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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2011, 02:41:10 PM
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Obama Administration Pulls the Plug on Their Failed Health-Care ‘Ponzi Scheme’ [Paul Ryan statement]
Committee on the Budget: U.S. House of Representatives ^ | October 14, 2011 | Paul Ryan
The President’s Health-Care Law’s House of Cards Begins to Crumble
WASHINGTON – Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin issued the following statement regarding the Obama Administration’s decision to discontinue a key component of its health-care law:
“To hide the true cost of their health-care overhaul, the leaders of the Democratic party loaded it with gimmicks and double-counting. One of the most egregious of these gimmicks involved the CLASS Act, a new long-term care program that was scored as an offset against the ten-year, trillion-dollar cost of the Democrats new law. Independent health care experts warned that the CLASS Act program would turn into a classic ‘insurance death spiral.’ Not only would the short-term savings fail to materialize, but the long-term costs would prove catastrophically high. Even Democratic Senator Kent Conrad called the program ‘A Ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.’
“Today, the Obama Administration finally surrendered to reality: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has informed Congressional leaders that she ‘does not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.' The smoke and mirrors that the Democrats employed to sell their health care overhaul are finally falling away, one broken promise at a time. When all of these gimmicks are stripped out, the new law would add hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink over the next decade, as health-care costs send the debt spiraling out of control. Now it is time for Congress to do the responsible thing: Repeal the disastrous new law and replace it with true, patient-centered reforms.”
For more information: http://budget.house.gov/healthcare/
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BOOOM - WE TOLD YOU MORONS SO FROM dAY 1 THIS WAS A SCAM
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Obama Administration Pulls the Plug on Their Failed Health-Care ‘Ponzi Scheme’ [Paul Ryan statement]
Committee on the Budget: U.S. House of Representatives ^ | October 14, 2011 | Paul Ryan
The President’s Health-Care Law’s House of Cards Begins to Crumble
WASHINGTON – Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin issued the following statement regarding the Obama Administration’s decision to discontinue a key component of its health-care law:
“To hide the true cost of their health-care overhaul, the leaders of the Democratic party loaded it with gimmicks and double-counting. One of the most egregious of these gimmicks involved the CLASS Act, a new long-term care program that was scored as an offset against the ten-year, trillion-dollar cost of the Democrats new law. Independent health care experts warned that the CLASS Act program would turn into a classic ‘insurance death spiral.’ Not only would the short-term savings fail to materialize, but the long-term costs would prove catastrophically high. Even Democratic Senator Kent Conrad called the program ‘A Ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.’
“Today, the Obama Administration finally surrendered to reality: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has informed Congressional leaders that she ‘does not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.' The smoke and mirrors that the Democrats employed to sell their health care overhaul are finally falling away, one broken promise at a time. When all of these gimmicks are stripped out, the new law would add hundreds of billions of dollars in red ink over the next decade, as health-care costs send the debt spiraling out of control. Now it is time for Congress to do the responsible thing: Repeal the disastrous new law and replace it with true, patient-centered reforms.”
For more information: http://budget.house.gov/healthcare/
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BOOOM - WE TOLD YOU MORONS SO FROM dAY 1 THIS WAS A SCAM
Not sure what you mean by vindicated. These are just transcripts from Paul Ryan's speech. The Health Care Plan is still going into effect
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You really are a deluded far leftist dope. This is all over the news today.
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Half of Obamacare's deficit reduction wiped out
The Examiner ^ | October 14, 2011 | Phil Klein
Posted on October 14, 2011 9:36:47 PM EDT by La Lydia
Nearly half of the deficit reduction that Democrats claimed when President Obama signed the national health care law would be wiped away by the administration's recomendation against implementing a doomed long-term care program. As Obamacare's critics noted at the time, Democrats' deficit reduction claims were based on a series of accounting gimmicks. One of the most obvious was the inclusion of the Community Living Assistance and Support Services Act, a program that was slated to collect five years of premiums before paying out any benefits. Though it was unsustainable over time, on paper it produced surpluses during the Congressional Budget Office's 10-year budget window.
