President Obama is catching some well-earned blowback for his decision to force religious institutions “to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.” You see, ObamaCare penalizes individuals (employers) who don’t purchase (offer) a certain minimum package of health insurance coverage. The Obama administration is demanding that coverage must include the aforementioned reproductive care services. The exception for religious institutions that object to such coverage is so narrow that, as one wag put it, not even Jesus would qualify. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reassures us, “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.” Ummm, Madam Secretary…the Constitution only mentions one of those things. The Catholic church is hopping mad. Even the reliably left-wing E.J. Dionne is angry, writing that the President “utterly botched” the issue “not once but twice” and “threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus.”

As I wrote over and over as Congress debated ObamaCare, anger and division are inevitable consequences of this law. I recently debated the merits of ObamaCare’s individual mandate on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a paragraph that got cut from my essay:

We can be certain…that the mandate will divide the nation. An individual mandate guarantees that the government—not you—will decide what medical services you will purchase, including contraceptives, fertility services that result in the destruction of human embryos, or elective abortions. The same apparatus that can force Americans to subsidize elective abortions can also be used to ban private abortion coverage once the other team wins. The rancor will only grow.

Or as I put it in 2009,

Either the government will force taxpayers to fund abortions, or the restrictions necessary to prevent taxpayer funding will reduce access to abortion coverage. There is no middle ground. Somebody has to lose. Welcome to government-run health care.

The same is true for contraception. The rancor will grow until we repeal this law.

ObamaCare highlights a choice that religious organizations — such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where my grandfather served as counsel — have to make. Either they stop casting their lots with Caesar and join the fight to repeal government health care mandates and subsidies, or they forfeit any right to complain when Caesar turns on them. Matthew 26:52.

Contraceptives Mandate Brings ObamaCare’s Coercive Power into Sharper Focus is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Michigan has become the latest to repudiate Obamacare:

In an action with major implications for health reform in Michigan, the state House has voted to turn down—at least for now—nearly $10 million in federal funds to create a statewide health exchange by 2014 to sell more affordable, standardized health insurance to consumers and small businesses.

The Michigan House’s action is consistent with what everyone from the American Legislative Exchange Council to the Heritage Foundation to the Cato Institute has recommended that states do: refuse to create an Exchange and send the money back to Washington.

Our friend Jack McHugh of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy writes:

Under the Michigan Constitution, no money can be spent by the state—including federal grant money—unless the Legislature passes an appropriation bill authorizing the spending…

House Republicans have shown no eagerness [to create a state Obamacare exchange], and that reluctance extended to this appropriation bill. In the colorful words of House Appropriations Chair Chuck Moss, R-Birmingham, to MIRS News, “They’d rather be caught sacrificing to Satan than voting for Obamacare, so that’s the way it is.”

Jonathan Adler and I explain in this Wall Street Journal oped how Michigan officials can protect Michigan employers (including the state government itself) from penalties under Obamacare’s employer mandate—and even help bring down the entire law—by refusing to create an Exchange.

‘They’d Rather Be Caught Sacrificing to Satan Than Voting for Obamacare’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In June, I testified in Richmond before Virginia’s Joint Commission on Health Care that Virginia should refuse to create one of ObamaCare‘s health insurance “exchanges”:

[ObamaCare's] health insurance “Exchanges” are scheduled to become operational in 2014.  These new government bureaucracies would enforce the law’s regulations that will drive up health insurance premiums, and would distribute hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to private health insurance companies, thereby driving up the national debt…

Neither the Commonwealth nor the federal government has money to waste on new government agencies that might be repealed or overturned tomorrow…

At a minimum, Virginia should defer the question of creating an Exchange until the courts dispose of the constitutional challenges brought against this law.  Legal scholars expect the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on this law in the summer of 2012…If the Court voids the law, Virginia will be glad she waited.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has inexplicably been gung-ho to create an ObamaCare Exchange. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, however, McDonnell may be modulating his tune:

McDonnell said he does not want to create an exchange legislatively until after the court makes its decision on the mandate’s constitutionality. The court will hear arguments in the case in March and possibly rule in July, just after a federal deadline for states to seek grant money to set up exchanges.

