The 170-page bill, still labeled a draft, is by far the most liberal approach to health-care reform being discussed in Washington and potentially is quite expensive. It does not identify how the expansion of health coverage would be paid for, except to require businesses to provide insurance for workers or pay penalties.
After spending “scores of hours in the Kennedy workhorse meetings” that assembled a diverse range of stakeholders, Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, said he was surprised and disappointed that the team had resorted to a “lot of the same old tired ideas we have fought against for many years.”
Much of the business community will “do everything we can to block” the proposed employer mandates, he said.
A source who has met often with Kennedy aides said they have estimated that the “employer mandate” could raise $300 billion over a 10-year period, which would suggest either high levies, a program that targets even the smallest businesses or a combination of the two.
On the House side, by comparison, Democratic leaders have examined an employer requirement that would raise $50 billion to $200 billion over a decade. In other respects, however, House Democrats are following the Kennedy outlines but at perhaps smaller levels.
With American business shedding jobs at an unprecedented rate . . . what could go wrong?
Comment by Rusty on 6/7 @ 5:51 am #
Oh. Yeah. This is going to work out well.
businesses to provide insurance for workers or pay penalties. Democrat for ‘more unemployment’.
Comment by serr8d on 6/7 @ 6:01 am #
My company has had to raise heath care coverage costs yearly. Now, we’ve had to institute an almost mandatory ‘wellness’ program, with annual checkups and proscribed requirements to meet ‘target’ goals (reducing cholesterols, fitting in your proscribed weight slots, smokers confined to cages, you know the drills) to get the lowest costs. A non-participant is slammed with the highest costs possible. If you don’t meet your goals, there’s a monetary cost increase – penalty at the next year’s renewal.
So far, no one’s been kicked to the curb. So far.
Comment by Carin on 6/7 @ 6:01 am #
These people are so fucking stupid.
Comment by Stephen Macklin on 6/7 @ 6:11 am #
It is apparently modeled on the highly successful, Mitt Romney signed, Massachusetts healthcare plan.
I guess I don’t have to bother to say I want this plan to fail – because it already has.
Comment by B Moe on 6/7 @ 8:54 am #
Trying to think of who Teddy reminds me of in that picture?
Oh yeah.
Comment by sdferr on 6/7 @ 9:01 am #
Why does Wyden call it affordable coverage?
Because it isn’t.
Comment by B Moe on 6/7 @ 9:03 am #
Why do they keep saying they are trying to lower the cost of healthcare when they aren’t? Doublespeak is all they know.
Comment by sdferr on 6/7 @ 9:17 am #
It’s a “lie about the hardest problems first and most” strategy, B Moe. Overwhelm the putzes with blather and folderall sure, but pound home the one - false - thing again and again, “it will be cheaper”.
Comment by Techie on 6/7 @ 10:22 am #
I fail to see how high taxes and government meddling in even the smallest proprietorship could have anything but positive consequences
-Democrat voter.
Comment by SBP on 6/7 @ 10:26 am #
It bears repeating over and over again: these are the people who managed to go bankrupt running a whorehouse in Nevada.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 6/7 @ 3:29 pm #
Yeah, I love the saga of the Mustang Ranch. Too bad it’s not quite true, although it should be :D
Comment by McGehee on 6/7 @ 3:35 pm #
SBP, Swen, I for one have no doubt it would have been true if the judge and the county commission had permitted the bankruptcy trustee to try. After all, the hookers would all have had to take the civil service exam, and you can’t just pimp-slap a GS-3 for holding out on you.
Comment by SBP on 6/7 @ 3:38 pm #
Thanks for the correction, Swen.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 6/7 @ 4:26 pm #
I think I’ll go with McGehee’s interpretation SBP, although I’d argue that even the pool boy would have been a GS-5. The whores? GS-9/11 easy. It’s the Peter Principle applied to government: The more you suck the higher you go.
Comment by Bob Reed on 6/7 @ 7:31 pm #
You know, I love how they’re talking about raising 60 to 300 billion over 10 years to fund a program that by most estimates will cost a minimum of a trillion dollars over the same 10 year period…
B-But, were broke…We’ve got to quit living beyond our means!
Just words?
Comment by McGehee on 6/7 @ 10:09 pm #
I am so not directing my wife (GS-12) to this thread.
Comment by ron on 6/8 @ 1:06 pm #
My largest complaint with the Bush Whitehouse was that they had ample opportunity to fix this and did nothing. Now looks who is doing the job they should have done. The republican party has no one to blame but the republican party and I am one. They could have tried but they did nothing.