Oops, HCA is SOL

[ivanm]

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http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/14/8325174-obama-administration-halts-part-of-health-care-law





Obama administration halts part of health care law


By Msnbc.com's Tom Curry

The Obama administration announced Friday that it has suspended one piece of the landmark health care law which the president signed last year.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told Congress in a letter that the CLASS Act, which was supposed to provide a new voluntary long-term care insurance program, was unworkable since no actuarially sound way could be figured out to run the program.

“I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time,” Sebelius said in her letter.

CLASS stands for “Community Living Assistance Services and Supports.”

The CLASS Act was a significant piece of the health care bill because it helped make it deficit neutral over the first ten years after enactment, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office. Thus CLASS helped garner the votes to help the bill pass.

According to the CBO, the CLASS program would have reduced federal deficits by $86 billion in first 10 years, partly offsetting the increased federal spending due to the other parts of the health care bill. In the first years of CLASS, enrollees would be paying premiums into it but would not be able to collect benefits until 2016.

In a memo to Congress in April of 2010, Medicare’s chief actuary Richard Foster warned that the program would “face a significant risk of failure” because sicker people would tend to sign up for it and the costs would soon exceed the premium payments. The program, he said, would likely be “unsustainable.”
In her letter Friday, Sebelius seemed to have reached the same conclusion as Foster did in 2010.

One of the Republicans who led the opposition to the CLASS Act, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said Friday, “The administration is finally admitting the CLASS Act entitlement is unsustainable and cannot be implemented. Simply setting aside the program for the near-term is not enough. Repeal is the only solution to ensuring American taxpayers will not be on the hook in the future for this disastrous entitlement.”
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So much for deficit reduction. Even dagon knows better than that.  Spend more to save more, good ole fashioned liberal speak.

[IM2]

Spend more to save more, that's exactly what conservtives did to put us in this hole. The wars Bush started were not fought free of charge fools.

[dustup]

Spend more to save more, that's exactly what conservtives did to put us in this hole. The wars Bush started were not fought free of charge fools.

And Obama is doing what to fix this??? We are still in the ME, costing billions, we are still in economic free fall, unemployment is still growing, government spending is still out of control, Banks are still failing, globe is still warming, green companies are failing, the natives are restless and marching in the streets, the derivative market bubble is ready to burst, the FRB is still printing money and making loans to foreign countries, Gold is still rising, ATF supplied guns to the Mexico drug cartels and Obama is a ONE TERM PRESIDENT!!!! 

[ivanm]

And Obama is doing what to fix this??? We are still in the ME, costing billions, we are still in economic free fall, unemployment is still growing, government spending is still out of control, Banks are still failing, globe is still warming, green companies are failing, the natives are restless and marching in the streets, the derivative market bubble is ready to burst, the FRB is still printing money and making loans to foreign countries, Gold is still rising, ATF supplied guns to the Mexico drug cartels and Obama is a ONE TERM PRESIDENT!!!! 

In fairness to Obama he is no more calling the shots than Bush was.  Both are poster boys for the neocons in the NSA and for the hogs in the financial world.  At the risk of sounding anti semitic, take a look at who is in charge in the NSA and who owns the FRS and you will see where the real trouble lies for some of the issues you have mentioned.

There have been some measures proposed to help alleviate emissions, but all too often it involves more taxation and more regulations.  And the Pubs aren't about to consider the ideas on their merits because their goal is to get Obama out of the WH at all costs and to take control of the Senate.  They have damned few decent ideas on climate control themselves, which should not suprise anyone because they are bigoted ideologues and not servants of the people.