. “My summary is it’s really hard to figure out how to bend the cost curve, but I can’t think of a thing to try that they didn’t try. They really make the best effort anyone has ever made. Everything is in here....I can’t think of anything I’d do that they are not doing in the bill. You couldn’t have done better than they are doing.”

Gruber may be especially effusive. But the Senate blueprint, which faces its first votes tonight, also is winning praise from other leading health reformers like Mark McClellan, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush and Len Nichols, health policy director at the centrist New America Foundation. “The bottom line,” Nichols says, “is the legislation is sending a signal that business as usual [in the medical system] is going to end.”

(snip)

In their November 17 letter to Obama, the group of economists led by Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford University, identified four pillars of fiscally-responsible health care reform. They maintained that the bill needed to include a tax on high-end “Cadillac” insurance plans; to pursue “aggressive” tests of payment reforms that will “provide incentives for physicians and hospitals to focus on quality” and provide “care that is better coordinated”; and establish an independent Medicare commission that can continuously develop and implement “new efforts to improve quality and contain costs.” Finally, they said the Congressional Budget Office “must project the bill to be at least deficit neutral over the 10-year budget window and deficit reducing thereafter.”

(snip)

http://www.politico.com/playbook/1109/playbook874.html

Obama makes a Ron Brownstein blog post mandatory reading for the West Wing

By: MIKE ALLEN on November 24, 2009

EXCERPT

WHAT THE PRESIDENT IS READING — Sources say President Obama declared that a Saturday blog post by Ronald Brownstein on The Atlantic’s “Politics” channel — on how health reform would control costs — was mandatory reading for all senior staff and that everyone involved in, or covering, the health care debate should see the piece, headlined: “A Milestone In the Health Care Journey”:

http://www.landrieu.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1630

Landrieu: Now is the Time to Pass Health Care Reform
December 15, 2009

WASHINGTON — Following a meeting with President Obama and fellow Democratic Senators, United States Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., today encouraged the Senate to move health care legislation forward. Sen. Landrieu commented on the improvements made to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and outlined how these changes will positively affect Louisiana families and small businesses.

Sen. Landrieu said:

“While many of us expressed cost and bureaucracy concerns about early drafts of health care reform legislation, it is clear that the product the Senate is debating is a dramatic improvement. Senate Democrats have developed a consensus that combines the best blend of private and public approaches to reduce cost, expand coverage and increase choice and competition for Americans. The Congressional Budget Office and the nation’s premier economists have confirmed that premiums will go down or remain stable, so that wages for millions of Americans can increase.

(snip)