At the time of final passage, the CBO found that the health care law would reduce deficits by $143 billion, and $70 billion of that was attributable to the CLASS program.
...a new HHS report recomending against implementing the program. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has now sent a letter to Congress conceding that there's no path forward.
...To prevent any confusion, I should emphasize again that the $70 billion number I referred to was the estimate at the time of passage, when the timeframe was 2010 to 2019. The CBO's ten-year timeline has since moved forward, and over the next 10 years, as Kliff points out, the reduction in revenue from killing the program would be $86 billion. ..
(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtone xaminer.com ...
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BREAKING!! Obama's HHS ends controversial program in health reform law (Obamacare dying)
the hill ^ | 10/14/2011 | sam baker
Posted on October 14, 2011 4:29:43 PM EDT by milwguy
The Obama administration will not implement a controversial piece of the healthcare reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday.
Sebelius said the department will not continue trying to implement the CLASS program, which was intended to provide insurance for long-term care. Republicans charged that the program’s financial structure was unsustainable, and Sebelius conceded as much Friday.
“We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” she wrote on the Huffington Post's website.
Sebelius said HHS will “suspend” implementation of the program.
The department recently reassigned the people it had placed in the CLASS office, following the release of emails showing that HHS officials had raised concerns about the program’s viability even before it became law.
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Obama pulls plug on part of health overhaul law
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law - a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.
Targeted by congressional Republicans for repeal, the program became the first casualty in the political and policy wars over the health care law. It had been expected to launch in 2013.
"This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., spearheading opposition in the Senate. "The administration is finally admitting (the long-term care plan) is unsustainable and cannot be implemented."
Proponents, including many groups that fought to pass the health care law, have vowed a vigorous effort to rescue the program, insisting that Congress gave the administration broad authority to make changes. Long-term care includes not only nursing homes, but such services as home health aides for disabled people.
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a longstanding priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers, and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. The money could go for services at home, or to help with nursing home bills.
But a central design flaw dogged CLASS. Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout.
After months insisting that could be fixed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, finally admitted Friday she doesn't see how.
"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.
The law required the administration to certify that CLASS would remain financially solvent for 75 years before it could be put into place.
But officials said they discovered they could not make CLASS both affordable and financially solvent while keeping it a voluntary program open to virtually all workers, as the law also required.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes aimed at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health could have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
"If healthy purchasers are not attracted ... then premiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractive to purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market," Kathy Greenlee, the lead official on CLASS, said in a memo to Sebelius. That "would cause the program to quickly collapse."
That's the same conclusion a top government expert reached in 2009. Nearly a year before the health care law passed, Richard Foster, head of long-range economic forecasts for Medicare warned administration and congressional officials that CLASS would be unworkable. His warnings were disregarded, as Obama declared his support for adding the long-term care plan to his health care bill.
The demise of CLASS immediately touched off speculation about its impact on the federal budget. Although no premiums are likely to be collected, the program still counts as reducing the federal deficit by about $80 billion over the next ten years. That's because of a rule that would have required workers to pay in for at least five years before they could collect any benefits.
"The CLASS Act was a budget gimmick that might enhance the numbers on a Washington bureaucrat's spreadsheet but was destined to fail in the real world," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Administration officials said Obama's next budget would reflect the decision not to go forward. Even without CLASS premiums, they said the health care law will still reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion over 10 years.
Kennedy's original idea was to give families some financial breathing room. Most families cannot afford to hire a home health aide for a frail elder, let alone pay nursing home bills. Care is usually provided by family members, often a spouse who may also have health problems.
"We're disappointed that (Sebelius) has prematurely stated she does not see a path forward," AARP, the seniors' lobby, said in a statement. "The need for long-term care will only continue to grow."
Sebelius said the administration wants to work with Congress and supporters of the program to find a solution. But in a polarized political climate, it appears unlikely that CLASS can be salvaged. Congressional Republicans remain committed to its repeal.
© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
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HAAHHAAAAHAHAA!!!!!
This is why Im not so sure I want to see this law struck down by the Supreme Court. It will be much more embarassing for Obama for it to unravel by itelf like this today.
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One Obamacare Disaster Averted, Lots More To Go
October 14, 2011 10:25 P.M.
By Yuval Levin
The editors have it just right on the CLASS Act. The administration’s latest Friday night bombshell was really no surprise at all. (The massive deficit announcement tonight surely couldn’t have surprised anyone either, though I certainly have to admit that getting involved in a war in Uganda is one I didn’t see coming.)
Just about every conservative critic of Obamacare pointed to the irrational design of the CLASS Act before the legislation’s enactment. In fact, the administration’s own CMS actuary said it would never work. He was ignored by his employers not because they disagreed with him, but because they needed to pretend their legislation would reduce the deficit. The CBO’s scoring methodology could be manipulated to accept a lot of implausible assumptions, but even with those the legislation needed help, and by designing the CLASS Act to start collecting premiums five years before it would start paying benefits (and counting those premiums as deficit reduction even though they would eventually need to be paid out in benefits) they were able to make the program seem to be in the black by $70 billion in its first ten years, which accounted for about half of the overall “deficit reduction” the Democrats claimed.
Of course, administration officials can’t acknowledge that they always knew the program’s finances could never work, so rather than admit to cynicism they are pleading incompetence. And who knows, maybe they really are that incompetent. Having assured Congress for over a year that the program could be made to work, HHS Secretary Sebelius said today that “Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.” In essence: We tried our best, but the statute makes no sense.
Get used to that excuse. This confirmation that Obamacare cannot in fact defy the laws of mathematics and accounting should serve as a warning regarding the implementation of the broader law, most of which would begin in 2014 if it is not repealed by then. The other major provisions of the statute are also grossly ill-designed. If it is permitted to take effect in full, the law will cause premiums to rise rapidly in the individual market and create major dislocation in the employer market, driving people into vastly overregulated exchanges that would push premiums higher still, and then initiate a program of subsidies whose only real answer to the mounting costs of coverage will be to pay them with public dollars and so inflate them further. It aims to spend a trillion dollars on subsidies to large insurance companies and the expansion of an unreformed Medicaid system, to micromanage the insurance industry in ways likely to make it even less efficient, to cut Medicare benefits without using the money to shore up the program or reduce the deficit, and to raise taxes on employment, investment, and medical research. CBO does not expect it to make a real dent in the inflation of health-care costs or to avert the fiscal implosion of Medicare. Instead, it will double down on price controls and centralized administration and make a real reform of our system much more difficult. These outcomes are nearly as predictable as the fiscal collapse of the CLASS Act (and have been predicted by the same people who saw that the CLASS Act would never work, including the CMS actuary). But in the case of the CLASS Act, the Secretary of HHS was required to certify in advance that her actuaries believed it could be sustained, and at the end of the day there was no way around the fact that it couldn’t. The rest of the law has no such requirements, so the “we tried our best” excuse will come only after disaster strikes.
But none of this has to happen. It seems we will avert the fiscal disaster of the CLASS Act. Now let’s find a way to avert the even greater disaster of the rest of Obamacare by repealing the law and enacting in its place a set of market-based reforms of Medicare, Medicaid, and a private insurance sector badly distorted by decades of ill-conceived federal policies. American voters will have one chance, next November, to correct the terrible mistake made by their leaders last year before it fully takes effect. Let’s hope we do.
This is the Obama defense: We are not criminals - we are corrupt.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/obama-health-care-law-class-program-cut_n_1011451.html#comments
Ha ha ha ha ha - meltdown!
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Class Dismissed
HHS pulls the plug on one of ObamaCare's main fiscal illusions..
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204002304576631361411737574.html
Late Friday afternoon, naturally, the Obama Administration formally conceded that it had shut down one of the Affordable Care Act's major new entitlement programs. The Department of Health and Human Services had already closed down the office in charge of creating this insurance program for long-term care last month. But HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's act of fiscal damage control is still a welcome if overdue admission that ObamaCare's claims of deficit reduction were always an illusion.
