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Pawlenty Reveals Health Plan’s Expensive, Tax-Increasing, Care-Cutting Flaws

By Bronwyn's Harbor on October 13, 2009 at 1:10 PM in Current Affairs

Hand it to Gov. Tim Pawlenty for his op-ed, “The Baucus Prescription: Higher Taxes and Higher Premiums,” at BigGovernment.com:

Today, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on Senator Max Baucus’ health care overhaul. Like most Americans, I believe that our health care system needs to be reformed. However, this bill is a tax and spending bill masquerading as a health reform bill. It gives government bureaucrats far too much power and encroaches on freedom more than any legislation since LBJ’s Great Society experiment. It is bad for the country and bad for the economy.

Senate Democrats are pushing a vote on the 1,000-page bill now because the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the bill cost “only” $829 billion over the next 10 years. In truth, the bill raises taxes immediately, but the benefits do not kick in for another four years, so the 10-year numbers are distorted. This is an expensive experiment that cuts Medicare, and exacerbates state government budget problems by dramatically expanding Medicaid without providing additional funding.

On Monday’s Special Report with Bret Baier, the great columnist Charles Krauthammer revealed that the government will (1) begin collecting taxes immediately, for the first three years coming (Pawlenty claims it’s four years), but (2) NO BENEFITS or health plans will become available to any American for the first three years. As the ascerbic Krauthammer noted, it’s no wonder that, on paper, this plan appears to have a surplus at the end of 10 years, but that only comes by denying Americans, for three years, the coverage they’re already being charged for through taxes (and, if the insurance industry does as threatened, higher premiums and co-pays).

Here’s more Pawlenty:

How do the Democrats propose to pay for the rest of the new spending? There are a massive amount of tax increases in the bill, including over $200 billion in tax increases on insurance premiums, new taxes on individuals and employers, and over $120 billion in new taxes on medical device makers and other health care businesses. All of these tax increases concern me, but the latter category does so especially: My state is the home of Medtronic, Boston Scientific, 3M, St. Jude Medical and other medical technology makers that employ 60,000 Minnesotans and save and improve countless lives. Increasing taxes on these businesses would not only be an unwise burden on these employers, but would siphon money otherwise spent on research and development. It would also risk the cost of increased taxes being passed on, directly or indirectly, to those who rely on such devices or who cover their cost.

[...]

There are many bipartisan ideas that would actually cut health care costs, like medical liability reform, allowing employees to keep their insurance when they switch jobs, standardizing health information technology, and allowing consumers to purchase insurance across state lines. In Minnesota, we’ve passed reforms that made price and quality more transparent for patients, moving the health care system towards paying for and achieving better health care outcomes, and empowering patients themselves to help drive down costs.

Congress should look at what we are doing in Minnesota, among the healthiest states in the nation, where we have the highest concentration of health savings accounts in the country and other market-based reforms that are containing costs. A vote for the Baucus bill today is a move in the opposite direction – towards higher premiums, higher taxes, and more government.

We’ll allow him to toot his own horn in the last paragraph. After all, he has his eye on the presidency. And he might become a serious contender.

P.S. Are you a regular watcher of Special Report on Fox News? For me, it’s must-see TV. It’s a truly serious news show with objective investigative reporting and a fine panel of opinion makers for the last 20 minutes (I’d love it to go on for another 30 minutes).

This is heretical to many of you NoQuarter readers, but I’d rather skip Glenn Beck, and have Special Report go for two hours. I am starved for the kind of hard news that is missing from almost all other news venues. And I love the panel. Already said that, didn’t I.

If CNN can give, snore, Wolf Blitzer three hours every day, let’s give Bret Baier two hours.