“Any major expense prior to the court decision is irresponsible and a waste of money,” the governor said at a luncheon meeting with members of the Capitol press corps.

Unfortunately, McDonnell is still laboring under the misapprehension that creating her own Exchange will let Virginia retain a measure of control over her health insurance markets:

McDonnell said he hopes the Supreme Court will strike down the law’s individual mandate, rendering an exchange unnecessary, but he made clear he wants Virginia to operate the exchange if the law stands.

“If we have to do it, I clearly want to have a state-based exchange,” he said.

To read about why Virginia doesn’t “have to do it,” and why there is no defensible rationale whatsoever for an ObamaCare opponent such as McDonnell to create an Exchange, read my Missouri testimony.

To learn how McDonnell may end up saving ObamaCare from repeal by creating an Exchange, read this Wall Street Journal oped by Jonathan Adler and me.

Va. Gov. McDonnell (Sort of) Takes My Advice, Defers Creating ObamaCare Exchange is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

To Mitt Romney, $10,000 is no big deal.

No Wonder Romney Didn’t Mind Forcing People to Purchase Health Insurance is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In the latest issue of Virtual Mentor, a journal of the American Medical Association, I try to capture the multiple absurdities that make up ObamaCare. An encapsulation:

During the initial debate over ObamaCare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) famously said, “We have to pass [it] so you can find out what’s in it.” One irreverent heir to Hippocrates quipped, “That’s what I tell my patients when I ask them for a stool sample.” The similarities scarcely end there…

ObamaCare supporters are ignoring the federal government’s dire fiscal situation; ignoring the law’s impact on premiums, jobs, and access to health insurance; ignoring that a strikingly similar law has sent health care costs higher in Massachusetts; ignoring public opinion, which has been solidly against the law for more than 2 years; ignoring the law’s failures (when they’re not declaring them successes); and ignoring that the law was so incompetently drafted that it cannot be implemented without shredding the separation of powers, the rule of law, and the U.S. Constitution itself. Rather than confront their own errors of judgment, they self-soothe: The public just doesn’t understand the law. The more they learn about it, the more they’ll like it…

This denial takes its most sophisticated form in the periodic surveys that purport to show how those silly voters still don’t understand the law. (In the mind of the ObamaCare zombie, no one really understands the law until they support it.) A prominent health care journalist had just filed her umpteenth story on such surveys when I asked her, “At what point do you start to question whether ObamaCare supporters are just kidding themselves?”

Her response? “Soon…”

(For more proof that ObamaCare supporters can draw from an apparently bottomless well of denial, see this article by Politico.)

ObamaCare–The Way of the Dodo is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announces today that he will be a candidate for president.   His announcement is expected to tout his business experience and to portray him as the candidate best able to deal with the country’s economic problems.  But one thing you are not likely to hear him talk about is his Massachusetts health plan, Romneycare.

Of course, Romney has already tried to put this issue away with a speech in Detroit last month, and he would probably be happy to never talk about it again.   But if Romney really believes he can hide from the Romneycare fallout, he is badly mistaken. 

Cato scholars have issued several reports detailing the many failings of Romneycare.  Those studies can be found here , here , here and here for instance.  

In his Detroit speech, Romney trotted out three defenses.  First, he says that his plan, unlike Obamacare, did not increase taxes. That is technically true — if you consider only the legislation as Romney signed it. However, it is also true that the legislation relied heavily on federal subsidies — more than $300 million — and was still underfunded. Romney’s successor was forced both to cut back on some benefits that the plan originally offered and to raise the state’s cigarette tax by $1 per pack ($154 million annually) to help pay for the program. The state also imposed approximately $89 million in fees and assessments on health-care providers and insurers. 

Similarly, Romney claims that his plan only costs about one percent of the Massachusetts budget and is, therefore, not a budget-busting, big government program.  In making this claim, however, Romney fails to note that that accounting does not take into account more than $300 million annually in federal funds.  Nor does it count the costs that were pushed off onto Massachusetts businesses and taxpayers through the individual and employer mandates, or the costs of increased insurance premiums.

