Christians are called to care, with or without evangelizing

Where is Jesus in politics?

By Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo

The Washington Post 04/01/2012  LINK

For almost as long as we have been a church, Catholic ritual for Palm Sunday has dramatized that people who greeted Jesus with “Hosannas” and palm branches on his entry into Jerusalem were in the crowd calling for his crucifixion days later.

Holy Week reminds us that religion can as easily distort consciences as illuminate them. This year, the entry of the Affordable Care Act into the Supreme Court invited Palm Sunday-like displays of acclaim accompanied simultaneously by dark threats of rejection. The final court decision is not on a par with Jesus’ passion, nor is Obama to be confused with the Messiah, but just because we consider ourselves God’s friends we are not exempt from the sin of distorting the Gospel message.

U.S. Congressman Paul Ryan introduces Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as he attends a pancake breakfast in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, April 1, 2012. (DARREN HAUCK - REUTERS)I’m troubled that public opinion so easily characterizes religion as only right-wing Republican politics. (Catholics like Rick Santorum probably falls into this category, so my critique is ecumenical.) The question of health care insurance is an example of how persons professing to be the most religious among us can nonetheless violate basic teachings of Jesus. We Christians are called to care for material needs of our neighbors (Mt. 25) without imposing evangelization as a condition. In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk:10:25-37), Our Lord criticized the temple priest and the Levite who passed by an injured man. Jesus praised instead the non-believer’s material help to his neighbor, while condemning the religious leaders’ escapism in the name of religious purity. Direct action for mercy is valued over abstract passion for piety. Logically then, it goes against Christian discipleship of Christ to repeal the Affordable Care Act without offering a substitute that will provide for 40 million uninsured, most of them children. Talk of “government take over” or “use of abortifacients” does not relieve the Christian’s need to be keeper of our brothers and sisters. Yet, we are treated these days to the irony of religion being invoked as reason to avoid Christian responsibility for health care.

Similarly, God’s friends say they want to remake the U.S. government in the model of Christian values. That clearly would include spending public tax dollars to perform the corporal works of mercy: food for the hungry, housing for the homeless, health care for the sick, etc. Yet the construct of their “Christian government” removes these functions from legislative action. Ironically, today’s so-called “secularists” promote Jesus’ values in government while the “Christian nation” folks largely oppose them.

The Paul Ryan budget endorsed by the Republican party is built upon the principles of atheist Ayn Rand. The Catholic League assails atheists and secularists for offenses like not illuminating the Empire State Building with red lights for Cardinal Dolan, but is meekly uncritical about Randism and uncharacteristically silent about Ryan’s individualism that contradicts centuries of Catholic social justice teaching.

Other “Christian” politics include legislating for more guns and opposing restrictions on their sale. I am waiting for one of these believers to explain how being pro-gun fulfills Jesus’ teaching on “turning the other cheek” (Mt. 5:39). Why do they promote laws like Florida’s “Stand Your Ground: in other states? “Claims of justifiable homicide in Florida have tripled since the law’s passage in 2005” with the result that murder goes unpunished more often. The death of Trayvon Martin should not be required to condemn laws that violate the teachings of Jesus both in word and deed. Why would any Christian be silent about such abuses?

Jesus told us to take in “strangers,” and Catholic teaching has applied this to the need for humane immigration reform. Yet “super-Christians” favor deportation of all the undocumented, even to the extreme ofRepublicans in Congress ridiculing medical attention to those imprisoned.

When God has friends like these, why worry about His enemies? In the reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday, we in the pews are required to shout out “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Maybe we should ask ourselves whether this is merely a ritual or if we are betraying Jesus all over again in our politics.

Republicans backed birth-control mandate

Before current birth-control fight, Republicans backed mandates

Republicans are fighting a birth-control rule in President Obama's healthcare law, but several states have enacted contraceptive mandates with the support of GOP lawmakers and governors.

February 15, 2012|By Kim Geiger and Noam N. Levey, Washington Bureau

LAtimes.com LINK

Reporting from Washington — Since President Obama moved to require Catholic hospitals and universities to offer their employees contraceptive health benefits, Republicans have rushed to accuse the administration of an unprecedented attack on religious freedoms.

None has been more forceful than former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who accused Obama of "a direct violation of the 1st Amendment." But years before the current partisan firestorm, GOP lawmakers and governors around the country, including Huckabee, backed similar mandates.

