Confirmed: Baucus Bill Will Reduce Wages

The Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation has come to a shocking conclusion about the excise tax in the Baucus plan. The tax will raise prices for insurance policies and depress wages as a result.

From Hot Air:

The Joint Congressional Committee on Taxation has analyzed the excise tax in the Baucus plan and come to the logical conclusion that it will raise prices for insurance policies. In two letters issued yesterday, the JCT acknowledged that the increased premium costs for health-insurance plans that qualify for the excise tax will increase costs to employers offering them, depressing wages directly or indirectly as a result, depending on whether they impose the total cost increase on employees. The second letter demonstrates that the effect of the Baucus plan and its disappearing subsidies on lower-income workers is to force them into a higher tax bracket, disincentivizing gains in employment.


First, let’s look at the impact the Baucus plan has on effective marginal tax rates for Americans:

More here.

Is the CBO Report on the Baucus Bill Believable?

The CBO report putting the "gross cost of coverage provisions" in the Baucus Bill at $829 billion over the next decade should be met with great skepticism. The CBO itself was skeptical on page 12 of the report. Their numbers are only valid if "the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades." The CBO admits this "is often not the case for major legislation." Read the editorial below to find out how Medicare spending projections missed the mark "by a factor of more than 10!"

From Investors Business Daily:

But read on. On page 12 of CBO director Douglas Elmendorf's letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mt., comes the passage that reveals the skepticism of Congress' non-partisan in-house numbers crunchers.

"These projections assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades," writes Elmendorf, "which is often not the case for major legislation."

Baucus Bill Will Expand America's Worst Health Care Program: Medicaid

America's worst government run health care system is medicaid. The Baucus bill will shove up to a total of 25% of the population into the Medicaid program within 10 years.

The more we inspect Max Baucus’s health-care bill, the worse it looks. Today’s howler: One reason it allegedly “pays for itself” over 10 years is because it would break all 50 state budgets by permanently expanding Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The reason this saves money is Medicaid's price controls are even tighter than Medicare's. Forty percent of U.S. physicians won't accept Medicaid.

Governors are angry at Senator Baucus for the method he uses to make his version of health care reform pay for itself over 10 years. Some of the cost is shifted to state budgets.

About 59 million people are on Medicaid today—which means that a decade from now about a quarter of the total population would be on a program originally sold as help for low-income women, children and the disabled. State budgets would explode—by $37 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office—because they would no longer be allowed to set eligibility in line with their own decisions about taxes and spending. This is the mother—and father and crazy uncle—of unfunded mandates.

Why is Medicaid America's worst government run health program? The reimbursement rates are even lower than Medicare. Forty percent of U.S. doctors won't take Medicaid and drugs are usually not covered.

As for the poor uninsured, they'll be shunted off into what Democratic backbencher Ron Wyden calls a "caste system." While some people will be eligible for subsidized private health insurance, everyone in the lowest income bracket will be forced into Medicaid, the country's worst insurance program by a long shot. States try to control spending by restricting access to prescription drugs and specialists. About 40% of U.S. physicians won't accept Medicaid at all.

Harry Reid Doesn't Like Baucus Bill Either

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is already demanding changes to Senator Baucus bipartisan partisan health care reform bill. Reid said, "Let me be very clear, I will not bring a health insurance reform bill to the Senate floor that is not good for Nevada.” Harry Reid isn't supporting Obamacare? Perhaps Maxine Waters should probe him for racist thoughts and Rep. Hank Johnson can fit him with a white hood.

The Las Vegas Sun reported the story.