Committee on Energy and Commerce facts on health care reform impact - District by District

The Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Represenatives has prepared, for all 435 congressional districts, a district-level analysis of the impact of health care reform legislation. This analysis includes information on the impact of the legislation on families, small businesses, seniors in Medicare, health care providers, and the uninsured.

The bill caps annual out-of-pocket costs at $6,200 for individuals and $12,400 for families who purchase insurance through the exchange or who are insured by small businesses. It also eliminates annual and lifetime limits on all insurance coverage. These changes mean no family will have to face financial ruin because of high health care costs.

The highlights from the report on MN's Second District, Represented by Republican John Kline:

• Improve coverage for 578,000 residents with health insurance.
• Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 117,000 families and 16,300 small businesses to help them afford coverage.
• Improve Medicare for 75,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.
• Guarantee that 5,800 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.
• Protect 1,200 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
• Allow 57,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents’ insurance plans.
• Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $43 million annually.

Under the legislation, small businesses with 100 employees or less will be able to join the health insurance exchange, benefiting from group rates and a greater choice of insurers. There are 17,900 small businesses in the district that could benefit from this provision.

Tax credits for truly small businesses:
Small businesses with 25 employees or less and average wages of less than $50,000 will qualify for tax credits of up to 50% of the costs of providing health insurance. There are up to 16,300 small businesses in the district that could qualify for these credits.

Curious how other districts will fare? The full report is at: Benefits of Health Care Reform, District by District Impact, where the Committee notes the cost of health care reform under the legislation as currently formulated is:

"...fully paid for, in large part by eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and excessive profits for private insurers. The legislation will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the next ten years, and by about $1.2 trillion over the second decade."

Open Letter to U.S. Representative John Kline (MN-2)

Dear Congressman Kline,

With the Congressional Budget Office having determined that revenue in the Health Care Reform package and savings from program cuts will outpace the cost of coverage, I'm excited by the prospect of reducing the federal deficit by $138 billion over the next 10 years.

The savings would continue to accumulate in the decade thereafter, the CBO said, eventually slicing around $1.2 trillion from the nation's budget gap. That's good for MN, good for the USA, and most importantly, good for future generations including my son.

I look forward to your support for this fiscally responsible bill, particularly during these challenging economic conditions. I know you're a fan of reducing the costs of operating the U.S. Government, and being able to do so in a way that also benefits the residents of your district by simply voting in support of a bill is a golden opportunity.

John Kline's Dec 17 Town Hall: phoning it in

On the evening of December 17th, 2009, current CD 2 Representative John Kline conducted a tele-conference town hall. Participants had to be called by the system, so the make-up of the listeners probably tended to come from a list of known supporters - one can infer that the Congressman was using it mostly to shore up his support.

While hammering on the notion of massive federal spending bills, Kline did allude to the fact that there had been excessive spending during the Bush administration. But his closing point on spending was to suggest citizens should "be alarmed" when they hear the term "omnibus" associated with a spending bill, implying it was a somehow a new tactic of the majority party although the term has been in use in Congress for decades.

The Congressman is unsurprisingly opposed to the current health care cost reform initiatives, he glossed over the steep increases in the cost of health care which have gone on at triple the rate of inflation for the past 30 years - you could say he stuck to the GOP talking points, which would be consistent with his vote on the House bill.

He left a lot of ambiguity on military policy, though, in response to a caller suggesting we should withdraw from both Iraq and Afghanistan rapidly. Complimenting the impressive logistical undertaking already in progress on the Iraq withdrawal, he pointed out there are mixed opinions from the military brass regarding the best course of action in Afghanistan, including the setting of a date to begin the turnover process, but noting we cannot let the country "collapse" by a precipitous departure. Kline did not specify or even outline what policy he'd advocate with regard to the Afghan deployment or the larger War on Terror.

Perhaps the most puzzling exchange came in response to a caller who evidently wanted tax policies to create domestic jobs, recalling when "Made in America" meant top quality and noting that it was tax breaks for corporations that had led to the outsourcing of jobs while lamenting what he described as buying televisions from China that end up in our land-fills in a year. Kline responded that taxes push jobs overseas, which resonates well with the GOP's traditional tax rhetoric, but failed to address how he'd reconcile additional tax cuts with the cost of the growth of a "huge bureaucracy with enormous power" over the first decade of the century (largely under a Republican administration which had, in fact, enacted massive tax cuts simultaneously with massive military spending commitments.) As a former small business owner I'm wary of folks who think we can have our budgetary cake and eat it, too.

In general callers seemed concerned about the obvious talking points, though often seemed to lack any substantive rationale as they cited Tort Reform, Cap-and-Trade, and partisan bickering (which most seem to blame on the Democrats.) These are legitimate matters for Congress and the White House to debate and address - we need to deal with the costs of medical malpractice even though it pales in comparison to the amounts flowing to the insurance companies, just as most agree we need to find a way to deal with the impact of climate change globally.

Most, that is, except for a woman from Lake City who expressed confidence that climate change is a complete hoax as one of her points. Evidently Kline agrees with her: he started his response by noting she was, "...right on point across the board..."

Still, this reluctance to consider human impact on climate runs close to the GOP mantra, and so on the whole the only news was the former Colonel's apparent support for Obama's decision regarding a surge in Afghanistan - and even that is in accord with the GOP strategists' guidance to avoid taking any position which could be construed as anti-military.

Hopefully at his next Town Hall Congressman Kline can open up to any interested voters, and tell us what he'll actually do on behalf of the the district, state, and country, instead of targeting certain constituents for a pep talk.