Obama's first choice manage health care reforms, Senator Tom Daschle shared the House/Senate Conference Committee's recipe for some really nasty sausage. The New York Times is reporting the final bill's details according to Sen. Daschle:
Daschle Handicaps the Final Health Bill
Among Mr. Daschle’s predictions:
* The final legislation will not contain the House bill’s provision for a tax on high incomes, but will contain an excise tax on so-called Cadillac insurance plans with annual premiums above $25,500 — higher than the $23,000 level currently in the Senate bill, which has created a backlash among labor groups and others.
(1) They refuse to tax the ultra wealthy elites, but they have no problem taxing workers for their employer provided health care insurance.
* There will not be a mandate for employers to insure their workers, but there will be a mandate for individuals to carry insurance.
(2) Lets call this one the Walmart Loophole. Go after the employee, leave the employers be.
You want to bet the Walton family billionaires prefer this version?
* The subsidies to enable people to buy insurance will end up somewhere between the more generous levels in the House bill and the less generous ones in the Senate.
(3) So the subsidies to individuals have gone from paltry to inadequate.
* Insurers would be able to charge older people 2.5 times as much as younger ones for policies. The House bill has a 2 to 1 ratio, and the Senate bill has it at 3 to 1.
(4) So your costs will rise as you approach the magic age of 65 years old.
* The starting date for insurance reform will be "somewhere around 2014 and not much sooner than that.
(5) To give private insurers plenty of time to run us through their ringer until 2014 arrives.
* Cost containment in the bill would be of "minimal value’’ at the beginning.
(6) This is bad to workers, their employers, and the American economy in general since we can expect health care costs to consume even larger shares of our income, our profits, and our GDP, since it makes only feeble attempts to rein in costs in the near term.
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I confess I clung so some measure of optimism until I read this litany of offensive details in the bill.
No Employer Mandate?
And these are Democrats?
Are you FREAKING Kidding me?!
Are Democrats that politically tone deaf?
I wouldn't be surprised if this bill is so bad that it attracts a number of Republican votes.