WSJ Editorial Page on the Class Act:
.Democrats engineered the program known by the acronym Class with front-loaded premiums and back-loaded benefits so that on paper it threw off a lot of revenue early on but then bankrupted itself later. This design made it possible for the Congressional Budget Office to score the program as a money-raiser during its first decade and thus make ObamaCare look like it reduced the deficit. And sure enough, CBO, in its final estimate at passage, said that Class would reduce the deficit by $70 billion through 2019—or more than half the bill's supposed $124 billion 10-year "savings" to the federal fisc. Well, goodbye to all that.
During the health-care debate Washington insisted on treating CBO's cost estimates as if God Himself had carved them into stone tablets, but as Class's mercy killing shows all they proved was that Democrats were good at manipulating its assumptions and synthetic budget conventions. HHS's own experts were warning Democrats all along that Class was a fiscal time bomb, so including it in the bill was a special act of fiscal corruption.
Ms. Sebelius contended yesterday that ObamaCare will still "reduce the deficit," and we're eagerly anticipating the day when reality forces her to dump that falsehood too.
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The Untimely Death of Long-Term Health Insurance
by Robert Reich
October 15, 2011
Today’s decision to jettison long-term care offers clear evidence why that individual mandate is so necessary.
Unfortunately, the mandate isn’t popular — because it wasn’t modeled on Social Security or Medicare but based instead on private insurers who’ll want to maximize revenues. It’s also vulnerable to constitutional challenge, largely for the same reason. The Supreme Court will likely decide its fate this term.
Why, oh why, didn’t the Obama administration make life easy for itself and for Americans by choosing the simplest and most efficient system for both primary and long-term health insurance — Medicare for all?
It didn’t because it wanted to get Republican votes. It got almost none. And now the Republicans are enjoying the prospect of the law being dismembered piece by piece, starting today.
Read the full article at:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/15-3
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Bump for straw.
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Bump for straw.
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Bump for straw.
why do you care so much about what I think
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why do you care so much about what I think
Because you are a typical brain dead leftist idiot who argue w me for months on end over this and now once again those of us who called obamacare the CBO score a fraud are proven to have been right.
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Because you are a typical brain dead leftist idiot who argue w me for months on end over this and now once again those of us who called obamacare the CBO score a fraud are proven to have been right.
none of which makes it a ponzi scheme
good job though spending thousands of hours of your life on this board
that's a real accomplishment
you must be very proud of yourself
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none of which makes it a ponzi scheme
good job though spending thousands of hours of your life on this board
that's a real accomplishment
you must be very proud of yourself
Just admit you were wrong.
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Just admit you were wrong.
When I'm wrong I always admit it
have you ever done so?
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When I'm wrong I always admit it
have you ever done so?
More diversion. Straw will you now admit that the CBO score for obamacare was based on a scam by Obama?
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More diversion. Straw will you now admit that the CBO score for obamacare was based on a scam by Obama?
what you see as a SCAM by OBAMA is seen as funding design flaw by sane people and when sane people see something like that they admit it
When crazy people see the same thing they run around screaming about scams and ponzi schemes and some really nutty individuals choose to spend thousands of hours of their life posting on messages boards about it.
I'm sure you will read the facts below and your brain will tell you it's proof of a scam and a ponzi scheme and there is nothing anyone can do to help you with that.
you're the person who believes Obama is a secret commie out to collapse the nation as revenge for us choosing him to be POTUS so OF COURSE it makes sense that this is a scam and a ponzi scheme.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/obama-health-care-law-class-program-cut_n_1011451.html
Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a long-standing priority of the late Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Although sponsored by the government, it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. The money could go for services at home or to help with nursing home bills.
But a central design flaw dogged CLASS. Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout.
After months insisting that could be fixed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally acknowledged Friday she doesn't see how.
Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.
