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The Ten Worst Provisions in Senate Health Care Bill

While it would appear that the health care bill is constantly changing, it's actually not. The big upcoming House vote will be on the Senate bill (H.R. 3590), exactly as it passed the Senate on Christmas Eve. It still includes dozens of corrupt special-interest deals like the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Chris Dodd's $100M University of Connecticut Hospital earmark, etc. There are a lot of promises being made right now that the bill will be fixed or improved in various ways after it passes, possibly via reconciliation. It's very important to understand, however, that once the House passes the Senate bill it goes to the president to be signed into law.

Here's a refresher on the 10 Worst Provisions in this bill (H.R. 3590):

Spends Way Too Much: $2.5 trillion over the first ten years that the plan is fully implemented

Raises Taxes During a Recession: Hikes taxes $493 billion with new levies on so-called “Cadillac” plans, a new Medicare payroll tax on higher-income earners, and taxes on health insurance and drug manufacturing companies, which are sure to be passed on consumers in the form of higher premiums

Individual Mandate:
Requires individuals to carry health insurance or exacts a fine up to $750

Business Burdens: taxes employers with more than 50 full-time workers if they are not offered insurance. CBO estimates employers would opt to drop as many as 5 million workers from private insurance, and pay the fine instead of maintaining current coverage

Huge Medicaid Expansion: an estimated 40 percent expansion of the entitlement program would greatly increase costs for government and taxpayers. States would be forced to manage the increased load. However, the federal government would pick up a large share of the new cost

Insurance Companies can still Limit Benefits: Although one of the prime reasons for this entire effort was to force insurance companies to live up to their commitments, the Senate bill would only ban lifetime-benefit caps. Insurance companies can still invoke yearly limits that will have essentially the same effect

Bad for Seniors: Cuts $120 billion from Medicare Advantage, which CBO says will result in fewer seniors with access to vision, dental and flu shots. Ultimately, up to 2.6 million seniors could lose their Medicare Advantage coverage

More Bureaucracy: Creates comparative effectiveness panels, a Medicare Advisory Board and a Health Care Commissioner, all of whom would be responsible for oversight of the greatly-expanded government role in health care and invoking rationing in attempts to contain cost

Doesn’t Tackle Tort Reform: Despite the president’s commitment to lower medical liability costs, the bill only contains a “Sense of Senate” provision, with no real reforms that could save up to $54 billion over ten years

Auto-Enrollment:
Businesses with more than 200 workers will be required to automatically enroll employees in health coverage