And, finally, Romney criticizes Obamacare as a “one size fits all” federal plan, whereas his plan was implemented in only one state. That’s true. Governor Romney only messed up the health-care system in Massachusetts, while President Obama has messed up health care for the entire country. Of course, as governor, Romney didn’t have the power to impose his model outside of his state. He now says that he opposes any national plan, calling for states to experiment with different approaches as the “laboratories of democracy.” That would certainly be an improvement over Obamacare. On the other hand, he has repeatedly said that he sees the Massachusetts plan as a model for the nation and has urged other states to copy his approach.

Governor Romney faces many challenges in convincing voters that he really does want to reduce the size, cost, and intrusiveness of government.  For example, Romney has recently been pandering to Iowa voters by renewing his support for ethanol subsidies.  On other issues, he has been a big supporter of federal involvement in education. He backed No Child Left Behind and once called for the federal government to buy a laptop computer for every child born in America. His record as Massachusetts governor was decidedly mixed. In the Cato Institute’s biannual ranking of governors on fiscal issues, Romney received a grade of only “C.” His philosophy of governing can be seen from his comment, “I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t always ask for federal money whenever I got the chance.”

But the biggest single obstacle to his candidacy remains Romneycare.  Unless and until he finds a way to deal with this albatross, he will be a weak and wounded frontrunner.

Romney Can Run, but He Can’t Hide from Romneycare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The following chart shows that ObamaCare‘s unfavorables reached 50 percent in the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll.  That’s higher than at any point since KFF started tracking ObamaCare’s unfavorables in January 2010.  The KFF poll also found that opposition is much more intense than support; 19 percent view the law very favorably, while 34 percent view the law very unfavorably.  Despite the availability of the these nuggets, KFF’S press release chose to deemphasize the surge: “Americans Remain Divided Over Health Reform With An Uptick In Public Opposition As GOP Ramped Up Repeal Campaign.”

Even more entertaining was this chart, which purports to show that Americans oppose defunding ObamaCare by nearly 2-to-1.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that 16 percent of the public opposes defunding ObamaCare because they want to see the law flat-out repealed.  A less-misleading pie chart would show that 33 percent approve of defunding, 16 percent say “don’t defund, just repeal” (total: 49 percent), and 46 percent disapprove of defunding ObamaCare.

Other findings include:

• 76 percent of the public oppose the individual mandate (and 55 percent oppose it even after hearing arguments for and against);
• 69 percent support cutting spending on ObamaCare’s coverage expansions;
• 60 percent believe ObamaCare will increase the deficit, while only 11 percent believe it will reduce the deficit;
• 52 percent support cutting Medicaid;
• 51 percent oppose ObamaCare’s employer mandate; and
• 51 percent oppose ObamaCare’s new taxes on over-the-counter medications for HSA, FSA, and HRA holders.

Despite these generally sensible views, 68 percent believe that Congress can balance the budget without cutting Medicare.

Opposition to ObamaCare Hits New High in Kaiser Family Foundation Poll is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a previous post, I promised to address the negative spin that the Kaiser Family Foundation put on its annual Employer Health Benefits Survey, released this month.  I do so in an op-ed that ran today at the Daily Caller.  An excerpt:

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently issued its annual survey of employer-sponsored health benefits, declaring: “Family Health Premiums Rise 3 Percent to $13,770 in 2010, But Workers’ Share Jumps 14 Percent as Firms Shift Cost Burden.” That’s half-right — but the other half perpetuates a myth about employee health benefits that stands in the way of real health care reform….

[Y]ou pay the full cost of your health benefits: partly through an explicit $4,000 premium and partly because your wages are $9,770 lower than they otherwise would be.

Kaiser therefore claims the impossible when it says that firms are shifting costs to workers.  Employers cannot shift to workers a cost that workers already bear. Yet this year, as in past years, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN, Kaiser Health News, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post uncritically repeated the cost-shifting myth.

The bolded sentence is Cannon’s Second Rule of Economic Literacy.  (Click here for the first rule.)

I have also collected a series of excerpts from past Kaiser Family Foundation surveys showing this is a persistent issue.  Here are a few:

1998: “Workers in small firms bear a much larger share of the financial burden for health benefits than employees of larger firms.”

2005: “The average worker paid $2,713 toward premiums for family coverage in 2005 or 26% of the total health premium.”

