Entries by emptywheel

Trash Talk – Spooks And Jukes Edition

Hi there Wheelies and Lugnuts, we have reached the end of another weekend. So now the fun starts! Marcy and I kind of have a lot of the same interests, that is how I came to be here. Today she wrote about the Ambinder Atlantic article on top spooks caterwauling about the lame ass to start with Holder “preliminary review” on the beyond the criminal guidelines, set out by even

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Al Punto Versus Fox News Sunday

It appears that Obama is appearing on Univision’s Sunday show, Al Punto, instead of Fox News Sunday not just because Latinos are a more important demographic than white racists, but because Al Punto is actually a more successful Sunday show.

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MaxTax’s Medicare Reforms: Would They Really Reform Health Care?

The MaxTax is largely a Medicare bill attached to 39 pages of private health care reform. To show you what I mean by that, here’s roughly how many pages MaxTax spends on each topic:

Health care exchange and other means to make private care available to the uninsured: 39 pages (including several on preventing tax dollars from being spent on undocumented workers or abortions)

Extending access to the poor and underserved (including expanding

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CBO on Co-Ops

Ezra has posted the CBO’s initial estimates on the costs of MaxTax–some of the assumptions for which seem to pretend that insurance companies will not react in any way to the new rules imposed by MaxTax.

But before I get into what CBO’s assumptions, here’s what CBO thinks of Baucus’ crappy co-op option.

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because,

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The REAL Worst Policy in the Bill

Ezra continues to claim that the worst employer incentive in MaxTax is the way it fines employers for not covering employees.

Max Baucus’s bill retains the noxious “free rider” provision on employers. Rather than a simple employer mandate that forces every employer over a certain size to provide health-care insurance or pay a small fee, the free rider approach penalizes employers $400 for hiring low-income workers who are eligible for subsidies.

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