Twenty-two states have laws or regulations that resemble, at least in part, the Obama administration's original rule. More than a third had some Republican support, a review of state records shows.

In six states, including Arkansas, those contraceptive mandates were signed by GOP governors.

In Massachusetts in 2006, then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed a healthcare overhaul that kept in place a contraceptive mandate signed by his Republican predecessor. Now the GOP presidential candidate is calling the Obama rule an "assault on religion."

At the federal level, President George W. Bush never challenged a similar federal mandate imposed in 2000.

The state laws were the product of a campaign by women's groups and others that began after insurers started covering Viagra for men.

The cause has always drawn more support from Democrats, who pushed successfully in 2010 to include a provision in the healthcare law designed to expand women's access to preventive services like contraception.

But until recently, many Republicans also supported expanding access to contraceptives, even if it meant angering some religious constituencies.

In 1997, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and then-Rep.James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania cosponsored bills aimed at requiring contraceptive coverage nationally. Seven additional Senate Republicans and 15 other House Republicans signed on to the legislation, though it never became law.

Three years later, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing laws against workplace discrimination, ruled all employers with more than 15 workers must cover contraceptives for women if they offer health plans that cover preventive services and prescription drugs.

When Republicans took control of Washington after Bush won the 2000 presidential election, his administration could have challenged that requirement, as it did other mandates.

But in his 2001 confirmation hearings to be attorney general, John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would "defend the rule" promulgated by the EEOC.

The original Obama regulation, released in January, went further than any state by requiring that women receive contraceptive benefits without co-pays or deductibles, as required for all preventive care under the healthcare law. But in exempting only some religious organizations, the administration followed what had become the approach used by many states.

The administration would have exempted an employer that "has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose," primarily employs and serves people of the same religion, and is a nonprofit.

That standard was understood to exempt churches, but not religiously affiliated hospitals and universities.

In the face of fierce blow-back, the administration has since proposed a compromise that makes insurers, rather than employers, responsible for the cost of contraceptive coverage for employees of religiously affiliated institutions.

Congressional Republicans are pushing legislation to exempt all employers from providing contraceptive coverage if it goes against their beliefs.

In 2000, when Iowa became one of the first states to enact a contraceptive mandate, the Republican Legislature overwhelmingly backed the bill, which has no exemption for religious employers of any kind.

Even one of the law's few opponents did not move to exempt religious employers at the time, records show. Republican Rep. Steve King, a leading conservative who was then a state senator, instead proposed to exempt employers who did not cover Viagra. "We were not fighting the battle over conscience protection then," King said in an interview this week.

In Arizona, state Rep. Linda Binder, a pro-choice Republican, formed a bipartisan coalition to push her bill, which exempted churches but not other church-affiliated institutions, through the Republican-controlled Legislature. Then-Gov. Jane Hull, a Republican and a Catholic, signed the measure into law.

In New York, a similar law also won GOP support in the Legislature. It was signed in 2001 by Gov. George E. Pataki, another Republican.

Four years later, the Arkansas law easily cleared that state's Legislature, with help from Republican lawmakers, including two GOP cosponsors. Huckabee signed it in April 2005.

He defended the law in a statement. "Religious employers are not required to comply with this policy," he said. "My position is, and always has been, that religious entities shouldn't be forced to pay for contraception."

But like the original federal regulation proposed by Obama, the Arkansas law did not exempt church-affiliated hospitals and universities. It exempts only "religious employers" that are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is "the inculcation of religious values," and primarily employ people who share the same religion, a standard few Catholic hospitals meet.

George Washington and and first congress first mandated health insurance

LINK

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"In 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves. In 1792, Congress enacted a law mandating that all able-bodied citizens obtain a firearm."

Einer Elhauge on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine

Harvard Law professor says early Congress mandated health insurance for seamen and gun ownership for most men

Share this story:

One complaint about President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is that it forces uninsured people to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty -- an argument the Supreme Court will consider when it takes up challenges to the health-care law in oral arguments March 27 and 28. If the court upholds the act, critics argue, what's to stop Congress from forcing us to buy, say broccoli.

Harvard Law School professor Einer Elhauge focused on that issue in a Jan. 5, 2012, commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine titled "The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate."

