I also made the follow observation as to why the report came out so late:
Now it makes sense. The Democrats refused to delay the vote on Obamacare even though the Medicare Actuary was not able to complete his analysis and cost estimates in time for the vote. In light of this report, it is clear why the Democrats didn't want to wait. They could game the CBO, but not the Medicaire Actuary.I may have been wrong in giving Democrats the benefit of the doubt as to the vote being rushed prior to the report. The vote may not have been rushed to avoid the completion of the report, the report may have been completed but withheld from the public.
According to this article (via David Freddoso), the report was completed prior to the vote, but held back to avoid the obvious problem with a report which questioned the political sales pitch and the plausibility of the CBO scoring:
If accurate, this reflects a level of cynicism and deceit beyond what even I had attributed to the Democrats.The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.
"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."
I'll be interested to hear Sebelius go on record about this.
Update: The Office of Medicare Actuary denies any delay in the release of the report.
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It seems to me that withholding of the report is a criminal act on the part of a federal official. Would this is true, in your opinion?
ReplyDeleteAlso, the article mentioned that the White House was also given the report. Are they not liable, as well, for withholding information to deceive the public and Congress? At the very least, an investigation needs to be started on this.
(Meanwhile, the people who did this are now excoriating Goldman Sachs for withholding information...) I'm not at all surprised by the administration's blatant deceit; it has always been BO's MO. The man is the antithesis of George Washington: He cannot tell the truth!
ReplyDeleteHow's that Transparency working out?
ReplyDelete"this reflects a level of cynicism and deceit beyond what even I had attributed to the Democrats"
ReplyDeleteIMO, there is no level of cynicism and deceit beyond what can be attributed to the Democrats.
If this is true, then can we trust the numbers for the current federal deficit? Or any treaty with the Russians what recounts numbers of nuclear warheads we will destroy or the Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac losses? All of these numbers have been filtered through the White House. The country is being run by Chicago thugs. This is the only Administration where staffers who park at 1600 PA Ave keep their car engines running during work hours in case they need to make a hasty departure. When he leaves office, Obama will have to go into the FBI witness protection program or exile in Yemen.
ReplyDeleteDr. Jacobson,
ReplyDeleteAt this link http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/201005070026 one source is claiming that this whole issue of Sebelius "sitting" on the report is now thoroughly debunked, and that the original AmSpec story is false due to the fact their weak response about the report being "submitted" was untrue. It was not. It was simply ill-timed at best. Or so the claim goes. The allgedly damning report was simply unable to be completed in time, as you yourself reported in a link to NR's copy of the letter submitted by Foster.
Any input on this?
While it IS interesting to note what we all suspected might be the case (bad numbers now coming out after a vital vote such as this IS really suspect, for such a monumental economic and cultural shift in American health care) the problem is the timeline.