2007: “Annual Premiums for Family Coverage Now Average $12,106, With Workers Paying $3,281”

The folks at the Kaiser Family Foundation were exceedingly gracious when I approached them to discuss this issue.

KFF/HRET Survey, Part III: Employers Can’t Shift to Workers a Cost that Workers Already Bear is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The individual mandate has been a tricky issue for Barack Obama, leading him to make some impressive self-reversals.

When campaigning against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama came out hard against an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, alleging that Clinton would garnish workers’ wages and that Massachusetts’ individual mandate has left many residents “worse off”:

He even dismissed an individual mandate by saying, “If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house”:

Once president, of course, Obama endorsed and signed into law both an individual mandate and an employer mandate.

During the debate over ObamaCare, Obama likewise mocked George Stephanopoulos — no really, he mocked the poor guy– for suggesting the individual mandate is a tax. Obama didn’t mince words: “I absolutely reject that notion.” The relevant exchange begins three minutes into this video:

Now, the Obama administration says the individual mandate is a tax. According to The New York Times:

When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”…

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

(My colleagues Randy Barnett and Ilya Shapiro explain how this flip-flop shows the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare aren’t quite as frivolous as supporters claim.)

The next time Obama is in the mood to reverse himself on the individual mandate, he might consider this statement from June 2009:

When you hear people saying, “socialized medicine,” understand that I do not know anybody in Washington who is proposing that–certainly not me.

When the government makes health insurance compulsory, that is socialized medicine.  (Why else would ObamaCare win plaudits from Fidel Castro?) It would be nice to hear the president admit it.

Obama Flip-Flops on the Individual Mandate (Again) is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a recent Wall Street Journal oped, Carnegie-Mellon economist Allan Meltzer explains how ObamaCare is delaying economic recovery:

Two overarching reasons explain the failure of Obamanomics. First, administration economists and their outside supporters neglected the longer-term costs and consequences of their actions. Second, the administration and Congress have through their deeds and words heightened uncertainty about the economic future. High uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth…

Mr. Obama has denied the cost burden on business from his health-care program, but business is aware that it is likely to be large. How large? That’s part of the uncertainty that employers face if they hire additional labor…

Then there is Medicaid, the medical program for those with lower incomes. In the past, states paid about half of the cost, and they are responsible for 20% of the additional cost imposed by the program’s expansion. But almost all the states must balance their budgets, and the new Medicaid spending mandated by ObamaCare comes at a time when states face large deficits and even larger unfunded liabilities for pensions. All this only adds to uncertainty about taxes and spending.

Meltzer concludes that the Obama administration is making the same mistake as FDR: “President Roosevelt slowed recovery in 1938-40 until the war by creating uncertainty about his objectives. It was harmful then, and it’s harmful now.”

For more on the harm caused by government-created uncertainty, read my colleague Tad DeHaven’s recent posts.

ObamaCare Is Undermining Economic Recovery, Job Growth is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The New York Times‘ Kevin Sack reports on the legal challenge to ObamaCare’s individual mandate launched by 20 state attorneys general:

Some legal scholars, including some who normally lean to the left, believe the states have identified the law’s weak spot and devised a credible theory for eviscerating it…

Jonathan Turley, who teaches at George Washington University Law School, said that if forced to bet, he would predict that the courts would uphold the health care law. But Mr. Turley said that the federal government’s case was far from open-and-shut, and that he found the arguments against the mandate compelling.

“There are few cases in the history of the court system that have a more significant assertion of authority by the government,” said Mr. Turley, a civil libertarian who acknowledged being strange bedfellows with the conservative theorists behind the lawsuit. “This case, more than any other, may give the court sticker shock in terms of its impact on federalism.”

Supporters claim the individual mandate will pass muster with the Supreme Court because in the past the Court has declared that the U.S. Constitution’s interstate commerce clause authorizes Congress to regulate non-commercial activity that affects interstate commerce. Sack writes:

Lawyers for the government will contend that, because of the cost-shifting nature of health insurance, people who do not obtain coverage inevitably affect the pricing and availability of policies for everyone else. That, they will argue, is enough to satisfy the Supreme Court’s test.

But to [the attorneys' general outside counsel David] Rivkin, the acceptance of that argument would herald an era without limits.

