The rules committee will meet today discuss the House health care reform bill HR 3962. It will aired be live on C-SPAN 2.
4:52 – The Rules committee comes back from recess. (There is currently some audio trouble making it hurt to health the meeting.)
4:54 – Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Flo) questions Rangel about how much money comes from cuts and how much comes from cuts to programs. Rangel says it is about $500 billion each. McGovern points at that the cuts are cuts in waste and abuse.
4:56 – David Dreier (R-Cal) is upset that when Republicans tried to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. The Democrats did not help them and they only cut some $40 billion. Rangel think that says something about the ineffectiveness of Republicans.
4:59 – Diaz-Balart is claiming that the “cuts” to Medicare Advantage plans (which are dramatically overpaid and would now simply be paid on an equal footing to regular Medicare) would reduce enrollment in Medicare Advantage. He claims this violates Obama pledge that people get to keep their coverage.
5:04 – Frank Pallone (D-NJ) defends the change to Medicare Advantage and claims some Medicare Advantage plans even in Diaz-Balart’s on district come in under the cost of regular Medicare. This change will only get rid of the bad plans. Diaz-Balart is basically arguing the in rural areas private insurance companies can’t be run efficently and some how we need to keep these plans in business.
5:11 – David Camp (R-Mich) is defending Medicare Advantage and basically called the CBO liars for claiming Medicare Advantage is overpaid by 14%. Diaz-Balart claims Medicare Advantage has been successful because it is “flexible.” (in reality it is “successful” because it is extremely over paid.)
5:15 – Pallone “all we are trying to do is level the playing field.” He says all this does is put the private Medicare Advantage plans on a level playing feild with fee for service. He compares this to the public option. It would complete with private plans on a level playing field.
5:17 – Pallone disputes Diaz-Balart’s claim that the public option would drive all the private plans out of business. (if private planscan’t do a better, cheaper job why should we try to protect them?)
5:18 – Diaz-Balart does point out a possible problem that the teired employer mandate might create an incentive to keep a business at a set size. (I beleive he is overstating the issue but is some case it might effect some decisions by some small business. I would prefer a flat employer mandate for all employers regardless of size.)
5:23 – Diaz-Balart is horrified that eventually all insurance in this country would need to meet some minimum benefit to be qualified as health insurance.
5:26 – There is a lot of confusing on the employer mandate would be enforced and how the penality would work.
5:29 – Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Flo) this country ranks terribly on most of the world health measurements while premiums continue to rise. He claims some have decide to presue fear mongering instead of offering solutions. He points out that five teabagger protest yesterday all fell ill and got government health care.
5:34 – Hasting delivers a long defense of the bill and bad mouthing the Republicans for not doing anything.
5:41 – Barton tries to defend the terrible Republican alternative. Hasting response that the CBO said there will would still leave millions of Americans uninsured.
5:45 – Barton is upset they did not ask him to help put together a bill. (Since he basically said he and the rest of his party would never vote for the bill why would the want his input?) Pallone said there just was no way they were going to come to an agreement.
5:52 – Pete Sessions (R) is claiming the taxes in the bill would be a job killer and Camp is backing him up. (Rangel’s mic is not working and it is very difficult to hear what he is saying)
5:55 – Peter Sessions is demanding to know what Republican ideas got added to the bill. Polis says that he listened to Republican ideas of citizens that lived in his district. They added interstate insurance selling mechanism, it would cut the deficit, and the size of the bill was reduced.
5:58 – Sessions seems honestly horrified that some basic regulations are going to be put on insurance like banning pre-exsisting condition and banning life time cap on health insurance policies. He says they would increase the cost of health insurance. He honestly supports charging woman more for health insurance than men.
6:04 – Sessions ask Pallone if he looked at the CBO savings of the Republican bill, Pallone said he had not.
6:08 – Sessions claims the there is a special carve out in the manager’s amendment for 3-4 Democrats’ districts physician owned hosipitals. Rangel disputes the claim that is an earmark meant to only help Democratic district. Camp and Barton claim only the few hosipitals that would be helped are in Democratic districts. Sessions ask Rangel if this carve out was done for a vote and if so would Rangel consider it an ethical violation.
6:15 – Sessions is referencing a NYT article that claims changes were made to the rules governing physican owned hospitals to help win some votes. Session and Rangel are arguing if and why this change was added.
6:20 – Sessions is freaking out that no economic analysis on the impact of jobs. Camp is claiming it would be a huge jobs kill. He wants a “guestimate” by CBO. Sessions wants Rangels to sent a letter with him to the CBO about this issue.
6:27 – Doris Matsui (D-Cal) “we can’t afford the statue quo.” Health cost are causing half of all bankrupticies and premiums keep rising faster than wages. She ask Miller to explain how it would help small businesses. He said they would get access to the new exchange and the bill would end job lock to encourage starting businesses. He said not having a universal health care system is just bad for the economy.
6:32 – Matsui, Medicare is a government program that works. She is happy about some of the small delivery reforms that will be part of the bill for Medicare.
