House Outlines Health Bill Today: Updated Tax the Rich and Business

The house has always been the more left in its approach so be it energy or health reform and the package they will outline today is no exception:

It includes:

1. A public insurance plan
2. A health care mandate that all Americans have health insurance including the "invincible".
   
3. Insurance Companies will be prohibited from denying coverage to those with existing health issues.
4. The Income Tax increase Rangel promised on the "rich"
5. Several of the provisions including the public plan only take affect after a couple of years.
   

So far details are limited with many questions left open:

1. What penalty will exist for those who do not buy insurance but can afford it.
2. What will the payment schedule for the public plan be?
3. Will employers face a tax if they lack health plans for workers?
4. Will low income families receive a subsidy to purchase insurance?

These are the tip of the ice berg and the only thing we can say for certain is that the Democrats have killed the idea of taxing employee health benefits for the time being. With Democrats balking at health care its clear this is an attempt to jump start the legislation. Expect a rush job and an ugly bill which no one will bother to read.

Update:

Key elements of the legislation include federal subsidies for poorer individuals and families to help them afford coverage.

Financing would come from a federal surtax on the upper income -- up to 5.4 percent on the income of taxpayers making more than $1 million a year -- as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending.

The new income tax on the wealthy is estimated to raise more than $500 billion over the next decade, and reductions in Medicaid and Medicare would account for nearly as much.

Democrats did not say in advance what the overall legislation would cost.

Numerous issues remain subject to change as the bill makes its way through committee. In particular, moderate to conservative Democrats have been negotiating for several days, asking for changes affecting rural health care as well as other issues.

Employers who do not offer coverage would be required to pay 8 percent of each uninsured worker's salary, with exemptions for smaller firms built into the legislation.

Individuals who refused to buy affordable coverage would be assessed as much as 2.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, up to the cost of an average health insurance plan, according to the legislation.

The legislation would set up a new government-run health insurance program to compete with private coverage. The plan's payments to medical providers such as hospitals and doctors would be keyed to the rates paid by Medicare, which are lower than what private insurers pay.

No number on the cost, pathetic. This is a left wing disaster that will utterly destroy the health care industry and the nations finances. Its Massachusetts health care on a grander more damaging scale.

Second Update:

We have a price tag, no thanks to the house but courtesy of the CBO:

1 TRILLION ! Via HA:

Actually, it’s really a cool trillion over five years. Eyeball the graph Philip Klein posted this afternoon and admire the left’s sleight of hand. They’re using a 10-year timeline to create the illusion that the program costs $100 billion a year or so. In fact, it’ll be more than $200 billion once it gets going, which won’t happen until 2014, and that’s assuming that the cost projections aren’t wildly over-optimistic the way every other projection they’ve made this year has turned out to be. In fact, the trillion-dollar figure doesn’t even account for all expenses; as MKH notes, the CBO has yet to compute “administrative costs” of implementing the program or the effect it’ll have on other areas of federal spending. Still, give The One credit for consistency: Whether it’s borrowing from future generations to pay for the stimulus or hiding the costs of his health-care boondoggle by backloading them, he’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Chart Via American Spectator

Remember rich is a sliding scale downwards as revenues inevitably dry up and costs exceed expectations.