“Every decision you can make as a human being has an economic footprint — whether to procreate, whether to marry,” he said. “To say that is enough for your behavior to be regulated transforms the Commerce Clause into an infinitely capacious font of power, whose exercise is only restricted by the Bill of Rights.”

Sack’s article contains an inaccuracy.  He writes:

Congressional bill writers took steps to immunize the law against constitutional challenge…They labeled the penalty on those who do not obtain coverage an “excise tax,” because such taxes enjoy substantial constitutional protection.

In fact, the law uses the term “excise tax” several times, but never in reference to the penalty for violating the individual mandate.  It describes that penalty solely as a penalty.  (The law does refer to the penalty for violating the employer mandate as a tax, but not an excise tax.)

As my Cato colleague Randy Barnett explains, that means supporters cannot reasonably claim that the individual mandate’s penalty is a tax, because that’s not what Congress approved.  As Cato chairman Bob Levy explains, even if supporters do claim that penalty is a tax, it would be an unconstitutional tax, because it does not fit into any of the categories of taxes the Constitution authorizes Congress to impose.

The “substantial constitutional protections” afforded to excise taxes do not protect the individual mandate.

NYT: Attorneys General Advance “a Credible Theory for Eviscerating” ObamaCare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Here’s my answer to today’s “Big Question” on The Hill‘s Congress Blog:

Now that the “public option” is dead, both the Left and the Right should be able to agree: the Senate bill is nothing but a $450 billion bailout of the private insurance companies.

In fact, the bailout may be several multiples of that figure.

That $450 billion just represents checks that the Treasury would write to private insurance companies. The Reid bill would also force nearly every U.S. citizen to fork over cash to the private insurance companies — no matter how lousy a deal they offer. A recent CBO memo reveals that Reid has been meticulously working behind closed doors to conceal the full cost of his private-insurer bailout.

The Left and the Right should insist that Reid produce a complete CBO score that reveals the full cost of his bill’s private-insurer bailout — in particular, the cost of the individual and employer mandates.

Left-wing Democrats will follow their own consciences when deciding how to vote. But they should force Reid to be honest about what he’s asking them to swallow.

Reid Won’t Even Tell His Base What He’s Asking Them to Swallow is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Along the lines of my oped with Bob Levy in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer explaining why an individual mandate is unconstitutional, here’s a poor, unsuccessful letter I submitted to the editor of the Washington Post:

To the Editor:

In one column, Ruth Marcus [“Health scare tactics,” Nov. 11] says it is “not true” that the House-passed health care overhaul “raises taxes for just about everyone.”  The same column, however, explains that anyone who doesn’t comply with the bill’s mandate that everyone purchase health insurance, or the associated fines, “could, in theory, be prosecuted — just like others who cheat on their taxes” (emphasis added).

A subsequent column [“An ‘Illegal’ Mandate? No,” Nov. 26] notes, “The individual mandate is to be administered through the tax code,” and finds constitutional authorization for it in Congress’ power to tax.

Let me see if I have this straight.  The Constitution’s taxing power authorizes it.  The IRS would enforce it.  If I don’t fork over what it demands, I face fines and jail time.  But somehow, the individual mandate is not a tax.

Fortunately, there are much better ways to reform health care.

The Individual Mandate: Not a Tax, Except for When It Is is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cato chairman Bob Levy and I have an oped in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer explaining why the individual mandate in Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) health care bill is unconstitutional.  (Our colleague Ilya Shapiro blogs about a similar piece by our colleague Randy Barnett.)

In sum, supporters of an individual mandate claim that two powers granted to Congress by the states in the Constitution — the Commerce Clause and the taxing power — give Congress the legal authority to force Americans to purchase health insurance.  We reject both theories.

First, the behavior that Congress seeks to regulate — the non-purchase of health insurance — is neither interstate, nor is it commerce.  Unfortunately, under the Supreme Court’s tortured interpretation of the Commerce Clause, that isn’t dispositive, so we explain why even the Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence doesn’t allow for an individual mandate.

Second, the individual mandate cannot be justified by pointing to Congress’s taxing power, because the tax it would impose is neither an excise tax, nor an income tax, nor a direct tax apportioned according to population.