The law required the administration to certify that CLASS would remain financially solvent for 75 years before it could be put into place.
But officials said they discovered they could not make CLASS both affordable and financially solvent while keeping it a voluntary program open to virtually all workers, as the law also required
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes aimed at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health could have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
"If healthy purchasers are not attracted ... then premiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractive to purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market," Kathy Greenlee, the lead official on CLASS, said in a memo to Sebelius. That "would cause the program to quickly collapse."
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And so it begins. On Friday, the plug was pulled on a major Obamacare program. The CLASS Act was a new federal long-term care insurance program set to begin in less than 90 days. It was spiked for a simple reason: It was yet another government program that would break the bank.
The CLASS Act was one of the least known but most dangerous provisions of the health reform law. Despite its noble aim — to help keep elderly people out of long-term care facilities — it would have come at an enormous cost to workers, the private market for long-term care insurance, and taxpayers.
For many workers, the program would have restricted choice and been prohibitively expensive, particularly in today’s economy. According a report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), unless workers’ employers opted out of the program, the federal government would have withheld up to $240 a month from their paychecks to pay for their participation in it.
Workers wouldn’t have had much choice in the matter. They would have been automatically enrolled, and the federal government would have deducted more than $2,800 a year from their paychecks. Before receiving any benefits, people would have needed to have paid into the program for five full years.
The program would likely have put many private long-term care insurers out of business. It would have competed with private insurers, but with all the perks that federal ownership gives, such as being exempt from regulations put on private long-term care insurers.
Moreover, the program would have busted the federal government’s budget. As with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the long-term sustainability of the program was a fantasy from the beginning. To be sure, collecting five years’ worth of premiums before paying a single benefit would have resulted in an initial surplus. But after that, according to CMS, the program would have quickly devolved into an “insurance death spiral,” where the vast majority of participants would consume far more resources than they contributed. Sound familiar?
Low-income Americans would have paid as little as $5 per month, but according to the Congressional Budget Office, the benefit could have averaged more than $27,000 a year.
It was this kind of financial model that led Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota to call the CLASS Act “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”
Less than a year ago, even the president’s own Deficit Commission described the CLASS Act as “unsustainable” and called for it to be fundamentally reformed or outright repealed.
The CLASS Act would have also busted business’s budgets. McKinsey & Co. estimated that, if the act weren’t repealed, 30 percent of businesses would drop employee health insurance. This shift would be “vastly more than expected,” meaning that millions of American workers would no longer get private insurance but would instead get government-sponsored coverage through a subsidy. Some estimate that this would have added as much as $1 trillion to the cost of Obamacare.
America dodged a bullet with the CLASS Act. Let’s hope that we can dodge the rest of Obamacare’s bullets. If we don’t, we’ll have a diagnosis of higher healthcare costs, limited access and more debt. That’s a terminal condition for American healthcare as we know it.
The house of cards is collapsing.
go fuck yourselves every piece of putrid trash voting for Obama in 2012.
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Obama opposes repeal of healthcare program suspended last week
By Julian Pecquet - 10/17/11 01:51 PM ET
President Obama is against repealing the health law's long-term care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government's announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.
"We do not support repeal," the official said Monday. "Repealing the CLASS Act isn't necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country."
Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called CLASS Act advocates to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program's demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday in a blog post on the liberal Huffington Post web site that the administration did not see a way to make the program sustainable. Sebelius indicated her agency hadn't been able to figure out a way to ensure the program providing long-term care paid for itself as required by law.
Later in a call with reporters on Friday, an HHS official said work on the program was being suspended.
"We won't be working further to implement the CLASS Act … We don't see a path forward to be able to do that," Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee told reporters on Friday.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, said Monday that repealing the program would not add to the deficit, making Republican repeal efforts that much easier.
The Obama administration sold the healthcare law with the argument that it would lower the nation's long-term health costs, and the CLASS Act was an important reason why.
CBO had scored the long-term care program for people with disabilities as saving the nation $86 billion in spending over 10 years. That's about 40 percent of the health law's $210 billion in total estimated deficit reduction over the next decade.
