Kennedy Care Revised

The original Kennedy plan which would have added at least 1 trillion to the deficit has now been revised. With Health Care the dominant issue for Obama the Senate Democrats have worked on a plan to further the chance that legislation will be passed this year. Of course tests cases of health care reform, such as Massachusetts have been found wanting. The Senate which had been mulling taxing employee health benefits with possible exemptions had discussed mandating employer coverage as part of the plan to cover all Americans:

WASHINGTON — To warm words from President Obama, the Democratic leaders of the Senate health committee unveiled a revised plan Thursday to provide health coverage to nearly all Americans. The plan would require most employers to offer benefits to their workers or pay fees to the government and would create a public competitor to insurance companies.

The proposal clears the way for the committee to vote on a package next week as the House and the Senate hustle to pass separate health bills this month before Congress leaves on its August break. But a second Senate panel, the Finance Committee, is still struggling to reach consensus.

The health committee’s blueprint builds on an incomplete version that was much criticized two weeks ago when the Congressional Budget Office reported that it would cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years and still leave up to 37 million Americans uninsured. That budget report was widely considered a setback for a health care overhaul, Mr. Obama’s top domestic priority.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the health committee chairman, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut subsequently filled in details of the plan and scaled back subsidies that would help low-income people buy insurance.Attached to the revised outline they presented Thursday was a new budget office analysis projecting that the plan would cost $611 billion over a decade and, together with expected changes from the Finance Committee, cover 97 percent of Americans.

The Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, is expected to propose expansions to that government health program for the poor that would add several hundred billion dollars more to the legislation’s cost, depending on how it is designed.

Of course the Democrats are still peddling their nonsense on cost savings, but this cam be discounted as a talking point:

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who control Congress are seeking to hold the upfront costs of overhauling the health care system to roughly $1 trillion over a decade. In the course of time, they argue, the changes would rein in health care spending through efficient practices and lower insurance costs.

Their main idea for controlling insurance costs is the proposal for a public option. Along with private insurers’ offerings, it would be part of a new insurance exchange from which consumers without employer-provided coverage could choose. On Thursday, Mr. Obama said again that the public option would help in “keeping the insurance companies honest.”

The public option is designed to destroy the private insurers and create a socialized system. Creating a program to keep private insurers "honest" makes no sense. Either it will offer the same deals as the private companies, or it will use the unlimited funds the government has to crush its competition. Obama and the left know this and they are being wholly disengenuous on this as they have been throughout this entire argument. So what is the plan?

Under the Kennedy-Dodd proposal, employers with 25 or more workers would have to provide coverage or pay the government an annual fee of $750 for each full-time worker and $375 for each part-timer. The government would pay the start-up costs for the public insurance option as a loan to be repaid, and premiums would be set up so that the option was ultimately self-sufficient.

No mention of a payment schedule, so how can they say the premiums will make it self sufficient if we don't know hoe much they are going the health care industry? As for the 750 dollar tax, color me skeptical that it will provide the revenues, even for their scaled back proposals which by magic spend less money then some of the original proposals but covers more people.