Game over.  All your base are belong to us.

We’ve already received many responses to the oped, some of them intelligent.  One reader asks how we can describe the non-purchase of health insurance as “a non-act that harms no one”:

We all know that when folks without insurance go to the emergency room, those of us with insurance are harmed in the form of higher premiums.

Originally, we had included a section expanding on our “harms no one” claim that would have addressed this point, but we dropped it for brevity.  Here it is:

Most uninsured people don’t end up in an emergency room.  As for those who do, research shows that the uninsured as a group more than pay their own way. Many simply pay their bills without imposing costs on anyone. And because they typically pay premium prices for medical care — far more than is ordinarily reimbursed by public or private insurance — they more than offset the cost of uncompensated care to the uninsured overall, according to MIT economist Jonathan Gruber and others.

Even if we ignore that evidence, uncompensated care to the uninsured accounts for about 2.2 percent of national health expenditures.  The left-leaning Urban Institute writes, “Private insurance premiums are at most 1.7 percent higher because of the shifting of the costs of the uninsured to private insurers in the form of higher charges.”  That’s hardly a crisis.

And think about it: an uninsured person is wheeled into an emergency room, unconscious and bleeding.  Is this person able to harm anyone?  Is this person in a position to impose costs on you?  Of course not.

What imposes costs on you are the laws that require the doctors and hospitals to treat those patients without regard to ability to pay — and the ethical codes that would impel doctors to treat them even if there were no such laws.  If you have a problem with those laws/codes, make them the focus of your ire.  If you support them, surely you can’t be upset that they increase your premiums by 1.7 percent.  Isn’t that a small price to pay to live in a compassionate society?

But if you’re still angry about that 1.7 percent, bear in mind that the Reid individual mandate — which is essentially a bailout for private health insurance companies — would increase the cost of insurance for some people by 30 percent and would require additional taxes on top of that.

Fortunately, there are much better ways to reform health care.

The Reid Individual Mandate: An Affront to the Constitution is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The fat lady hasn’t even started to warm up yet.

The narrow 220-215 victory in the House on Saturday night was a step forward on the road to a government takeover of the health care system.  But as close and dramatic as that vote was, that was the easy part.  The Senate must still pass its version of reform—which will not be the bill that just passed the House.  Nancy Pelosi was, after all, able to lose the votes of 39 moderate Democrats.  Harry Reid cannot afford to lose even one.  A conference committee must reconcile the two vastly different versions.  And then, Pelosi must hold together her 3 vote margin of victory (if it gets that far).  Yet several House Democrats who voted for the bill on Saturday said they did so only to “advance the process.” Their vote is far from guaranteed on final passage.  And, House liberals are almost certain to be disappointed by the more moderate bill that may emerge from the conference.

Among the more contentious issues:

Individual Mandate: This should’ve been low-hanging fruit. Democrats agreed on a mandate early in the process. But it became increasingly plain that a mandate would hit those with insurance as well as the uninsured — forcing people who are happy with their plan to switch to a different, possibly more expensive plan. With this mandate now being seen as a middle-class tax hike, qualms have developed.  The House bill contains a strict mandate, with penalties of 2.5 percent of income backed up by up to five years in jail.  The Senate Finance Committee, on the other hand, watered down the mandate’s penalties and delayed the mandates implementation.

Employer Mandate: The House bill also contains an employer mandate, a requirement that all but the smallest employers provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty tax of up to 8 percent of payroll.  The Senate,  looking at unemployment rates over 10 percent, seems unlikely to include an employer mandate.

The Public Option: The House included, if not a “robust” public option, at least a semi-robust one.  But moderate Democrats in the Senate are clearly not on board.  Joe Lieberman (I-CT) says that he will join a Republican filibuster if the public option is included.  Harry Reid is trying various permutations: a trigger, an opt-in, an opt-out.  But as of now there is not 60 votes for any variation.

The Sheer Cost: Fiscal hawks like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) say they will not support a bill that adds to the deficit or spends too much.  But the house bill cost a minimum of $1.2 trillion.

Taxes: The House plan to add a surtax on incomes of $500,000 or more a year has no support in the Senate. At the same time, the Senate plan to slap a 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans is unacceptable to key Democratic constituencies like labor unions.