6:40 – Pallone thinks one good idea George Bush had was to provide money to community health centers and says the bill would be a big improvement for them. Miller claims they are critical for improving the health status of Americans.
6:45 – McGovern (not Barton) joked that the committee meeting was like Gitmo.
6:46 – Virginia Foxx (R-NC) claims everyone wants everyone to have health care, but she is against these “government takeover.” She claims this is the greatest health care system in the world and this would turn it in the wrong direction. Foxx decided to use “evidence.” She claims the infant mortality rates information is a lie, because countries have a different defination for infant mortality.
6:51 – Foxx claims lower life expentancy in American is due to are bad living not our bad health care system.
6:55 – Foxx mocks people for hating the “mean and pesky” private health insurance companies claiming Medicare is worse. Foxx is attacking the AARP for how they run their Medigap program and thinks Democrats should not be proud of their endorsement. She is claiming this is a kickback. Rangel says he is proud to haver the AARP’s support.
6:59 – Dreier said he was called by the Texas AMA to tell him they were furious that the national AMA endorsed the bill.
7:06 – Foxx complains that the taxes would start for a few years before the benifits start.
7:12 – John Kline (R-Minn) claims this bill would be bad for small business but the Republican bill would be. Miller gets angry. Says that doing more health saving accounts would not work.
7:16 – (More mic trouble makes it hard to hear anyone)
7:17 – Foxx says the bill will make government funding of abortion and that Democrats should allow a vote on an amendment. (She seems to being refering to the Stupak amendment.) Pallone defends the current language about abortion in reference to the exchange. Claims the exchange will not subsidizes abortion.
7:22 – Foxx thinks it is absurd that there could be trillions of more in saving in this plan. She claims “never in the history of this country has the government do anything cheaper than the private sector.”
7:28 – Dennos Cardoza (D-Cal) is not wild about the bill and has never really been wild about any bill which needs to work through this long multi-committee sausage making process. Cardoza tells Camp that he does not beleive the Republican plan would cover his people.
7:34 – As a blue dog Cardoza thinks we need to focus on cost more. He thinks technology needs to be used increase efficency.
7:36 – Michael Arcuri (D-NY) ask Camp if anyone who wants insurance can go out and buy insurance in the Republican plan. Camp dances around answering. The exchange because heated with Arcuri repeating his question again and again.
7:43 – Arcuri attacks Camp’s claim that the bill would be a major job killing and argues that his analysis is not based on the bill.
7:50 – Arcuri compared the rhetoric to the current bill to that attacks on Medicare and says like Medicare this will be popular soon after it passed.
7:53 – Ed Perlmutter (D – Col0) makes it personal. He talks about his daughter of epilepsy and how the pre-existing condition would make her uninsurable. He calls the current discrimination terrible and he considers it unconsitutional. He is proud that this Congress will take on this subject. Perlmutter attacks the Republican bill for allowing discrimination based on pre-existing conditions. Camp defends his bill for not banning pre-existing conditions. He claims the Republican bill would only be a first step and will not be a way to get to universal coverage.
8:03 – Perlmutter slams the Republican bill for doing almost nothing. He reads the USA Today editoral attacking the Republican “alternative.”
8:06 – Chellie Pingree (D-ME) wants to finish this evening so they can send the vote to the floor and get the bill passed. Her brother was diagnosed with skin cancer. He was unable to find an insurance company, so he get rid of every asset he had so he could be on Medicaid. He unfortunately died a few months later. This was twenty years ago and even back then we were talking about the problem of pre-existing conditions. Pingree is tired of waiting. “Let’s just get this done.”
8:11 – Jared Polis (D-Colo) said there is nothing in this bill in “any way shape or form” that is a government take over of health care. He thinks we have spent about the right amount of time on this bill. Polis is a support of the public option and is glad Congress will be able to choose the public option. Camp lies claiming his bill would not result in an increase in the number of uninsured in this country. Polis calls him out for his falsehood using the CBO analysis to prove that more people without insurance.
8:18 – Polis comes out strongly in defense of allowing illegal immigrants to buy health insurance with their own money. He says it would save the government money. Pallone completely agrees with Polis and say it is purely a political move but very bad policy.
8:21 – The panel of witness from the three committees who work on the bill have been dismissed.
8:23 – The Committee will finally start dealing with amendments.
8:24 – Nathan Deal (R) lists several amendment he wants to be able to offer.
8:28 – Greg Walden (R) offers two amendments that were adopted in committee but were stripped out. The first would make sure that new Health Benefits Advisory Committee had members from rural medicine. The second would make sure there was significant rural repersentation on MedPAC.
