A quick wrap on the health reform debate, first up two from the Politico's Pulse:

After months of holding their tongues, insurance industry officials launched a very public attack on the Senate Finance bill Sunday with an analysis that says insurance reform will increase premiums faster than doing nothing. The industry, which didn’t like last week’s CBO report, bought its own analysis and will tout the PricewaterhouseCoopers findings in new ads. The developments have the White House and Finance Chairman Baucus on the defensive. This could be a turning point that the White House and Baucus worked hard to avoid – when industry begins to publicly oppose Democratic reforms. With this report, insurers take a half step in that direction and put Democrats in a dangerous place. If insurers inspire other dissatisfied groups – everyone from docs to hospitals – to take a more aggressive approach in their legislative demands, Democrats could quickly find themselves playing defense against some of the town’s best funded groups when they should be playing offense to pass a bill.  READ THE 26-PAGE REPORT HERE. 

READ KAREN IGNAGNI’S 2-PAGE MEMOTO MEMBER PRESIDENTS AND CEOs. KEY GRAF: "Between 2010 and 2019 the cumulative increases in the cost of a typical family policy under this reform proposal will be approximately $20,700 more than it would be under the current system."

And the Single-Bullet Scenario, also from Politico:

It's been conventional wisdom forever that health care reform’s brass tacks will be decided in conference committee, where Senate and House negotiators reconcile each chamber's version into one bill. But what if reform could skip conference on the way to the president’s desk?

It wasn't a question I’d considered until a former House and Senate leadership aide sent an email sketching out another route to passage. Instead of introducing a Senate bill, Majority Leader Reid could insert the merged health care reform language into a revenue raising House bill already languishing in conference committee. The Senate would pass it and send it to the House whereupon passage, it would go straight to the president’s desk – completely bypassing conference. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

By cutting out conference, this single-bullet scenario eliminates weeks of expected wrangling and would make it possible to pass a bill by the Thanksgiving target so many Democrats are aiming for. Many insiders agree that a conference committee would make that goal next to impossible."

REID SPOKESMAN Jim Manley sends a somewhat tongue-in-check response to the single-bullet scenario saying, "Don't waste your time thinking about that idea anymore. What we will end up doing will be much more painful and prolonged."

Lisa Rickard posted Saturday on the CBO's finding that lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits; but wait there's more! Ed Morrissey explains:

But that’s not the end of the savings, either.  A 0.5% reduction in health-care costs would mean $11 billion in savings per year overall, with roughly 40% of that benefiting the federal government in Medicare and other federal program costs. That amounts to a whopping $110 billion in cost savings over ten years to the entire medical industry, which would help keep premiums in check for consumers.

Amazingly the trial lawyer response is that none of these savings are "a significant amount of money." This is of course laughable, which is why they then go on to claim that medical liability reform will kill people. Hey CBO, did you look at that?

Some recent research has found that tort reform may adversely affect such outcomes, but other studies have concluded otherwise. Lakdawalla and Seabury (2009) found that a 10 percent reduction in costs related to medical malpractice liability would increase the nation’s overall mortality rate by 0.2 percent. However, Kessler and McClellan (1996 and 2002) and Sloan and Shadle (2009) concluded that tort reform generated no significant adverse outcomes for patients’ health.

Significant savings, no significant adverse outcomes; why is this not in the bill?  Oh, right.