In a new blog post, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf clarified that last week's decision by the Obama administration not to implement the program means those savings are now moot. Because the program is not being implemented, Elmendorf said a repeal bill would not be estimated as saving money.
"Following longstanding procedures," Elmendorf wrote, "CBO takes new administrative actions into account when analyzing legislation being considered by the Congress — even if it has not published new baseline projections. Beginning immediately, therefore, legislation to repeal the CLASS provisions in current law would be estimated as having no budgetary impact."
New baseline budget projections due out in January, Elmendorf wrote, "will assume that the program will not be implemented (unless there are changes in law or other actions by the administration that would supersede Friday's announcement)."
In the Senate, John Thune (R-S.D.) has a bill to repeal the CLASS Act that has attracted 32 Republican cosponsors. In the House, Charles Boustany (R-La.) has a similar bill with 48 cosponsors, including Democrat Dan Lipinski of Illinois.
Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/187949-white-house-opposes-formal-class-act-repeal
LMMFFFAAAOOO! ! ! !
Holy shit is this moron dumber than dirt!
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I was travelling on Friday, so I missed blogging about the untimely demise of the CLASS Act, the long-term care program long-dreamed-of by Ted Kennedy which helpfully added over $70 billion to ObamaCare's projected deficit reduction over the ten-year CBO forecast window . . . before blowing up into another monstrous, budget busting entitlement.
HHS, which was required to certify that the program was sustainable, couldn't, and thus it is no more. The program has taken about half of ObamaCare's projected deficit reduction to the grave with it. Conservatives are having a field day, but Kevin Drum argues that this is actually good news:
Yesterday the Obama administration finally abandoned the CLASS Act, a program to subsidize long-term elderly care that was part of the healthcare reform bill. Conservatives are in full war whoop mode over this, and I suppose I don't blame them. The budget forecasts for CLASS were always dodgy, and conservative concerns about this have now been vindicated.
But they should contain themselves anyway. What happened here is that government worked exactly the way it ought to. The CLASS Act was passed in a fog of rosy estimates and emotional appeals (it was one of Ted Kennedy's longstanding priorities), and the Department of Health and Human Services immediately began the detailed work of writing the implementing regulations to get it up and running. And guess what? They did their work honestly and conscientiously. Even though it was a liberal program promoted by a longtime liberal icon, HHS analysts eventually concluded that its conservative critics were right and the program as passed was flawed. So they killed it. And most of the liberal healthcare wonks that I read seem to agree that, unfortunately, HHS was right.
This is how we all want government to work.
It is of course, great news that the administration has not actually gone foreward and implemented an unsustainable program that would have had disastrous effects on the federal budget. But it's not great news that HHS has found that the program was just as disastrous as conservatives said it was . . . yet a Democratic congress, deep in the passion of their historic moment, passed the damn thing anyway. It's in fact deeply troubling. The problems with CLASS were known from day one, but no one listened, because it gave them good numbers to sell their program politically.
Now it turns out that ObamaCare reduces the deficit over ten years by about $70 billion instead of $140 billion. Only . . . what about all the other stuff that had problems, like the reimbursement cuts that both Medicare's chief actuary and the head of the CBO warned might very likely prove too deep to sustain medically or politically? Can we assume that Democrats exercised the same thought and foresight about the other parts of ObamaCare that they did with the CLASS Act? How come all of those liberal health care wonks that Kevin cites were unable to identify the problems with this program before it passed?
Last March, I did a retrospective on the law's first year anniversary, wherein I pointed out that there had been a lot of bad news, and no upside surprises. Six months later, we've had more nasty surprises, and the "upside" consists of the entirely unsurprising revelation that forcing insurers to cover kids up to 26 results in more kids under the age of 26 being covered, at some cost in rising premiums.
