Obama Pushing on Health Care End Game

March 10, 2010

Google News

By Associated Press

President Barack Obama is making his closing arguments for a health care overhaul, pushing a new anti-fraud plan as he cranks up the pressure on skittish Democratic lawmakers to act fast.

Obama is to speak Wednesday at St. Charles High School, his second health care address in three days. His speech comes as congressional Democrats stand on the brink of delivering the president a dramatic success with passage of his sweeping overhaul legislation — or a colossal failure if they can’t get it done.

Business groups that oppose the legislation are also stepping it up, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing a coordinated campaign to spend as much as $10 million on ads, starting Wednesday, saying, “Stop this health care bill we can’t afford.”

Leaders in the House and Senate are waiting for a final cost analysis from the Congressional Budget Office in the next day or so that will allow them to start counting votes — and twisting arms — in earnest. In the House, in particular, getting the needed majority will be touch and go.

The two-step approach now being pursued calls for the House to approve a Senate-passed bill from last year, despite House Democrats’ opposition to several of its provisions. Both chambers then would follow by approving a companion measure to make changes in that first bill.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has said he expects the House to act by March 18, the day Obama leaves for an overseas trip. That timetable would be tough to meet, and congressional leaders told White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that they don’t need deadlines handed down from the White House, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee.

“He was certainly informed that we don’t feel that we want any deadline assigned to us,” Waxman said.

Republicans are playing on House Democrats’ suspicions of their Senate colleagues, arguing that Senate Democrats may not hold up their end of the bargain and the votes will be damaging politically for Democrats in November.

“They will be voting, when they pass the Senate bill, to endorse the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, the Gator-aid, the closed-door deal,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, citing controversial elements of the Senate bill.

An Associated Press-GfK Poll released Tuesday found a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, but also found that Americans don’t like the way the debate is playing out in Washington.

About four in five Americans say it’s important that any health care plan have support from both parties. And more than three in five say the president and congressional Democrats should keep trying to cut a deal with Republicans rather than pass a bill with no GOP support.

Leaders of both parties in Congress say that’s not how it’s going to work out. After a year of off-and-on negotiations, Republicans adamantly oppose Obama’s plans. The White House and Democratic leaders say it’s now-or-never for a health care overhaul, which would cover an additional 30 million Americans, require almost everyone to buy health insurance and impose new restrictions on insurance companies.

The president is applying pressure from the outside. In a speech Monday in Pennsylvania, he railed against insurance companies. The message for his Wednesday afternoon speech is aimed directly at the political middle. The plan he’s touting would bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, a populist idea with bipartisan backing.

Waste and fraud are pervasive problems for Medicare and Medicaid, the giant government health insurance programs for seniors and low-income people. Improper payments totaled an estimated $54 billion in 2009. They range from simple errors such as duplicate billing to elaborate schemes operated by fraudsters peddling everything from wheelchairs to hospice care.

The bounty hunters in this case would be private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims. The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover. The White House said a Medicare pilot program recouped $900 million for taxpayers from 2005-08.

A presidential memorandum Obama will sign Wednesday directs Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to intensify their use of private auditors under current legal authority.

The White House estimates that expanded use of private audits throughout the government could recoup at least $2 billion for taxpayers over three years.

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Obama Policies Projected to Add $9.7 Trillion to Debt by 2020

March 8, 2010

Washington Post

By Lori Montgomery

President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall.

The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.

The CBO and the White House are in relative agreement about the short-term budget picture, with both predicting a deficit of about $1.5 trillion this year — a post-World War II record at 10.3 percent of the overall economy — and $1.3 trillion in 2011. But the CBO is considerably less optimistic about future years, predicting that deficits would never fall below 4 percent of the economy under Obama’s policies and would begin to grow rapidly after 2015.

Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020, the CBO said. Interest payments on the debt would also skyrocket by $800 billion over the same period.

Obama’s tax-cutting agenda is by far the biggest contributor to those budget gaps, the CBO said. As part of his campaign pledge to protect families making less than $250,000 a year from new taxes, the president is proposing to prevent the alternative minimum tax from expanding to ensnare millions of additional taxpayers. He also wants to make permanent a series of tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration, which are scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

“Over the next 10 years, those policies would reduce revenues and boost outlays for refundable tax credits by a total of $3.0 trillion,” wrote Douglas W. Elmendorf, the CBO director. Combined with interest payments on that shortfall, the tax cuts account for the entire increase in deficits that would result from Obama’s proposals.

Obama is convening a special commission to bring deficits down to 3 percent of the economy, but the CBO report shows that Obama could accomplish that goal simply by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and paying for changes to the alternative minimum tax.

Other policy changes, such as Obama’s signature health-care initiative and a plan to dramatically expand the federal student loan program, would have significant effects on the budget, Elmendorf wrote, but they generally would be paid for and therefore would not drive deficits higher.

