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Friday, March 04, 2011

Class Act a fraud? Secretary HHS claims she will "reform" it

Financially unsound is the most generous way one can describe the part of Obamacare known as the CLASS Act ( The Community Living Assistance and Supports Act). see here.

Even the secretary of HHS admits to problems with this section of ACA but her answer is that she will use her discretionary powers to " reform it". What ever happened to the rule of law? A law is passed and if there are problems with it and an administrative arm of the executive branch will alter the law to fix it.It will be fixed by a politically appointed administrator who serves at the pleasure of the president.

Secretary Sebelius,at a congressional hearing, said that those provisions were "totally unsustainable" meaning it would not pay for itself and would require taxpayer money to make it fiscally viable.

Early on, opponents of ACA insisted that the provisions were not fiscally sound and were placed in the bill to give the illusion that Obamacare would cost less than the magic one trillion dollar price tag. The plan was to front load the plan with premiums without any benefit payments for a number of years. It was advertised as a mechanism to decrease the federal deficit by 86 billion over a ten year period. Now even the administration admits it will do no such thing.

Either the authors of the CLASS Act were aware of the lack of sustainability but proceeded on in a wink-wink-nod-nod manner or they did not know what they were doing. Ms. Sebelius testified that they (the folks at HHS) realized right way that was the case. Did the folks at HHS have no input to the crafting of the legislation?

2 comments:

Melissa "Darla" In Texas said...

Lies, more lies and damned lies!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukaIZ7pmabo

Matthew Bowdish MD said...

Either the authors of the CLASS Act were aware of the lack of sustainability but proceeded on in a wink-wink-nod-nod manner or they did not know what they were doing.

Cogent. I tend to generally believe that most of the time these efforts should be attributed to stupidity rather than conspiracy. However, with what the President has said about 'transitions' to single payer, I am not so sure anymore.

What is also interesting is whether Sebelius can even fix these issues, as per Avik Roy's recent post on the subject.

Matt Bowdish MD