No CLASS

Read my lips, no new taxes, but there will be new revenues . . .

The gang of 6 in DC have cooked up a witches brew to satiate the head warlock but I don't think the natives back home are going to like it.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) reports a plan to keep the country running, albeit in a deficit, but sputtering along none the less.

The 'Gang of Six,' a bipartisan group of senators, today unveiled a deficit-reducing plan that would:

--Starting in 2020, set target to hold the growth of federal health care spending to a formula linked to the Gross Domestic Product, plus one percent, for each beneficiary in Medicare. If spending exceeded that amount, some kind of action would be required by Congress and the president.
--Save $26 billion by curbing waste, fraud and abuse in entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
--Repeal the CLASS Act, a voluntary long-term care insurance program that was created by last year's health law.
--Require the Senate Finance Committee to quickly approve legislation that would stop statutory cuts in physician payments from taking effect - the so-called '"doc fix.

Don't you just love the hocus-pocus?

We have all the usual suspects including "waste, fraud and abuse". Every time I hear the DC idiots talk about what they are going to do to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse it makes me wonder why we need a new law or program to take care of something that SHOULD BE standard operating procedure.

If they fix the "doc fix" problem that means payments to medical providers will increase. How will this save money?

And we also get a goodie in the form of repealing the CLASS Act.

And there are $1.2 trillion in revenue enhancements in the proposal as well.

That is code for tax increases.