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New $10 Fee To Get Into The United States

March 8, 2010

Yahoo News

By Associated Press

President Barack Obama has signed a bill creating a program to promote the U.S. as a premier tourism destination for international travelers.

The U.S. Travel Association calls it a major step in addressing the drop-off in such visits to the U.S. during the past decade. The association says the U.S. welcomed 2.4 million fewer overseas visitors last year than in 2000. And that, the group says, has cost it an estimated $509 billion in total spending and $32 billion in direct tax receipts.

Government and private industry would evenly split the program’s costs, with Washington contributing up to $100 million a year. That money will come from a $10 fee paid by foreigners who do not pay for visas to enter the U.S.

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2009 Record Profit Year for Health Insurers

February 17, 2010

Insurance and Financial Advisor

By Bob Graham

The five largest public U.S. health insurance companies generated record profits in 2009, according to a new report from Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

The health care campaign organization said WellPoint, parent company of Anthem, and UnitedHealth, parent company of UnitedHealthcare, as well as Aetna, Humana and CIGNA Corp. had combined profits of $12.2 billion last year, up 56% from the prior year.

The report comes as Congress and President Barack Obama continue to wrestle over how to expand coverage to the uninsured in the U.S. through comprehensive federal health care reform. Advocates for change say the profits of the public corporations show the need for reform.

“Big insurance made more money by insuring fewer people and by trying to get rid of the people who need health care the most,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager of HCAN, in a statement. “For-profit insurance companies cater to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Congress must listen to us, not the insurance lobbyists, and finish comprehensive health care reform the right way now.”

Four of the five companies saw earnings increase, with Philadelphia, Pa.-based CIGNA’s profits increasing 356%, HCAN said. It said four of the five companies covered fewer people through private coverage, which in large part was caused by the employers shedding employees, thus making them ineligible for employer-sponsored coverage. That in turn led to increases among four of the five in the number of people covered through public plans, including Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan and Medicare, according to the report.

The industry set the record while 27 million people who had health insurance in 2008 lost it last year, according to the group.

Of the estimated $809 billion spent on private health insurance in 2009, the five biggest, for-profit companies captured $232 billion, according to HCAN’s analysis of financial reports, which also noted that those company’s market share has increased steadily through mergers and acquisitions.

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China Warns Obama Against Meeting with Dalai Lama

February 2, 2010

ABC NEWS

China has said relations with the United States will be seriously undermined if President Barack Obama holds a meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

A senior Chinese communist party official has said Beijing will take action if the meeting goes ahead.

The White House has indicated that President Obama intends to meet the Dalai Lama, who is due in Washington later this month, but no date has been announced.

China’s ties with the US have become more strained in recent months over a variety of issues, including planned US arms sales to Taiwan and accusations by the internet company Google of systematic attempts originating in China to hack into its computer systems.

China has for many years tried to isolate the Dalai Lama by asking foreign leaders not to meet him.

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States Seeking to Ban Mandatory Health Insurance

February 1, 2010

AbcNews.com

By David A. Lieb

Although President Barack Obama’s push for a health care overhaul has stalled, conservative lawmakers in about half the states are forging ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates.

The proposals would assert a state-based right for people to pay medical bills from their own pocketbooks and prohibit penalties against those who refuse to carry health insurance.

In many states, the proposals began as a backlash to Democratic health care plans pending in Congress. But instead of backing away after a Massachusetts election gave Senate Republicans the filibuster power to halt the health care legislation, many state lawmakers are ramping up their efforts with new enthusiasm.

The moves reflect the continued political potency of the issue for conservatives, who have used it extensively for fundraising and attracting new supporters. The legal impact of any state measures may be questionable because courts generally have held that federal laws trump those in states.

Lawmakers in 34 states have filed or proposed amendments to their state constitutions or statutes rejecting health insurance mandates, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit group that promotes limited government that is helping coordinate the efforts. Many of those proposals are targeted for the November ballot, assuring that health care remains a hot topic as hundreds of federal and state lawmakers face re-election.

Legislative committees in Idaho and Virginia endorsed their measures this past week. Supporters held a rally at the Pennsylvania Capitol. And hearings on the proposed constitutional amendments were held in Georgia and Missouri. The Missouri hearing drew overflow crowds the day after Obama urged federal lawmakers during his State of the Union address to keep pressing to pass a health care bill. The Nebraska Legislature plans a hearing on a measure this coming week.

Supporters of the state measures portray them as a way of defending individual rights and state sovereignty, asserting that the federal government has no authority to tell states and their citizens to buy health insurance.

“I think the alarm bell has been rung,” said Clint Bolick, the constitutional litigation director at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, which helped craft an Arizona amendment on this November’s ballot that has been used as a model in other states.