Some people, he said, "argue that the Constitution's framers could not possibly have envisioned a congressional power to force purchases. However, in 1790, the first Congress, which was packed with framers, required all ship owners to provide medical insurance for seamen; in 1798, Congress also required seamen to buy hospital insurance for themselves.

"In 1792, Congress enacted a law mandating that all able-bodied citizens obtain a firearm. This history negates any claim that forcing the purchase of insurance or other products is unprecedented or contrary to any possible intention of the framers."

We wondered whether those early Congresses -- some of whose members helped draft the Constitution -- did indeed mandate health insurance and gun purchases.

First, we wanted to see whether that first Congress was actually "packed with framers."

Fifty-five men are considered the framers. During the first Congress in 1790, only 20 of the 91 senators and representatives were framers. That's not exactly packing them in.

Then we contacted Elhauge about the other parts of his claim. He referred us to three pieces of legislation.

First was the 1790 law, passed by that first Congress, which applied to any U.S. ship that was at least 150 tons or with a crew of at least 10. It required the master or commander to either have a supply of on-board medicines (with instructions) or provide "all such advice, medicine, or attendance of physicians, as any of the crew shall stand in need of in case of sickness" and do it "without any deduction from the wages of such sick seaman or mariner."

Sounds like mandatory health care to us.

Then, in 1792, a Congress that included 17 framers passed a law requiring nearly every "free able-bodied white male citizen" age 18 to 44, within six months, "provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges," along with balls and gunpowder. A rifle could be substituted. The purpose was to establish a uniform militia.

Again, that sounds like a mandated purchase to us.

Finally, in 1798, a Congress that included five framers expanded the health coverage mandate, requiring every ship owner or master coming into a port to pay 20 cents per seaman for every month each worker had been employed.

The funds, which could be withheld from the seamen, were used "to provide for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick or disabled seamen, in the hospitals or other proper institutions now established" in the port. Leftover funds were used to create hospitals for those mariners.

How did the framers vote on these laws?

There was no roll call for the House and Senate bills requiring health care for seamen. But on the proposal mandating the purchase of musket, firelock or rifle as part of the larger bill to establish a uniform militia, 10 of the 14 framers whose votes were recorded endorsed the measure.

One side note: In November 1792, an attempt was made in the House to reconsider the weapon requirement in the militia bill because some people were complaining that it was too onerous, an argument that echoes complaints from critics of the new health-care law. The proposal was defeated 6 to 50. The vote among framers was 1 to 6.

It should also be noted that the president who signed the first two of these laws was our Founding Father-in-Chief, George Washington.

Elhauge, in an e-mail, stood by his characterization that the first Congress was "packed" with framers, saying, "20 framers sounds pretty packed to me. There were only 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention, so 20 is around 40 percent of all the framers present in that Congress."

We disagree. The issue is not how many framers went to Congress, but how many members of Congress were framers. And you can't pack a meeting when you only account for 22 percent of the representatives.

More importantly, he said, "I don’t think anyone objected to any of these laws on constitutional grounds, which presumably someone would have if it was obvious that the original understanding was that such an obligation would be unconstitutional."

Our ruling

Harvard Law professor Einer Elhauge said that early Congresses, particularly the first Congress, had no qualms about forcing purchases.

Our research confirmed that. Congress required merchant ship owners to purchase medicines or provide health care for their workers. Seamen were later taxed to pay for what might be regarded today as an 18th-century health maintenance organization to provide for hospital care. And most able-bodied men were required to purchase weaponry for their service in the militia.

Although he correctly characterized the laws, to say that the framers of the Constitution "packed" that first Congress is too much of a stretch. "Packed" means at least a majority; 22 percent is not a majority.

For that reason, we rule his statement Mostly True.

(An earlier version of this item incorrectly reported that Washington signed all three bills. John Adams, a founding father who was not a framer because he was in Europe when the U.S. Constitution was written, signed the 1798 legislation.)

(Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.)

Insuring kids nice, but too expensive, Rick?

Rick Santorum Rejects Obamacare’s Success At ‘Pro-Life’ Event
By Scott Keyes on Dec 15, 2011
Link
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/12/15/389859/santorum-rejects-obamacares-success-at-pro-life-event/

At a pro-life event in Iowa yesterday, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R) spoke out against new data showing that 2.5 million young adults now have health coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Ignoring the good news, Santorum insisted that health care reform had “failed miserably” by not doing more to bring down costs and said that insurance was “too expensive” to cover young adults.

