Opponents take aim at health bill
The Congressional Budget Office has been crunching the numbers to find out how much the Senate health-care overhaul will cost. Nancy Marshall Genzer reports the bill's opponents are having a field day.
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Kai Ryssdal: Any day now we are going to get the official total for what the Senate health-care bill is going to cost. The Congressional Budget Office is crunching those numbers. All the bill's supporters can do until they get those totals is wait. Opponents, however, are having a field day, as Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer reports from Washington.
NANCY MARSHALL GENZER: The insurance industry is lobbying furiously against the Senate health care overhaul. Some health-care analysts say insurers aren't just shooting arrows at the bill. They're rolling out rockets.
Analyst Jerry Katz is with Kurt Salmon.
JERRY KATZ: They're lobbying against the bill. They're not lobbying against provisions of the bill. They want to take the whole house down.
The Chamber of Commerce is taking a bulldozer to the bill. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported the Chamber is hiring an economist to study the legislation. The goal: more ammunition to sink the bill.
Ewe Reinhardt teaches economics at Princeton. He says, if the Chamber does its study, it will probably get the result it wants.
EWE REINHARDT: You can always get an economist with a PhD from a reputable university to give a scientific report that makes your case. So, yes, there will be such a study.
Even some of the Democrats' traditional allies are taking aim at the health-care bill. Unions are upset about a proposed tax on high-end insurance plans, which many union members have.
Maya MacGuineas is president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a government watchdog group.
MAYA MACGUINEAS: They have been ringing every warning bell possible. You see them warning their members, using the media as an outlet. They're more organized than most groups so they can be very persuasive, and their voices can be heard on Capitol Hill.
One voice may be heard on Capitol Hill for several days straight. Some Republicans want to require the Senate clerk to read the health care bill out loud on the Senate floor. It's at least a 1,000 pages.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Framingham, MA, 11/18/2009
I agree that Republicans have a right to read the bill, but do they really need it read to them? (Or perhaps I shouldn't be assuming literacy on their part ...)
From Corvallis, OR, 11/17/2009
Seems to me that if the insurance companies and the unions are upset with the bill it must be the right bill for the citizen. Its a massive bill covering many aspects of our health care system. By definition no one should be a winner and thus there will be parties unhappy. As for me if these two groups are at odds with the bill - it must be a good thing. Lets get tha ball rolling. As for reading the bill....did the Patriot Act get read before the house and senate before they all blindly signed it?
From Milan, MI, 11/17/2009
Those disreputable economists that you're implying the Chamber of Commerce might hire have already been put to work in favor of the health care so-called "reform." And the Republicans don't merely "want" to require the bill to be read on the Senate floor; they have a right to, and unless they exercise that right this bill (like several other major bills this year) might well be rammed through without giving *anyone* a chance to read it.
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