“These amendments are a way to manifest grass roots opposition” to federal health insurance mandates, Bolick said. “They kind of have a life of their own at this point. So while some of the pressure may be off, I think that this movement has legs.”

Separate bills passed by the U.S. House and Senate would impose a penalty on people who don’t have health insurance except in cases of financial hardship. Subsidies would be provided to low-income and middle-income households. The intent of the mandate is to expand the pool of people who are insured and paying premiums and thus offset the increased costs of insuring those with preexisting conditions or other risks.

The federal bills also would require many businesses to pay a penalty if they fail to provide employees health insurance that meets certain standards, though details and exemptions vary between the House and Senate versions.

Obama and Democratic legislative leaders were working to merge the two bills when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat long held by the late Edward M. Kennedy on Jan. 19, leaving Democrats one seat shy of the number needed to break a Republican filibuster.

Since then, the federal legislation has been in limbo. But state lawmakers have not.

“We need to move ahead no matter what kind of maneuvering continues in Washington, D.C.,” said Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham, a Republican from suburban St. Louis.

Since suffering resounding defeats in the 2008 elections, Republicans have seized upon voter unease over the federal health care legislation to help revitalize their fortunes.

A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted the day after the Massachusetts vote found that about 55 percent of respondents — including a majority of self-described independents — favored putting the breaks on the current health care legislation. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

State laws or constitutional amendments clearly could bar lawmakers in those states from requiring individuals to purchase health insurance, such as Massachusetts has done. But it’s questionable that such the measures could shield state residents from a federal health insurance requirement.

“They are merely symbolic gestures,” said Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University. “If this Congress were to pass an individual mandate, and if it is constitutional — which I believe it is — the express rule under the supremacy clause (of the U.S. Constitution) is that the federal law prevails.”

Many Democratic lawmakers are skeptical of both the intent and the effect of the state measures, entitled in many states as the “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act.” Some have derided it as “political theater” or an attempt to merely shape the public debate.

“We need to do something about health care,” said Idaho Rep. Phylis King, a Boise Democrat. “And the federal government is trying to do something. It hurts our companies and it hurts our people to be uninsured.”

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3 Million Homeowners Hit With Foreclosure in 2009

January 20, 2010

CNN Money

By Les Christie

Almost 3 million homeowners received at least one foreclosure filing during 2009, setting a new record for the number of people falling behind on their mortgage payments.

RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed homes, reported that one in 45 households — or 2,824,674 properties nationwide — were in default last year. That’s 21% more than in 2008, and more than double 2007’s total.

The dramatic, sustained increase occurred despite efforts, such as President Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program, to reduce foreclosure filings.

“As bad as the 2009 numbers are, they probably would have been worse if not for legislative and industry-related delays in processing delinquent loans,” said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio in a prepared statement.

There was at least one bright spot in the report: In spite of a 21% increase in filings, the number of homes actually repossessed was 871,086 — up just 1.1% above 2008’s total.
Check the foreclosure rate in your state

“That was driven primarily by short-term factors: trial loan modifications, state legislation extending the foreclosure process and an overwhelming volume of inventory clogging the foreclosure pipeline,” said Saccacio.

Filings peaked in July with more than 361,000 homes receiving notices. After that, filings dropped four straight months.

Much of that is attributable to the government-led efforts to modify loans to make them affordable, though it is still uncertain whether the efforts have forestalled — or just delayed — foreclosure.

By early December more than 680,000 borrowers had gotten temporary workouts but only a few thousand had been permanently modified.

That leaves Saccacio a bit pessimistic about the future. “In the long term, a massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market,” said Saccacio. “And many of those delinquencies will end up in the foreclosure process in 2010.”

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Does Republican Win In Massachusetts Doom ObamaCare?

January 20, 2010

Google

By Erica Werner

It’s gut-check time for President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on their health care overhaul.

A stinging loss Tuesday in Massachusetts cost Obama the 60-vote Senate supermajority he was counting on to overcome Republican procedural obstacles and pass the far-reaching legislation. The outcome splintered the rank and file on how to salvage the bill, energized congressional Republicans and left Obama and the Democrats with fallback options that range from bad to worse.

Senate Democrats were scheduled to meet at midday Wednesday, and a sign of their intentions could emerge then. Obama will have to exert a mighty influence to keep jittery moderates from giving up on the effort.

Democrats don’t appear to have enough time to resolve differences between the two bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate – and get cost and coverage estimates back from the Congressional Budget Office – before Brown is sworn in.

A leading idea involves persuading House Democrats to pass the Senate version of a health care bill that many of them have serious problems with. Another alternative calls for Senate Democrats to promise to make changes to the bill later on. Some Democrats said their big hopes would have to be scaled back.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to acknowledge that as a possibility as she left the Capitol near midnight Tuesday after meeting with her top lieutenants to discuss the way forward. Pelosi and others contend that because Massachusetts already has near-universal health coverage under a state law, the upset victory by Republican state Sen. Scott Brown to take the late Edward M. Kennedy’s former seat could not be seen as a referendum on the issue.