Asked if he saw any contradiction between attending an event that celebrated life and criticizing the health law for extending health coverage to living people, Santorum replied that he didn’t:

KEYES: Could we get your reaction to the new study that the Affordable Care Act extended coverage to 2.5 million young adults in this country?

SANTORUM: How about the same reaction that’s also caused a dramatic increase in the price of health insurance? In fact, a substantial increase in the cost of health insurance to millions of Americans. It has failed miserably in the one area the president suggested it would have the most impact, which is decreasing the cost of health care in the country. [...]
KEYES: But if we’re at an event though celebrating life, shouldn’t we be pushing to cover more young adults like the Affordable Care Act is doing?

SANTORUM: No. Again, if government had unlimited amounts of money we could cover everybody with all the coverage in the world, but of course we don’t. The objective President Obama sold to the American public was that this would reduce health care costs, make it more affordable, save the government and people money, and thereby expand insurance. It is not doing it in that fashion. It is simply spending more money and wasting more money.

KEYES: So it’s just too expensive to cover the kids?

SANTORUM: It’s too expensive, number one. Number two, it’s the wrong approach in solving health care, which is government-run, top-down and that’s why it’s wasteful and inexpensive.

Despite Santorum’s claims, the government is not financing the coverage expansion; the ACA allows families to keep young adults on their existing health plans until they turn 26. The provision has added more young people to health care risk pools and has had a negligible effect on premiums.

The fact that Santorum dismissed this achievement at a pro-life event demonstrates just how much Republicans are willing to let their dislike for President Obama’s policies shade their judgment of policy outcomes. For years, the Republican Party has fought the perception that they care more about pre-birth fetuses than post-birth humans who are struggling to make ends meet. Santorum’s remarks Wednesday did little to shed that reputation.

HCR coming through for breast cancer victims

Op-Ed

'Obamacare' to the rescue

A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind.

By Spike Dolomite Ward

LA Times LINK

December 6, 2011

I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he'd worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family.

By the time the COBRA ran out, my husband had decided to go into business for himself, so we had to purchase our own insurance. That was fine for a while. Every year his business grew. But insurance premiums were steadily rising too. More than once, we switched carriers for a lower rate, only to have them raise rates significantly after a few months.

With the recession, both of our businesses took a huge hit — my husband's income was cut in half, and the foundations that had supported my small nonprofit were going through their own tough times. We had to start using a home equity line of credit to pay for our health insurance premiums (which by that point cost as much as our monthly mortgage). When the bank capped our home equity line, we were forced to cash in my husband's IRA. The time finally came when we had to make a choice between paying our mortgage or paying for health insurance. We chose to keep our house. We made a nerve-racking gamble, and we lost.

Not having insurance amplifies cancer stress. After the diagnosis, instead of focusing all of my energy on getting well, I was panicked about how we were going to pay for everything. I felt guilty and embarrassed about not being insured. When I went to the diagnostic center to pick up my first reports, I was sent to the financial department, where a woman sat me down to talk about resources for "cash patients" (a polite way of saying "uninsured").

"I'm not a deadbeat," I blurted out. "I'm a good person. I have two kids and a house!" The clerk was sympathetic, telling me how even though she worked in the healthcare field, she could barely afford insurance herself.

Although there have been a few people who judged us harshly, most people have been understanding about how this could happen to us. That's given me the courage to "out" myself and my family in hopes that it will educate people who are still lucky enough to have health insurance and view people like my family as irresponsible. We're not. What I want people to understand is that, if this could happen to us, it could happen to anybody.

If you are fortunate enough to still be employed and have insurance through your employers, you may feel insulated from the sufferings of people like me right now. But things can change abruptly. If you still have a good job with insurance, that doesn't mean that you're better than me, more deserving than me or smarter than me. It just means that you are luckier. And access to healthcare shouldn't depend on luck.