8:34 -Michael Burgess (R-TX) offers an amendment would that would give states a bonus for achieving compliance with making Medicaid the payer of last resort. Burgess wants insurance companies to have the power to use smoking to set rates. His amendment would let them could charge smokers a ratio of 1.5 to 1. His third amendment would put in place the extreme tort reform found in the Republican alternative. The next amendment would set Medicaid reimbursement at a minimum rate. This amendment would allow members of congress to be part of Medicaid. This amendment would make Medicaid expansion contingent on having an acceptable level of access to a sufficent provider network. This amendment is very funny. It would require CBO to project cost every year and for the next 100 years!!! The last amendment would not allow the public option to use the U.S. treasure as a means for capitol reserve fund.
8:54 – Marsha Blackburn (R) offers 6 amendments.
9:05 – Next was Rep. Gingrey (R) who submitted 7 amendments.
9:10 – Buck McKeon (R) has 5 amendments.
All summary of all amendments can be seen here on the Committee on Rules page and the Committee on Rules Republican page has a link to the text of the amendments.
9:18 – Gingrey and Burgess join the chorus of Republicans who have recently been attacking the individual mandate.
9:22 – Sessions claims to still be finding out things that “scare him to death.” He claims people will go the jail for not pay mandates.
This theme that the failure to pay the individual mandate could technically be a tax violation and could therefore result in the maximum penality for tax evasion is very popular with Republicans. Expect to see more talk about this line of attack moving forward.
9:30 – Cardoza vows to help Walden work to address the issues in his amendments. That will probably not be dealt with in this bill but could probably be dealt with in the future.
9:38 – Cardoza, in response to Sessions fear mongering, said what is really scare is our current health care system.
9:47 – Foxx and Walden spend a long time focusing on the fact that his amendments, approved by bipartisan voted in committee, were stripped out of the final bill.
(You get the strong sense that the Republicans are doing everything they can to drag out this process.)
9:54 – Perlmutter defends the mandate and says the claim that people would go to jail because of the individual mandate is silly and gets into a heated debate with Sessions.
9:58 – Dreier keeps harping on the fact that his bill HR 3962 was technically not marked up in committee. (This is just plain silly. It is the combined versions of HR 3200 that were marked up in three committees. Do expect to see Republicans try to use this strange extremely technical attack moving forward.)
10:12 – Dreier is reading Pelosi’s promise for a “New Direction” to change they way Congress works. One of the promise was that a bill would not be marked up in the rules committee later than 10:00 pm the day before the bill comes up for debate. Oh snap it is 10:14 pm.
10:15 – Kevin Brady (R) has 8 amendments. He is talking about one that would insure there is no “rationing” in Medicare.
10:20 – Shelley Berkley (D) tells a very entertaining story about how a Jewish doctor (her eventual husband) tricked her into getting a bone density test. It was very funny story and a moment of lightness needed during a long day. The amendment would provide funding for bone density test.
10:26 – Steven Kagen (D) offers an amendment to openly disclose all payment data. It would create real tranparency in health care pricing.
10:35 – Hank Johnson (D) offers two amendments. His first amendment would cap prescription drug cost. His second would change the out of pocket annual cap to four quarterly caps.
10:41 – Phil Roe (R) offers his amendment.
10:52 – Sheila Jackson Lee (D) offers two amendments. They would help physician owned hosipitals.
11:02 – Steve Scalise (R) offers an amendment so that no one making under $250,000 will pay any new taxes. He offers another amendment that would put a four year sunset on the bill. And finally he offers one dealing with the FDA putting regulations on oysters.
11:07 – Mark Kirk (R) offers one amendment to “protect” the doctor patient relationship. He offers a second amendment to basically gut the individual mandate.
11:15 – John Fleming (R) offers an amendment to force members of congress on to the public option. (This is a standard theme among several Republican amendments.) He says the public option will slowly morph into single payer.
11:21 – Ron Klein (D) he offers an amendment to make changes to the Medicare Advantage program. It would slow the phase in of reform to Medicare Advantage.
11:51 – Mark Kirk and Perlmutter get into an argument about how health care reform will work. Kirk is defending a bold face lie that a 27 year old with serious medical problem would pay less now than after reform. Kirk must literally have no idea what the current private insurance market is like.
11:55 – Sessions is a broken record who will not give up on the claim that people will go to jail for not buying health insurance.
12:02 – Bart Stupak (D-Mich) claims that they had an agreement and that it just feel apart moments ago on the issue of abortion. Stupak offers his anti-abortion amendment. (It would effectively make it illegal for private insurance in the individual market to cover abortion.) Stupak calls all “compromises” offered unacceptable.
12:20 – Hastings just said it is unlikely that he would vote for reform if this admendment became part of the bill.
12:35 – Steve King (R-Iowa) offers a several amendments on a range of topics. He offers several dealing with “illegals.”
1:02 – King claims that he saw news reports that only two amendments will be accepted.
1:04 – The hearing portion of HR 3962 and HR 3961 has comed to the end.
1:05 – The Stupak Amendment will get a floor vote and the Republican substitute amendment will also get a vote.
1:10 – The Republicans on the committee offer many amendments which are all reject by party line votes.
1:34 – The debate will start tomorrow at 9.
1:37 – The bill passed out of the Rules Committee.
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