“Massachusetts has health care. … The rest of the country would like to have that too,” Pelosi said. “So we don’t say a state that already has health care should determine whether the rest of the country should.”

“We will get the job done. I’m very confident. I’ve always been confident,” she added.

Others saw miles of bad road in any direction and suggested that regrouping was in order.

“We shouldn’t show the arrogance of not getting the message here,” said liberal Rep. Anthony Weiner, contending independents had turned against the bill and the Democratic base had lost its enthusiasm. “I don’t think it would be the worst thing to take a step back” and turn the focus to jobs, in conjunction with scaled-back health care goals.

Republicans said don’t even bother: The election of Brown over the once-favoured Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold sent a message that the health legislation should be scrapped altogether.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele said Americans were breathing “a sigh of relief” over the potential derailing of the health care bill.

“People across the country are saying, ‘Slow it down,” Steele said Wednesday on ABC television.

But David Plouffe, who led Obama’s presidential campaign, rejected calls to scrap the bill. “We have a good health care plan,” he said on ABC. “We need to pass that. We have to lead.”

Moderate Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat, said the Senate should not hold any further votes on health care until Brown is seated.

Other Democrats said they feel the need to act even more urgently.

“There is only one guarantee – that if we don’t pass something the notion of trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again is a real long shot,” said Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late senator. “It’s a lot easier to pass something and fix it later.”

The legislation would expand coverage to more than 30 million Americans now uninsured, while attempting to rein in the growth of health care costs. Democratic lawmakers will have to move in virtual lockstep to enact the bill now, even as Republican opposition intensifies.

That could be too much to ask from rank-and-file Democrats demoralized by losing a seat held in an almost unbroken line by a Kennedy since 1953. Efforts to woo Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe as a convert could increase. But with polls showing voters souring on health care legislation the president could be abandoned by lawmakers of his own party.

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IRS Commissioner Doesn’t File Own Taxes: Too Complex

January 12,2009

The Hill

By Bob Cusack

IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman does not file his own taxes in part because he believes the tax code is complex.

During an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program that aired on Sunday, Shulman said he uses a tax preparer for his own returns.

“I’ve used one for years. I find it convenient. I find the tax code complex so I use a preparer,” Shulman said.

Pressed on how he would make the tax code simpler, Shulman responded, “I don’t write the tax laws. Congress writes the tax laws so that’s a whole different discussion.”

The IRS this month announced it will be scrutinizing the tax preparer industry. Shulman said the IRS is looking to set “a minimal level of competence in the preparer community.”

Later in the C-SPAN interview, Shulman downplayed his use of a tax preparer, saying he has used one for 10 years. He noted that he and President Barack Obama are proponents of simplifying the tax code.

Shulman said about 60 percent of Americans use tax preparers and another 20 percent use software to file their returns.

He added, “So you’re over 80 percent of people who aren’t just sitting down and filling out the forms themselves.”

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Obama Orders $1 Billion To Be Spent On Airport Body Scanners

January 08, 2o1o

Toledo Blade

President Obama yesterday ordered intelligence agencies to streamline how terrorism threats are pursued and analyzed, saying the government has to respond aggressively to the failures that allowed a Nigerian man to ignite an explosive on a jetliner on Christmas Day.

Mr. Obama directed the Homeland Security Department to acquire $1 billion in advanced-technology equipment, including body scanners, for screening passengers at airports.

He said intelligence reports involving threats would be distributed more widely among agencies. He instructed the State Department to review its visa policy to make it more difficult for people with connections to terrorism to receive visas, while making it simpler to revoke U.S. visas when questions arise.

“We are at war,” Mr. Obama said, releasing an unclassified version of a report on the attempted attack. He pledged not to “succumb to a siege mentality” sacrificing America’s civil liberties for security, but he called for expanding the criteria for adding people to terrorism watch lists.

Declaring the “buck stops with me,” the President avoided blaming any particular agency or official for breakdowns that allowed

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit armed with explosives despite a series of warning signs along the way.

“Ultimately, the buck stops with me,” Mr. Obama said. “As President, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people. When the system fails, it’s my responsibility.”

Nevertheless, the remedies he ordered in a memo to Cabinet officials and security chiefs mostly were modest steps, and intelligence officials defended the existing system as largely functional and superior to the apparatus in place before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Obama called on U.S. intelligence and security communities to strengthen terrorist watch lists, especially the nation’s no-fly list, by expanding criteria for people to be included. The President also demanded reviews that could lead to additional travelers being subjected to time-consuming secondary security checks at airports, as well as visa denials and revocations at consulates.

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