Fortunately for me, I've been saved by the federal government's Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan, something I had never heard of before needing it. It's part of President Obama's healthcare plan, one of the things that has already kicked in, and it guarantees access to insurance for U.S. citizens with preexisting conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months. The application was short, the premiums are affordable, and I have found the people who work in the administration office to be quite compassionate (nothing like the people I have dealt with over the years at other insurance companies.) It's not perfect, of course, and it still leaves many people in need out in the cold. But it's a start, and for me it's been a lifesaver — perhaps literally.

Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

Spike Dolomite Ward is the founder and executive director of Arts in Education Aid Council, a nonprofit organization that is restoring the arts to public schools in the San Fernando Valley. http://www.aieac.org

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

HCR coming through for senors

AP Newsbreak: Medicare's drug coverage gap shrinks

LINKBy RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR | AP – 1 hr 39 mins agoWASHINGTON (AP) — Medicare's prescription coverage gap is getting noticeably smaller and easier to manage this year for millions of older and disabled people with high drug costs.

The "doughnut hole," an anxiety-inducing catch in an otherwise popular benefit, will shrink about 40 percent for those unlucky enough to land in it, according to new Medicare figures provided in response to a request from The Associated Press.

The average beneficiary who falls into the coverage gap would have spent $1,504 this year on prescriptions. But thanks to discounts and other provisions in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, that cost fell to $901, according to Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which handles economic estimates.

A 50 percent discount that the law secured from pharmaceutical companies on brand name drugs yielded an average savings of $581. Medicare also picked up more of the cost of generic drugs, saving an additional $22.

The estimates are averages, so some Medicare recipients may do worse and others better. Also, it's still unclear if the discounts will start to overcome seniors' deep unease about the law.

Concern over cutting Medicare to expand coverage for the uninsured helped push older voters toward Republicans in the 2010 congressional elections. Obama and the Democrats have been trying to woo them back ever since.

"For people with high drug expenditures, the 50 percent discount offers real savings," said Tricia Neuman, director of Medicare policy for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "It's certainly more helpful than no coverage at all, which is what they had previously."

More than 2 million beneficiaries already have gotten some help, discounts that have gone largely to middle-class seniors, because the poor are covered in the gap at taxpayer expense.

For retired elementary school teacher Carolyn Friedman, it meant she didn't need a loan to pay for drugs that keep her epilepsy under control.

"What a change for the better," said Friedman, 71, of Sunrise, Fla. "This year it was easier to pay my bills, whereas last year I had to borrow money to pay for my medications when I was in the doughnut hole."

One of her brand-name anti-seizure drugs cost about $370 in the gap last year, and the other about $270. This year Friedman paid about $150 and $130, respectively, for a month's supply.

Medicare covers about 47 million older and disabled people, and about 9 in 10 have some kind of prescription plan. Most rely on the drug benefit, also known as Part D, which is delivered through private insurance plans.

Beneficiaries have until Dec. 7 to change their drug plans for 2012. Consumer advocates recommend that seniors check their coverage during open enrollment to see if their current choice remains the best for next year. Many families start the process around the Thanksgiving holiday.

The coverage gap, a money-saving idea from a previous Congress, never has been popular.

It starts after an individual beneficiary and his or her drug plan have spent a total of $2,840 on medications for the year. Seniors are then on their own for the next $3,600.

Once total spending reaches about $6,440, Medicare's catastrophic coverage kicks in and beneficiaries pay only a token amount. Most people do not spend enough in the doughnut hole to qualify for catastrophic coverage.

Although few private insurance plans still cap the amount they spend on medications, Medicare's hole-in-the-middle approach is highly unusual.

The Republican-led Congress that passed the drug benefit under President George W. Bush was trying to balance coverage and costs, as many conservatives fretted about creating a new unfunded entitlement.

Supporters wanted all beneficiaries to get some initial benefit from the program, and they wanted to protect those with overwhelmingly high costs. The resulting compromise led to the doughnut hole.

Under Obama's health care law, the gap will be gradually phased down by 2020.

This year, the law provides a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs and 7 percent break on generics. Next year the discount on generics rises to 14 percent. When the changes are fully phased in, beneficiaries will still be responsible for their annual deductible and 25 percent of the cost of their medications until they reach catastrophic coverage.

If Republicans succeed in repealing what they dismiss as "Obamacare," the discounts would be wiped out as well.

Joan Gibbs thought her pharmacy had made a mistake. Her total cost for a brand-name painkiller in the doughnut hole came out lower than her co-payment earlier in the year, at a time her plan was picking up most of the tab.