Abortion: Conservative Democrats insisted on a strict prohibition on the use of government funds for abortion.  The bill could not have passed without the inclusion of that provision.  House liberal swallowed hard and voted for the bill, despite what they called “a poison pill” anyway with the expectation that it will be removed later.  If the final bill includes the prohibition at least a couple liberals could defect.  If it doesn’t, conservative Democrats won’t be on board.

Immigration: The Senate Finance Committee included a provision barring illegal immigrants from purchasing insurance through the government-run Exchange.  The House Hispanic Caucus says that if that provision is in the final bill, they will vote against it.

As if these disagreements among Democrats wasn’t bad enough, public opinion is now turning against the bill.

President Obama has called for a bill to be on his desk before Christmas—the latest in a series of deadline that are so far unmet.  It is hard to see how Congress can meet this one either.  The Senate has not yet received CBO scoring of its bill and is not prepared to even begin debate until next week at the earliest.  That debate will last 3-4 weeks minimum, assuming there are 60 votes for cloture.  That means, the bill cant’ go to conference committee until mid-December, even if everything breaks the way Harry Reid wants.  Privately, Democrats are now suggesting late January, before the State of the Union address, is the best they can do.

The fat lady can go back to sleep—this isn’t over yet.

Health Care: Not Close to Over is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

As my colleague Jeffrey Miron noted earlier today, when grilled by George Stephanopolous on whether the so-called “individual mandate” is a tax increase, Obama replied, “Nobody considers that a tax increase….You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase…My critics say everything is a tax increase.”

Where do Obama’s critics get these wacky ideas?  From a bunch of nobodies, that’s who!

Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, quoted by Larry Summers (1987):

[Just because] the fiscal flows triggered by mandate would not flow directly through the public budgets does not detract from the measure’s status of a bona fide tax.

Economist Larry Summers, Obama’s National Economic Council chair (1989):

Economists have generally devoted little attention to mandated benefits regarding them as simply disguised tax and expenditure measures… Essentially, mandated benefits are like public programs financed by benefit taxes… [If] the mandated benefit is worthless to employees, it is just like a tax from the point of view of both employers and employees…There is no sense in which benefits become ‘free’ just because the government mandates that employers offer them to workers.

Columbia University economist Sherry Glied, Obama’s appointee to HHS Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, in the New England Journal of Medicine (2008):

The mandate is in many respects analogous to a tax. It requires people to make payments for something whether they want it or not. One important concern is that the government will provide insufficient funds for the subsidies intended to accompany the mandate. In that case, the mandate will act as a very regressive tax, penalizing uninsured people who genuinely cannot afford to buy coverage.

Congressional Budget Office (2009):

Under some proposals, firms would be required to make payments to the federal government if they chose not to offer health insurance to their employees, and individuals who did not comply with the requirement to  obtain insurance would have to pay a penalty. Such payments would be equivalent to a tax or a fine, and the government’s receipts should be recorded in the budget as federal revenues.

Here’s a question: if an individual mandate is not a tax, why exempt anybody?  If an employer mandate isn’t a tax, why exempt small businesses?

Nobody Considers Health Insurance Mandates a Tax? Really?? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Hell of a speech last night, eh?  Here are a few of my favorite gems.

Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.

Translation: I, Barack Obama, ignoring thousands of years of failed price-control schemes, will impose price controls on health insurance. I will force insurers to sell a $50k policies for $10k. What could go wrong?

We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs per month.

True. And your employer mandate would kill hundreds of thousands of low-wage jobs that would never come back.

They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime.   We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses…. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care.

Translation: Boy! Are we going to force you to buy a lot of coverage!

I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.

…except for the bureaucrats I proposed to put between you and your doctor.

Some… supported a budget that would have essentially turned Medicare into a privatized voucher program. That will never happen on my watch. I will protect Medicare.

Translation: I will never let seniors control their own health care dollars. I will never give up Washington’s control over your health care decisions.  Mmmmuuuuhahahahahaha!

…there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed.

Translation: There are too many lobbyists counting on me to succeed: drug-industry lobbyists, health-insurance lobbyists,  physician-cartel lobbyists, large-employer lobbyists, hospital lobbyists….

