House GOP targeting key health reform component, the medical loss ratio

On health-care reform, GOP has an unmet obligation to get beyond NO!
This week, House Republicans will take the symbolic step of voting to Repeal the health-insurance reform act signed into law by President Obama last year. The vote won’t mean anything, given that the Senate will refuse to go along and that President Obama holds a Veto. But it will at least allow GOP House members to claim they took action. What we don’t know, however, is how the Republicans propose to address Health Care reform themselves. Their slogan during the campaign was ̶...

Liberal group up with new ad on health care repeal
The political fight over the federal Health Care law is ramping up in Nevada and elsewhere. And, let’s be clear, a political fight is what this is. Republicans, with a fresh majority in the U.S. House, have vowed to Repeal the Affordable Care Act. Of course, even if they could muster the votes to Repeal the law in the House, it wouldn’t make it through the Senate controlled by Democrats or past President Obama’s Veto pen. So think of this as the early days of the 2012 election. To that end

GOP lawmaker targets key health reform provision
A powerful House Republican is setting in motion a congressional challenge to a key provision of the Healthcare Reform law. Republican Conference Secretary John Carter (R-Texas) is trying to build momentum for a Congressional Review Act (CRA) challenge to a recent Regulation that requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of their premium dollars (85 percent in the large group market) on healthcare services. The House GOP majority is expected to approve Legislation Wednesday that would re...

GOP will defund healthcare bill, get around to "replacing" it never
Congressional Republicans are excited for the opportunity to repeatedly cast symbolic votes to "Repeal" the Healthcare Reform bill passed by Democrats last year. The first such vote will happen Wednesday in the House, and while it won't undo the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it will make all the Republicans feel really good about themselves. Then, as Politico explains today, they'll get around to messing with the bill piece by piece. They will cast votes against the unpopular indiv...

Poll: Slim majority want Congress to repeal healthcare reform
A slim majority of Americans want Congress to Repeal the Obama Administration's Healthcare Reform law, a new poll reported Tuesday. The poll by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, released today, found that 48 percent of Americans want the Republican-controlled Congress to Repeal the reform Legislation, while 43 percent want the law to stay in place. The poll's results come on the same day that House Republicans open up floor debate for repealing the legislation. The House is scheduled ...

Independent analysis debunks false GOP claims about health reform
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a group with a reputation for producing materials that are balanced, authoritative, and accessible to non-specialists, has released a study of the claims central to the debate on repealing health reform that will reopen in the House this week. The short answer is that the CBO analysis is deemed accurate while Republican claims to the contrary are deemed inaccurate. At issue is the pending bill to Repeal "job killing" Health Care reform, a bill who's ve...

Health care: Democrats for full repeal of this 'malignant tumor' says Rep. King
Using what he terms a "Health Care vernacular" ,  Representative King calls the Obama health care bill a "malignant tumor"  and says the entire bill must be  and will be repealed - with significant  Democrat support. Rep. King feels American rights are diminished by the Federal Government making decisions about King says we must "Repeal it, pull it out by The Roots , so that it doesn't grow back again. " Breaking this down to two primary issues - the philosophical issue of Am...

As House healthcare debate begins, report finds millions of Americans have preexisting medical conditions
WASHINGTON -- On the day Republicans in the House begin their charge to the Repeal the sweeping healthcare overhaul law, the Obama Administration released a report Tuesday that estimates that as many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have preexisting medical conditions that could make it more difficult for them to obtain health coverage. The analysis prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services marks an attempt to quantify how many across the country would be affected if the law,...

House kicks off debate over health-care repeal
The House meets Tuesday for its first day of debate on a measure that would Repeal the national Health Care overhaul, following a week during which legislative action came to a standstill following the Tucson shooting tragedy. Debate on the Health Care Repeal bill is expected to begin after the House reconvenes at 2 p.m. The House has set aside seven hours for debate on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a vote on the measure expected to come Wednesday afternoon. The Repeal measure is expected to pass ...

"House Republicans plan to vote tomorrow to repeal last years health care overhaul."
"One of the key defenses of the law is that it will reduce the Deficit over the next decade and the decades to come. But the projections employed to make this argument just aren’t believable. Democrats gamed the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring process, producing a score that distorted the long-term numbers and was believable only under a set of fantastic and improbable assumptions." ...

Liberal group ad calls for Republicans to vote against healthcare repeal
The same day that the House of Representatives is set to begin the floor debate on repealing the Obama Administration's Healthcare Reform law, a liberal interest group is airing an ad calling for Americans to rally against Repeal. The ad, created by Americans United for Change, argues that Americans have the same healthcare benefits as members of Congress under the Affordable Care Act, which repeal of the act would take away. "The Affordable Care Act gave your family the same coverage that me...

Bill Frist: Health Care Is 'Law Of The Land,' GOP Should Drop Repeal And Build On It
WASHINGTON -- As congressional Republicans ready themselves for a largely symbolic effort to Repeal President Obama's Health Care reform law, at least one former GOP leader is urging them to drop the charade and build on the Legislation instead. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who caused a stir during the construction of Health Care reform when he said he'd vote for the bill, said it was important to consider the bill the "law of the land" and move on from there. "It is not the bill...