"I reluctantly called the insurance company," said Gibbs, 54, who lives near Cleveland. "If they had made a mistake, I knew they would catch it sooner or later. I was very surprised that it turned out to be such a good discount."

Gibbs is on Medicare because of an auto-immune disorder and other medical problems that left her unable to work.

Other beneficiaries say it's still a struggle, even with the discounts.

John Robinson of Bel Air, Md., has diabetes and heart problems. A retired director of patient accounts for a hospital, Robinson said he runs up his credit card balance to pay for insulin, other medications and diabetic supplies in the doughnut hole.

"Thank God for credit cards," said Robinson, 71. "I thought it was better this year, but it still cost me more money than I had."

___

Online:

Medicare plan finder: http://tinyurl.com/2c6o5fh

Republican Favorites Supported Individual Mandate

The GOP 2012 Hopefuls Who Supported a Health Care Mandate

By: Elspeth Reeve

Updated: May 29, 2011 | 3:06 p.m.
May 27, 2011 | 5:30 p.m.

Mitt Romney can raise $10.5 million in one day. He has a big campaign organization and a national network of supporters and he's tall and nice-looking former governor with a full head of hair. He should be a strong candidate to challenge President Obama in 2012, except for one thing: He signed Romneycare into law, a health care overhaul that features a mandate that individuals buy health insurance, a feature of Obama's health care plan that Republicans despise. Explaining his embrace of the individual mandate is Romney's biggest challenge in the primaries. But Romney's not the only one with an individual mandate skeleton in his closet. Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and, Politico's Ben Smith unearthed Friday, Tim Pawlenty all have varying levels of support for the measure in their pasts.

Tim Pawlenty

Just after he was reelected in 2006, when he was governor of Minnesota, Pawlenty gave a speech detailing his health care plan, which "surprised many health care officials and questioned the effectiveness of health insurance companies," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported at the time. Pawlenty said he was "open to" getting universal coverage with the help of a Massachusetts-style mandate, adding, "I think a mandate by itself is potentially helpful, but is not an answer by itself."

Newt Gingrich

When he was Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich fiercely fought Hillary Clinton's health care plan. Republicans offered their own plan--one with an individual mandate. Earlier this month, Fox News' Greta van Susteren asked Gringrich why he backed the idea in 1993. Gingrich struggled to explain it:

"No, no. I'm saying that 18--imagine this in your own case. I'm saying that you see a 20-second clip from 18 years ago when you were fighting Hillarycare and when virtually everybody in the conservative movement was united in trying to stop Hillarycare.

Now, nobody at that time was talking about the 10th Amendment. Nobody at that time was talking about this kind of constitutional issues. But to jump from that and say, gosh, if Newt said this in 1993, he must be for Obama--skipping, by the way, 2 1/2 years of active consistent opposition to Obamacare? I mean, I think the kind of amnesia that Washington gets into is, frankly, silly.

Jon Huntsman

As governor of Utah in 2008, Huntsman signed into law a health care plan that did not include a mandate. But that's not because he didn't want one, the Huffington Post's Jason Cherkis and Jon Ward report. It was the state legislature that kept the mandate out of the bill (though Huntsman disputes this version of events). Cherkis and Ward spoke to David Sundwall, Huntsman's health department head at the time, who was part of a group the governor's convened to draft a reform plan. They decided a mandate was necessary, and Huntsman agreed:

"He was supportive," Sundwall said. "It was something he would have liked to have happened."

But, he said, "we ran into a brick wall." The obstacle he referred to was Utah's Republican speaker of the House, Greg Curtis. "I met with him in his office and he laid down the parameters," Sundwall recalled. "We pitched the idea of the mandate. And that was not going to fly, according to the speaker."

"We would have liked everyone to have had insurance. … And a mandate would have worked."

Interestingly, Huntsman, Pawlenty, and Romney are viewed by establishment Republicans (and Intrade!) as the top tier in the primary race.

HCR not raising health costs

Posted at 06:00 AM ET, 03/25/2011

‘Obamacare’ and the myth of rising cost estimates

By Glenn Kessler

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. (Melina Mara - The Washington Post)

“Obamacare Price Tag Spikes by 54%”

— Headline on a news release by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, issued March 21, 2011

“Unhappy Anniversary: ObamaCare's cost jumps 8.6%”

— Headline on Wall Street Journal editorial, March 23, 2011

The venerable Congressional Budget Office issued an updated budget projection last week, and critics of the new health care law pounced.

