“THE MARK LEVIN SHOW” Live –Thursday September-10-2009

Howdy.

and she is just getting started.

Good for Genny! Sweet kitty.

thanks Dave!

Yes!

I knew immediately that when I heard that man call into a very popular show host, and when he made Beck out to be the inventor of the tea party movement, that the odds were the man was a plant.

Another host I know kisses his bottom every damn show and I can’t take it!

Some of these automatons act like he signed the Declaration of Independence!

Is it "elitist" if Glenn beck plays Moron Trivia?

Seems kind of mean calling 7/11 clerks asking trivia questions about current news and making football predictions with their wrong answers doesn't it?

Oh, I’m shocked.

That’s OK. I just wanted to call him, “clownish.” LOL!

Hey Obama, just for once give some positive credit to the USA, that is not in you is it?

FGS, do I have to do ALL of the work for Chris Simcox? No FReepers on the campaign??

Congressional Budget Office
Director’s Blog

« Will the Demand for Assets Fall When the Baby Boomers Retire?

Supplemental Information on Potential Effects of the Affordable Health Choices Act

Today CBO released a letter responding to a number of questions from the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) about the effects of health insurance legislation considered by the Committee this summer. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) issued a preliminary and partial analysis of that legislation as it was introduced on July 1, 2009. We have not completed an assessment of the legislation as it was ultimately approved by the committee.

Expanding Medicaid Coverage. One question concerned the cost of combining the legislation with an expansion of eligibility for Medicaid for all legal residents with income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). As CBO indicated in its letter to Senator Gregg on July 6, 2009, an expansion of Medicaid coverage of this sort would increase the federal cost of the legislation considerably—by an amount that is probably on the order of $500 billion over 10 years. Our preliminary assessment was that the provisions of the legislation pertaining to insurance coverage would increase federal deficits by $645 billion over the 2010–2019 period—so such a Medicaid expansion would probably bring the total federal cost to more than $1 trillion. Adding a Medicaid expansion to the legislation would also yield a substantially larger reduction in the number of people who are uninsured, because about half of the people projected to be uninsured under current law would have income below 150 percent of the FPL.

Effect on Workers’ Wages. Another question asked whether the costs borne by employers as a result of the proposal would be passed on to workers. Under the legislation as introduced, firms with more than 25 workers would have to offer health insurance (and contribute a specified share of the premiums) or pay a penalty. CBO believes that firms that pay the penalty would generally pass that cost on to their workers, primarily in the form of lower wages—just as firms that contribute toward health insurance today pay lower wages than they otherwise would, keeping their total compensation costs about the same. One exception would be workers earning close to the minimum wage, because their wages might not be able to adjust downward to offset the cost of the penalty; as a result, employment of those workers might be adversely affected, though that impact is likely to be small. (For more discussion, see Effects of Changes to the Health Insurance System on Labor Markets.)

Effect on Health Insurance Provided by Employers. A further question dealt with the effects of the legislation on employment-based health insurance. CBO and JCT estimated that the version that was introduced on July 1 would not have a major effect on the number of people obtaining coverage through an employer. This outcome is the net effect of changes going in both directions: Some people would gain employment-based coverage, because the mandate to obtain health insurance would induce some employers to make an offer of such coverage that would not have been made otherwise or would induce some individuals to take advantage of an existing offer that they would not have accepted otherwise. At the same time, we estimated that some people who would have employment-based coverage under current law would not have such coverage under the proposal.

Impact of a Public Plan. Another question was whether the federally administered “public plan” that would be offered under the legislation as introduced would have a substantial effect on federal spending for health care. In the legislation, the public plan would be managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, would pay negotiated rates to providers of health care, and would have to be financially self-sufficient (albeit with the government bearing some risk, as discussed below). Given those provisions, CBO’s assessment is that premiums for the public plan would typically be comparable to the average premiums of private plans offered in the insurance exchanges—and thus the existence of such a plan would not directly affect the amount of federal subsidies for health insurance under the legislation.

Nevertheless, including a public plan would probably have two small effects on private premiums, both of which would tend to lower federal subsidy payments through the exchanges to some degree. First, a public plan as structured in the introduced bill would probably attract a substantial minority of enrollees (in part because it would include a broad network of providers and would be likely to engage in only limited management of its health care benefits). As a result, it would add a small amount of competitive pressure in many insurance markets that are currently served by a limited number of private insurers. Second, a public plan is also apt to attract enrollees who, overall, are less healthy than average (for the same reasons it would attract a substantial number of enrollees). Although the payments received by all plans in the exchanges would be adjusted to account for differences in the health of their enrollees, the methods used to make such adjustments are imperfect. As a result, the higher costs of those less healthy enrollees in the public plan would probably be offset partially but not entirely; the rest of the added costs would be reflected in the public plan’s premiums. Correspondingly, the costs and premiums of competing private plans would, on average, be slightly lower than if no public plan was available.

Effects on National Spending for Health Care. The introduced legislation would also affect national spending on health care. By itself, a substantial expansion of insurance coverage could cause national spending on health care to increase by between 2 percent and 5 percent, largely because insured people generally receive somewhat more medical care than do uninsured people—notwithstanding the fact that some newly insured people would avoid expensive treatments by getting care sooner, before their illness progressed. (For more discussion, see Key Issues in Analyzing Health Care Proposals.) However, the rise in national spending on health care would be less than the increase for the federal government because some costs that are now paid by others would be shifted to the government (via the subsidies provided by the bill).

The bill would encourage private insurers to adopt measures to improve the coordination of the care they provide, but private insurers would be inclined to adopt cost-reducing strategies even in the absence of new legislation, so the effect of those provisions on costs is not clear. The insurance market reforms included in the bill would reduce administrative costs for individually purchased policies, but the resulting savings would probably be small relative to the increase in spending brought about by the insurance expansion. On balance, the bill would probably increase national spending on health care modestly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Health.

Does Laura really do that? Wait, I thought you liked Beck!

Huey Long, Ross Perot, populists. Statists are closer to populists than conservatives.

I would argue William Jennings Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt, but your point is taken.

Actually, I do think he is very entertaining, AND I think he has a net positive in our struggle for freedom.

HOWEVER, for him to be crowned as the inventor of the Tea Party Movement or MORE makes me want to hurl.

The fact is, that he gets his info the same places we get ours and he makes a show out of it, period.

That is a good thing. But lets not put him at the head of the movement, because he isn’t and it is detremental to the cause. Lets not make him out to be Caesar Rodney or even Barry Goldwater, cause he isn’t.

You said it!

FR is full of anti war third Party loons. (Ron Paul and his ilk)
They sound like Code Pinkos

Actually, if anyone deserves credit for inspiring the Tea Party movement, it’s probably Rick Santelli.

But the real impetus behind the movement had been brewing for a while; the Santelli rant just brought it to a head, and other fine patriots—many of them behind the scenes—ran with it.

We’ll see how many Beckies show up at the rally Saturday.

“Tea Party” and “9/12” are different things.

[Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in “The People’s Front of Judea”?]

Is it Beckies or Beckers?

I’m all confused now...