The Real Showdown
Ezra Klein's healthcare preview: In the end, Repeal will pass the House -- likely tomorrow -- and quickly die in the Senate. Then comes the more interesting phase of the fight over health-care reform: The GOP's effort at revision. Republicans, who already know that Repeal will fail, are preparing to begin the longer and more complex campaign to replace, rewrite, or simply undermine various parts of the bill. The relevant committees in the House will try to develop alternatives, w...

Frist: GOP Should Drop Repeal Effort
Sam Stein at Huffington Post reports: As congressional Republicans ready themselves for a largely symbolic effort to Repeal President Obama’s Health Care reform law, at least one former GOP leader is urging them to drop the charade and build on the Legislation instead. Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who caused a stir during the construction of Health Care reform when he said he’d vote for the bill, said it was important to consider the bill the “law of the landR...

One More Reason for Dems to Welcome the Repeal Debate
[Guest post by Noam Scheiber:] On Sunday, Jon Chait cited one reason Democrats should relish the debate over repealing Healthcare Reform: public support for Repeal appears to be dropping. Two days earlier, Jonathan Cohn hinted at another reason: Repeal is likely to divide the business community--a.k.a the GOP base--a significant portion of which prefers the health reform law over the GOP's nonexistent alternative. Today, a piece in Politico highlights a third reason Democrats should be high-fi...

Senate panel votes down 'repeal amendment'
A Senate subcommittee voted today to kill a proposed Constitutional Amendment that would allow two thirds of states to collectively Repeal a federal law or Regulation. The vote was 4-3 with all four Democrats on the subcommittee voting against the proposal and all three Republicans voting for it. The vote in the Privileges and Elections subcommittee sets up another showdown with the House of Delegates, whose speaker, Del. William J. Howell, R-Stafford, is a strong proponent of the measure. In Se...

House Dems to hold hearing on reform law's protections
As House Republicans plan to Repeal the Healthcare Reform law this week, their Democratic counterparts are staging a hearing on Tuesday where individuals will testify in favor of consumer protections included in the reform law. The House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee is billing the hearing as the only one in which “parents of young Children and young adults, Americans with pre-existing medical conditions, Small Business owners and seniors will have the opportunity to testify abou...

House Dems: Frosh GOP unaware of reform's benefits
House Democrats trying to build support for the Healthcare Reform law say their new Republican colleagues are unaware of the law's benefits. Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Democrat Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) say the GOP's efforts to Repeal the reform law would take consumer protections away from constituents of freshmen GOP congressmen. “Healthcare reform is already delivering important health benefits to your constituents,” Waxman and Pallone wrote Tues...

Big health bucks roll in for K St.
K Street expects to reap a new bonanza from the healthcare law even as House Republicans move to Repeal the measure on Wednesday.  Lobbying firms are adding healthcare specialists and new boutique firms are opening to court clients interested in influencing the shape of Regulations implementing the law. Nearly a year after healthcare’s passage, there’s little sign of business slowing down.  “Passing the law is just the beginning of the story in this case. The development of the

AP dismantles Republican claim that health reform will cost jobs
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) argued in a recent report that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, enacted last March, will cause "significant Job Losses" in the United States -- up to 650,000, he said -- citing the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The claim is so important to the Republican Party's opposition strategy that they've titled the bill, "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." But as Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reported Tuesday for The Associated Press, the ...

US says 129 million people have health woes
A doctor administers a shot to a patient at a Hospital ER unit. As many as ... As many as 129 million people in the United States, or almost half of those under 65, have a Pre-existing Condition that could bar them from Health Insurance, a government report said Tuesday. The report was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services just as lawmakers were poised to debate a Republican-backed bill that aims to Repeal President Barack Obama's Healthcare Reform law, signed last year. Betwee...

ObamaCare and the Deficit
House Republicans plan to vote tomorrow to Repeal last year’s Health Care overhaul. You can read the text of the Repeal Legislation here. One of the key defenses of the law is that it will reduce the Deficit over the next decade and the decades to come. But the projections employed to make this argument just aren’t believable. Democrats gamed the Congressional Budget Office’s scoring process, producing a score that distorted the long-term numbers and was believable only under a set of fan

Republican Health Care Repeal Threatens Coverage for 129 Million
       If  the new Health Care reform law is repealed—and today Republican lawmakers are taking their first step toward Repeal—more than 129 million Americans would be put at risk of  losing their Health Insurance. A new study by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that as many as  half of Americans younger than 65 have preexisting conditions such as high Blood Pressure, asthma, Cancer or other chronic health conditions. Before the Aff

Steve King Defends Health Repeal: There Will Always Be Those Who Slip Through The Cracks
Last night, Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren pressed Rep. Steve King (R-IA) on how Repeal of Health Care reform would help the Uninsured or the poorest Americans who can’t afford to purchase coverage. King first responded, “There will always be those who slip through the cracks,” then tried to dodge the question by arguing that just 12 million would be left without coverage should the law be eliminated. “That’s less than 4 percent of the population. And it’...

Index annuities are a safety trap
(MONEY Magazine) -- The card that landed in mailboxes throughout central Illinois in early 2008 promoted "the most informative Retirement workshop you've ever attended." Pinnacle Investment Advisers, which had four offices in the area, was offering discussions of Medicaid planning, IRAs, and tax-efficient income over lunch or dinner. Bios of Pinnacle owners Susan and Tom Cooper mention their Grandchildren, his Vietnam service, and her Bible study group. Email Print A group of senior...