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A report from the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds the the cost control provisions in the Affordable Care Act produce a "notable improvement in the long-term outlook" for debt reduction if the law is implemented fully.
The federal government faces long-term fiscal pressures ... driven on the spending side largely by rising health care costs and an aging population. GAO's simulations show continually increasing levels of debt that are unsustainable over the long-term.
Both of these simulations incorporate effects of health care legislation enacted in March 2010, which includes a number of provisions to control the growth of federal health care spending. There is a notable improvement in the long-term outlook under the Baseline Extended simulation, which assumes full implementation and effectiveness of cost control provisions.
I guess Frank Guinta didn't get the memo. Guinta claims to be focused on balancing the budget, but he never misses an opportunity to call for repealing healthcare reform. And he doesn't stop there. If can't eliminate it, he'll work to reduce its effectiveness.
“Procedurally, if it gets to the president’s desk and he vetoes it, the reality is that we don’t have the votes to override,” said Guinta. “So we’re going to have to work immediately after that to do three things: No. 1, reduce the cost of the overall bill. No. 2, eliminate the unconstitutional components of it. And No. 3, do what many people in this country wanted to see done in the first place, which is to reduce costs for employers and employees.”
So tell us Frank, how are you going to make up for the big budget hole that healthcare repeal will leave behind?
Like many of you, I contacted my two senators in an effort to encourage them to support the current efforts in the Congress to achieve healthcare reform. Yesterday, I got my response back from Senator Gregg. He sent me a three page letter in which he says that he supports reform, but not in the form of the legislation currently being debated in Congress.
Senator Gregg takes three pages to tell me what is wrong with the current bills and tries to convince me that he is really for reform as long as it is market based and not costly.
Twenty people showed up for our rally for keeping the Public Option in Healthcare Reform on Thursday, August 20...This was sponsored by Working Families Win... I personally convinced four others to join me...We held hand-lettered signs while others mass-printed ones...I wished our numbers were closer to 200...So important is this issue...
On the other hand, all motorists who responded gave us a thumbs up or other positive gestures...A contrast with other public demonstrations held in Keene's Central Square over the decades.
In backing away from its support for a public option in healthcare reform, the Obama administration is picking a fight with the liberal wing of the Democratic party.
Liberal Democrats have insisted a public insurance option is necessary to ensure competition for private insurers.
I heard from a friend who was sitting in on a meetings regarding health care reform (they are not from NH, nor is the congressman they work for), that our Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter told a group of stubborn congressman who were unsure about supporting the bill, something to the effect of...
Look, we're all getting attacked back in our districts for supporting heath care reform, but that doesn't bother me. We need grow some guts and pass this bill because this is what people need.
Again, I'm paraphrasing and this is all hearsay, but it really made me proud to have such a bold congresswoman. Apparently it was a pretty heated meeeting and CSP really kicked some butt (and also changed a few minds).
John McCain and Sarah Palin have spent much of the past few weeks attacking the greedy, corrupt villains behind the collapse of our financial markets. And there truly were some pretty shady characters involved in some very questionable financial dealings. But a crisis of this magnitude never is the fault of just a few rotten apples. What McCain and Palin can't seem to grasp is that environmental factors can turn honorable people into criminals and people of questionable morality into models of probity.
Shade the truth just a bit, do this over and over again, and the possibility of weapons of mass destruction becomes a certainty. Create financial instruments that no one really understands, add a little more risk with each derivative, and all of a sudden you've inoculated the entire financial system with a virulent strain of almost worthless paper. But John McCain and Sarah Palin are as wedded to their mistaken notion of free market economics as George Bush is to his war in Iraq. Out of political necessity, McCain and Palin may try to sound like they understand the need for government referees at a free market football game, but in the end they simply can't surrender their favorite theory to some stubborn little facts.
