Harry Reid guts the ban on annual limits. His defense: this now worthless fake insurance would be “cheaper.” It appears that HHS knew in advance about the gutting of consumer protections. Byron Dorgan is holding up the Senate until he gets a vote on his drug re-importation amendment. Reid and the White House are working to [...]

The CMS released its analysis of the Senate health care bill. (One big caveat about this report is that it does not take into account any “deal” that Reid may or may not have reached on the public option.) Overall the report is a mixed bag. National health expenditure and coverage expansion National health expenditures [...]

The reason Reid dropped the annual limit from the Senate bill was to make his bill appear cheaper in the CBO score, and make insurance premiums appear lower. (Via Ezra Klein) Hill sources explain that this was inserted because CBO said premiums would “go through the roof” if insurers couldn’t cap benefits. The official quote [...]

The new excise tax on employer-provided health insurance will result in most people getting worse health insurance from their employer, insurance that covers less. That is just not my conclusion, it is the conclusion of the CMS. In reaction to the tax, many employers would reduce the scope of their health benefits. The resulting reductions [...]

The Department of Health & Human Services seems to have been quietly promoting the “annual limit” on benefits that Harry Reid dropped into the Senate bill.

For all those apologists who say we should absolutely pass a health care bill, even without a public option, because it still “has so many great consumer protections,” I have a rude awakening for you. The AP is reporting that Harry Reid quietly gutted one of the most important consumer protections in the bill, the [...]

Please join me in calling on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure to ask Hadassah Lieberman to step down by signing the petition.

Despite all the talk about “bending the cost curve,” President Obama and Harry Reid have declared all-out war on cost control. They are in the process of doing everything they can to kill Byron Dorgan’s bipartisan drug re-importation amendment. They have delayed the vote on his amendment for days (effectively filibustering their own bill), had [...]

Harry Reid, who is solely responsible for crafting the bill that he introduced in the Senate, decided that there should be a limit on lifetime benefits. So when people get sick and have huge bills for things like biologic drugs that cost $50,000 or $100,000 a year, whose bills could become “unreasonable” because Congress is granting drug manufacturers “indefinite monopolies” (per Henry Waxman) that prevent generics from coming to market to compete with them, Harry Reid thinks they should eventually be cut off.

Allowing younger people to buy into Medicare sounds like a good idea. Medicare is a well-run and cost-effective program. The problem is that the latest reports indicate this “Medicare buy-in” idea might not really be Medicare at all, it might in fact be fake Medicare: Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said efforts [...]