In a news release, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), declared that “according to CBO’s latest estimates, the cost of Obamacare has increased by $500 billion. Meaning, in only one year, the cost has increased from an already staggering $938 billion price tag to $1.445 trillion.” The news release then cheekingly noted what a half-trillion dollars could buy. “1,002,004,008 iPad 2s,” for instance. Or “a Ford F-150 for every resident in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Omaha.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal had some different math in a March 23 editorial, saying: “Obamacare will be far more expensive than advertised. To wit, CBO says the entitlement's health insurance subsidies will cost $1.13 trillion between 2012 and 2021, not $1.04 trillion, the prior estimate. . . . CBO is conceding that it significantly underestimated the bill's cost.”

Talk about fuzzy math! Did the price of the health care law go up 54 percent, 8.6 percent, or what? Let’s look at the numbers.

The Facts

The cost of the health-care law has been one of its most contentious issues. President Obama had said it would cost less than $1 trillion over 10 years, and promised it would reduce the deficit in that period. The law, as scored by the CBO, met those benchmarks, but critics have charged the bill was deliberately structured to reach that result. (We have addressed those concerns previously.)

Last week was the third time that CBO has provided an estimate for the cost of the health care bill. Each time, the number has been a little different because of various technical factors, and also because different budget windows are being used, such as 2010-2019, 2012-2019 or 2012-2021. The longer the budget window, the bigger the costs and the revenues, in part because the population is getting larger and the gross domestic product is expected to increase.

The Energy and Commerce Committee came up with its increase by mixing apples and oranges. It compared the gross cost of insurance coverage provisions calculated for 2010-2019 (that’s the $938 billion number) with new figures for a different budget window, 2012-2021 (that’s the $1.445 trillion figure.) That’s kind of like saying the cost of pizza went up by comparing last year’s price for a 12-inch pie with this year’s price for a 16-inch pie.

Debbee Keller, a spokeswoman for the committee, defended the committee’s math, saying, “The legislation was written to hide the true costs of the law — it delayed much of the spending, providing about six years of spending and ten years of ‘pay fors.’ ” The new estimate, she said, shows “about eight years of benefits and ten years of ‘pay fors.’ ” — and she said the price tag will get only bigger as time goes on. “We predict the full cost will actually exceed $2 trillion” once the bill is fully implemented over 10 years.

We do not find this argument compelling. Yes, certain provisions do not kick in immediately, but neither do many of the new taxes. The revenue estimate by the Joint Tax Committee shows that $58 billion of revenue is raised in the first four years, compared to $380 billion over the last six years. As mentioned before, the cost numbers also get larger in later years because of population and GDP growth.

The Wall Street Journal came up with its increase by comparing a different set of numbers: the net cost (which strikes us as more reasonable than the gross cost used by the House committee) for the same time period, 2012-2021, as estimated in February 2011 and March 2011. But the Journal failed to note that the CBO cost estimate in February was actually lower than its initial estimate last year, so the overall effect from last year to this year is minimal.

The CBO generally remains aloof from the political back-and-forth over its numbers. But late Wednesday, the CBO addressed this question in its Director’s Blog. It lined up the numbers for all three of its estimates and then made the following point, underlying it for emphasis:

“Over the eight-year period that is common to all three analyses (2012 through 2019), the latest estimate of the net cost of the coverage provisions ($794 billion) differs by only about 2 percent from the original estimate ($778 billion); the projected gross costs . . . differ by only about 4 percent over that period.”

In budget terms over such a long period of time, these differences amount to rounding errors.

As the CBO put it, again underlining its point: “The evolution of the estimates does not reflect any substantial change in the estimation of the overall effects of [the health care law] from what was projected in March 2010.”

The Pinocchio Test

Critics of the health care bill need to recheck their math. The CBO’s new numbers do not suggest any noticeable increase in the cost estimates.

The Energy and Commerce Committee in particular used different time frames to come up with a wildly inflated number, and thus earns Three Pinocchios.

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By Glenn Kessler | 06:00 AM ET, 03/25/2011