It’s a plan that asks everyone to take responsibility for meeting this challenge – not just government and insurance companies, but employers and individuals.

Translation: I’m going to tax the hell out of you, but I don’t want you to notice how much I’m going to tax you. So I’m going to tax employers and insurance companies, and they’re going to pass the taxes on to you. Most of the taxes won’t even show up in the government’s budget. It’s all very clever. No, seriously – just ask my economic advisor Larry Summers.

It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from Senators and Congressmen; from Democrats and Republicans – and yes, from some of my opponents in both the primary and general election.

Translation: I may have savaged your ideas in the past, called them irresponsible…risky…dangerous…whatever. But that wasn’t about principle; I just wanted to become president. Now that I’m president, I need a win. So you’ll help me, won’t you? Hey, where’s Hillary?

Obama’s Health Care Speech in Plain English is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Cato Institute will launch an ad campaign Thursday highlighting under-reported poll data showing Americans’ concerns that current health care reform plans will raise costs, limit choice and reduce the quality of their health care.

The campaign will feature full-page ads in major national newspapers, in addition to radio spots focusing on why government-run health care cannot address the problems of growing costs and lack of coverage for many individuals and families. The campaign will expand in the weeks ahead.

“Our goal is to help the American public navigate terms like ‘a public plan’ and ‘individual or employer mandates’ to understand what is really happening here,” said Ed Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute. “The bottom line is, most of the plans coming from the White House and congressional leadership will result in a government-run health care system that is really not the best option for most Americans.”

A poll by the Washington Post and ABC News conducted June 18-21 showed that 84 percent of respondents were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that “current efforts to reform the health care system” would increase their health care costs. The survey also showed that 79 percent of respondents were concerned that current efforts would limit their choices of doctors or medical treatments.

As part of the campaign, Cato is running radio ads in major cities across the country. You can listen to them below, and embed them on your own blog using the code on the official campaign site.

Cato has also created a new website, Healthcare.cato.org, to promote more free market-oriented health care reform proposals.

Cato Institute to Launch Ad Campaign Against Government-Run Health Care is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama will hold a press conference tonight to answer questions about his health care reform proposal. This is what I would ask him:

Mr. President, during your campaign, you said, “I can make a firm pledge…Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”  You also said that “no one will pay higher tax rates than they paid in the 1990s.”

Your National Economic Council chairman, Larry Summers, has written that employer mandates “are like public programs financed by benefit taxes.”  Under the House health reform bill, an uninsured worker earning $50,000 per year, with no offer of coverage from her employer, would face a 15.3-percent federal payroll tax, a 25-percent federal marginal income tax rate, an 8-percent reduction in her wages (to pay the employer penalty), plus a 2.5 percent uninsured tax.  In total, her effective marginal federal tax rate would reach 50.8 percent.

Do you stand by those pledges, and would you therefore veto any employer mandate or individual mandate as a tax on the middle class?

(Add it to the questions I posed here and here.)

My Question for the President is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Here’s a roundup of bloggers who are writing about Cato research, commentary and analysis. If you’re blogging about Cato, let us know.

• Blogger Melissa Clouthier helps spread the word about Cato’s analysis of Obama’s health plan by posting a video of Cato experts dissecting the ABC special last week.

• David Kirkpatrick examines Obama’s record on civil liberties by quoting Cato scholar Doug Bandow.

• Education blogger Brandon Dutcher links to Neal McCluskey’s analysis of American public schools.

• At the Real Clear World Compass blog, Kevin Sullivan quotes Juan Carlos Hidalgo on the political crisis in Honduras.

• Blogging for Townhall.com, Kevin Glass quotes Michael F. Cannon on Wal-Mart’s  support of an employer mandate to provide health care.

• Freedom Politics blogger Thomas J. Lucente Jr. cites foreign policy expert Christopher Preble in a post about the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.

• Writing about the political situation in Honduras, Patrick Murphy draws from Juan Carlos Hidalgo’s analysis on the president’s removal.

• At the Americans for Tax Reform blog, Tim Andrews cites David Boaz’s post that lists the “taxes proposed or publicly floated by President Obama and his aides and allies.”

Who’s Blogging about Cato is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog