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11:17

Fred Barbash-Moderator -

Nina Owcharenko is a Senior Policy Analyst for health care at The Heritage Foundation's Center for Health Policy Studies. She will be with us at noon to take your questions on healthcare, most notably today, the CBO numbers for the Baucus bill.

She'll be with us at noon...we invite you to submit questions in advance now.

11:18

11:23

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Ms. Owcharenko recently wrote this:

Current efforts by Congress to "reform" the health care system are centered on several flawed policy initiatives that will transfer more power and decisions to Washington and away from patients and families.

Rather than create a massive government-based health care system and dislocate people from their existing private coverage, policymakers should focus on putting the health care system on a path where individuals and families are in control of their health care dollars and decisions.

11:59

Fred Barbash-Moderator - Welcome readers from whichever site you're visiting--POLITICO or Heritage. This is one in a series of POLITICO chats with Heritage experts every other Thursday. Thanks for participating.

Welcome to Nina Owcharenko...and let me begin by asking you, Nina, for your take on the CBO numbers that came out yesterday, whether you a)trust them and b)think that they advance the bill in a significant way.

12:02

[Comment From nina owcharenko]
As people get the time to actually read the CBO analysis, they will find this is not good news for the American people. Expanding Medicaid is not reform. A full 10 year budget window will cost substantially more. There will still be 25 million uninsured people. It relies on budget gimmicks.

12:02

[Comment From John Fanning]
If you look at the math, 94% of 305 million leaves 18.3 million uncovered in 2019. With an estimated population growth of 10% (it has been 13% in last decade) will leave 20.1 million uncovered. How is that progress??

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