During the debate over health reform, a lot of liberals were suggesting that ObamaCare's deficit reduction was just as likely to be larger than projected as less--or even that the CBO's scoring process systematically underestimated the savings from new health care programs. Jonathan Cohn professed himself "baffled" by the belief "that, rather than try and craft a fiscally responsible program, the Democrats instead figured out the CBO's accounting methods, came up with ways to make an expensive program seem deceptively cheap, and then fiddled with the numbers to get the result they wanted."
But how else do we explain the CLASS Act, which the Washington Post warned about in December 2009? Or the utterly moronic provision forcing small businesses to give 1099s to all their vendors? Are we really to assume that these were not stupid gimmicks put into the law to, erm, "make an expensive program seem deceptively cheap", but rather, represent the sober and considered judgement of Democratic legislators and the Obama administration about sound fiscal policy?
That's a far scarier thought, actually. For if the CLASS Act is genuinely what those legislators and that administration consider a good idea, we might as well just hand over our wallets and pray.
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Repeal the CLASS 'Ponzi scheme'
By: Rep. Charles Boustany
January 17, 2012 10:09 PM EST
‘Obamacare” appears ready to collapse under its own weight. Look at the CLASS Act, a government-run long-term care program Congress is likely to vote to repeal from the 2010 law.
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ignored warnings from the Medicare actuary and the American Academy of Actuaries when they added this budget gimmick to the 2010 health law. A bipartisan Senate majority voted to strip CLASS from the law, but Democratic leaders needed CLASS premiums to offset the costs of unrelated parts of “Obamacare.”
Last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suspended CLASS after department attorneys conceded HHS lacked the legal authority to make CLASS appear more actuarially sound. Citing HHS, the Congressional Budget Office added: “The program cannot be operated without mandatory participation so as to ensure its solvency.”
Unfortunately, CLASS could return to haunt us if it isn’t fully repealed before October 2012. Legal experts at the Congressional Research Service warn that a federal judge could force HHS to revive CLASS after this key deadline in the law expires.
As we seek to repeal CLASS, we should confront two myths used to sell this Ponzi scheme.
First, CLASS does not guarantee a daily minimum cash benefit for working disabled Americans with pre-existing conditions. The administration planned to break the law, according to HHS attorneys, by excluding them from coverage, writing new income rules and phasing enrollment because of health status.
HHS also said solvency or legal problems could force the program’s shutdown, at the risk of leaving some working disabled Americans “worse off.”
Second, CLASS is a bad deal for healthy Americans and leaves us unprepared for the aging of the baby-boom generation. Howard Gleckman of the Urban Institute notes the average CLASS premium would run as high as $391 per month, “which far exceeds private market premiums.”
In addition, consumers receive no private contract that guarantees benefits. They must meet a five-year vesting period and forfeit what they contribute into a pay-as-you-go system with no reserve requirements.
Approximately, six out of 10 seniors will likely need some type of long-term care. The number of Americans 85 or older could grow 250 percent by 2040, and this group has the greatest need for long-term care.
As a physician, I treated hundreds of patients who needed long-term care, including ones with Alzheimer’s. More than 13.5 million seniors could have this disease by 2040. Middle-class families remain dangerously unprepared for these costs. Some people will likely spend more than $100,000 on care. The fictional CLASS daily benefit of $50 per day won’t cover this.
I urge my House and Senate colleagues to support this CLASS repeal. We should instead make it easier for disabled Americans to save for future needs, expand access to affordable private long-term care coverage and better educate Americans about the need for retirement planning.
Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a physician, is chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight.
© 2012 POLITICO LLC
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Insurance companies are the problem, they are the ultimate middle men that control the direction, ease of use and flow of patients to health-care. The insurance companies dominate the market, they control reimbursements, how much you and I pay, whats covered etc....we are slaves to them and have no recourse.
Instead of fixing this or whatever this "plan" (among other things) forces Americans to purchase insurance from them.
Stupid.Stupid.Stupid.
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Bump for team Kenya - Hugo - straw - blackass - 180.
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Bump for team Kenya - Hugo - straw - blackass - 180.
WTFare you talking about? I like Ryan and hate obamacare. shit man, why include me?