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As the healthcare debate drags on more questions are raised than answered. Perhaps good news for drug companies and bad news for the insurance industry. The partisan bill and vote in the Senate Finance Committee last week may lead to a rewrite this week. The last estimate on the cost of the bill was over $800 billion. And about the only sure thing is that it will cost taxpayers more money. Covering uninsured with tax credits and expanding Medicaid will raise tax bills for the rest of us.

If mandates from Congress force insurers to payout more claims with lower premiums anyone’s math should arrive at the obvious conclusion. Politicians will dictate who wins and who loses yet they have the audacity syndrome to label insurance companies as the villains. Simply because they oppose the idea of losses created by Congress.

One self-proclaimed winner from so-called healthcare reform is from David Snow of Medco Health Solutions, Inc. You may find it interesting to follow the Merck spinoff history of this company. There are those who would say the history of Merck and Medco Health Solutions produced a dark cloud in the trustworthy department. That may raise more issues about the winners and losers in reform.

The ten year eighty billion dollar plan between the White House and Big Pharma is as suspect as the Obama Administration’s claim that the insurance industry opposition to reform is ’smoke and mirrors’. The White House should use those mirrors to check their own claims in the debate.

Read the WSJ piece referenced below to arm yourself with more information for the battle in the weeks ahead. And if you think it is alright for insurers to get beat down by politicians with healthcare reform stop to think who else stands to lose. That might be another job for one of those mirrors mentioned earlier.

CEOs Tally Health-Bill Score
Drug Makers and Hospitals Figure to Benefit, While Insurers Brace for a Big Hit

The drug industry stands to gain in a health-care overhaul by getting tens of millions of newly insured customers, while insurance companies — especially those that cater to the individual market — look like they are in for a tougher time.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

Time to ratchet up contact to your elected reps. As the healthcare reform saga continues in the nation’s capital those in the majority confirm the loyal opposition is not the party of ‘no’ but the only ones trying to eliminate insane portions of current proposals in Congress.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday failed in their bids to strengthen provisions to prevent both taxpayer funding of abortions and illegal immigrants from obtaining access to government tax credits in the health care reform bill.

There you go. Taxpayer funding of abortions and opening the door wider for illegals to obtain more healthcare services meaning billions of public funds will extend benefits to those who are citizens of a country other than the United States. This improves healthcare for Americans how?

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, hoping to cull support for his reform proposal, told Democrats he’s open to reworking some of the new taxes in the bill, including the tax on high-valued insurance plans

Harry Reid and company have the task of reconciling two Senate committee bills before they reach the Senate floor next week. How is that going to happen based on the markup process that has been the longest in fifteen years? Rather than proposing legislation that would benefit Americans across the board there is a mix of takeaways and givebacks to accommodate the political agendas of various politicians. There is no way this so-called reform will improve healthcare in the United States. But it will raise taxes.

The only certain outcome of liberal healthcare reform is more taxes and less control for individuals over their healthcare decisions. Each version proposed in Congress has come with a slightly lower estimate on costs over the life of the legislation. Based on previous experience with government forecasts for government programs with the possible exception of the CBO indicate the actual costs will exceed any current estimates. The CBO can only predict based on information available at the time and since the various versions change on an almost daily basis that task is made nearly impossible. You can be sure it will cost more than anyone will tell you now.

More taxes, spending, deficits and national debt totals that will only benefit those not paying the bills as well as forcing taxpayers to cover the cost of many items that they oppose. There is simply no benefit to current healthcare reform proposals except for those making them. It’s a political power grab and a dangerous game to play given mounting debt and financial uncertainty. The money to pay for it does not come out of the sky but the pockets of Americans who simply cannot afford more expense during a recession. Nor can they afford to pass this debt on to their children and grandchildren. Especially when those future generations will likely gain nothing from the massive expense.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

Democrat Sen. Tom Carper: Read the bill? Are you kidding me! (Michelle Malkin)

Upbeat Conservative News, Dems Don’t Understand Health Bill

A former aide to Senator Max Baucus and current acting-Director at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Jonathan Blum, has complied with a request by his former boss to investigate insurance companies. President Obama appointed Jonathan Blum and it appears he is faithfully silencing opposition to the Baucus efforts to produce a Senate version of the failing House healthcare reform package.

The investigation resulted in a letter being sent to Humana and, say sources on Capitol Hill, other health insurers who have a fiduciary relationship with CMS that imposes an industry-wide “gag order” ordering a halt to any additional mailings and effectively prevents companies from communicating with their customers about the impact of any pending healthcare reform legislation.

Efforts to quash transparency and accountability are not lost on Democrats in Congress.

Obama and the Democrats have not, however, governed as they campaigned. Openness and transparency exist in theory and talking points, not in practice.

We saw another example Wednesday afternoon, as Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee almost unanimously voted to defeat an amendment offered by retiring G.O.P. Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning to require that the exact language of any health care legislation—and the bill’s cost estimate—be placed on the committee’s website seventy-two hours before a final vote in committee.

What’s the big deal you ask? The House version of healthcare reform is a disaster. Congress had thought they could go to the August recess to gain support for government-run healthcare in their home districts.

What they found was something quite different. Unlike many in Congress, the folks who turned out for the these events had actually read the bill—in this case H.R. 3200, the healthcare reform package pushed forward by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., and her leadership team. And, having read the bill, the critics of Obamacare were able to slice through the arguments in favor of it like a chain saw slicing through a barrel of fish.

Democrats in the United States Senate, however, are apparently not as naïve as their colleagues on the other side of the Capitol. They are pushing ahead with reform legislation fully intent on keeping it away from the prying eyes of the American people, if that’s what it takes.

If you haven’t read the version of America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 currently available and the Chairman’s mark, etc., a subsequent post on this blog will address that topic. And if you believe that health ‘insurance’ reform in Congress will be a good thing you qualify as ’sheeple’. There is nothing about this episode in government-run reform that will be any better than the failures in the past…. those rejected or those that became law.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com