White House: Obama's health insurance excise tax can't be repealed by future Congresses!

[Better Believe It]

Peter Orszag is director of the Office of Management and Budget. Nancy-Ann DeParle is director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

Orszag and DeParle Spin Insurance Reform Whopper
By: Scarecrow
March 5, 2010

The Administration’s OMB Director Peter Orszag and Health care adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle use the Washington Post’s op-ed page to pitch the deficit reduction and cost-cutting advantages of the President’s health care reforms. It’s the standard pitch we’ve seen before, offering a necessary response to many of the false statements made by the bill’s detractors.

There are undoubtedly worthwhile cost-cutting/efficiency measures in the current bills. Predictably, the authors once again neglect to mention what the President’s proposals should have done but didn’t.

Other than ignoring the industry provider market power, concentration and price-fixing elephants in the room — and thus not having to explain why Medicare can’t reimport or negotiate drug prices, the US can’t shorten anti-competitive patents and non-compete agreements, can’t end off-shore tax havens for PhRMA’s largest drug companies, and can’t confront the private insurers with more budget-saving, premium-reducing public insurance alternatives — Orszag and De Parle slip in one giant whopper with extra cheese and mayo when describing the excise tax escalation rates:

"And, just as with the version in the Senate-passed bill, the president’s excise-tax proposal would increase that threshold more slowly than the rate of health-care cost growth. As a result, firms would have a gradually increasing incentive to seek higher-quality and lower-cost health plans."

Uh, no. When the insurer’s and employer’s incentives are to avoid the tax by reducing the premium, the inevitable result — because it’s the easiest tax-avoidance path — is to provide lower-quality insurance to employees based on higher co-payments (or less coverage) for the employees.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/33469

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The two self describe "fiscal hawks" also pointed out in their Op-Ed that:

" if a future Congress tried to repeal the excise tax in, say, 2016 or 2017, it would violate the statutory pay-go law just enacted -- and Congress would therefore either need to find hundreds of billions in offsets or waive the pay-go rules. Circumventing pay-go was perhaps a feasible option for Congress the last time that law was in effect during the budget surpluses of the late 1990s. But it is much less likely to be feasible in the projected fiscal environment."

[bbgrunt]

1. not good. nt

[ThomCat]

2. Yup, a built in mechanism to push everyone onto crap plans

with lower premiums, offering fewer services, with Much higher co-pays, and Much higher deductibles.

Instead of a solution, it's a guarantee that more and more people will get screwed every year.

Thanks Obama. :(

[WVRICK13]

3. I Would Gladly Pay Higher Taxes

if everyone had access to decent health care. But this bill and tax will have the opposite effect, placing more money in the insurance companies pockets while reducing the quality of coverage for more people.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. They'd just waive/repeal pay-go.

There is no law that can't be undone.

[Better Believe It]

5. They can't do that because of the "deficit crisis" Obama has promised to end.

[dysfunctional press]

6. welll...when he ends it, there won't be a crisis, and then they can.

and will.

[Better Believe It]

9. The deficit will be cut on the backs of working people and those on social security and Medicare

Watch what that deficit reducation commission will come up with and follow who is heading it up and who is appointed to it. It will be loaded up with conservative Republican and Democratic "spending hawks". It will propose higher taxes mainly on working people and the middle class and major cuts in so-called entitlement programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

[AllentownJake]

11. Yep

and a certain subset of posters on here will be rabidly in favor of it, even though at this time you are a conspiracy theorist for seeing what is painfully obvious.

See Insurance Mandates in June of 2009 for an example.

[AllentownJake]

8. Yes and the CBO has just scored a 20 trillion deficit in 2020 nt.

[AllentownJake]

7. As a local amateur political operative

I could probably write about 50 effective truthful attack ads on this legislation that will kill any democrat that votes for it in any district the democrat has less than a 10 point advantage.

Seeing that I'm a novice, and really not that bright, I'm guessing the pros on the right who do this for a living, are going to be having a lot of fun.

[Name removed]

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