CBO Analysis: Both House Plans Would Cover At Least 35 Million Uninsured

Two competing House health care reform proposals would extend coverage to at least 35 million Americans within ten years, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis that has yet to be made public.

One plan includes a government-run insurance option tied to Medicare rates; the second would require the government plan to negotiate with providers. An outline of the analysis was provided to HuffPost by a senior House leadership aide, who emphasized that the plan requiring the public option to negotiate would cover 36 million people. However, that number includes coverage that is extended by also increasing Medicaid eligibility from 133 percent of the federal poverty line to 150 percent.

Under the plan that includes the "robust public option" favored by progressives, which would tie reimbursement to Medicare rates plus five percent, 35 million additional people would be covered within ten years.

The focus on the roughly equal coverage rates telegraphs a coming leadership strategy. With Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) uncertain that he can muster the votes for the progressives' favored option, the case will be made that the negotiated-rate version really isn't all that bad after all.

Clyburn met with Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders Tuesday and, aides say, the meeting became tense as he told them he had yet to whip enough support for the Medicare-plus-five plan.

Clyburn spokeswoman Kristie Greco told HuffPost that the count is ongoing but leadership is currently short the votes needed.

Liberals favor tying reimbursement rates to Medicare because it would keep costs down and would help get the public option up and running. Yale Professor Jacob Hacker, the intellectual father of the public option, insists that the public plan would have a very hard time succeeding if it was required to negotiate rates with providers.

The public option tied to Medicare rates saves $110 billion over ten years. Requiring it to negotiate rates only saves $25 billion.

If leadership goes with the negotiated-rate plan, that $85 billion difference will have to come from somewhere to meet President Obama's ten-year, $900 billion price ceiling. The fattest target is the subsidies to help people afford insurance.

Comments

[Chernynkaya]

04:18 PM on 10/29/2009

I am being told this is historic, that I should be satisfied. That this is the best we can do. (And let's not forget that this is not the final bill by a long shot--just the most liberal!)

I'm being told that this is just a first step, but how many decades until the next little incremental step is taken? I'm being told to be practical. This bill IS NOT practical--practical is at least cost effective: Medicare for all.

I won't be defeatist-- and that's exactly what all of the above excuses are. They assume an undemocratic, backwards America. I won't accept that and I insist on a higher standard.

This bill, when all the verbiage is stripped away, is Medicaid for more people. That is not bad, just not nearly good enough.

[kelleytom]

06:49 PM on 10/28/2009

35,000,000 covered in ten years. In ten years, 10,000,000 of them will already be dead. Thanks for all the help republicrats!! The 48,000,000 will be fine waiting 10 more years as long as you elected prostitutes give up yours for 10 years as well.

[RightsGuy]

01:50 PM on 10/28/2009

Today - Wednesday, October 28th-- the next wave of the Mobilization for Health Care for All begins. Go here to see the locations of the 19 actions around the country: http://www.healthcare-now.org/the-next-wave-of-actions/

For more info: http://mobilizeforhealthcare.org/

[RightsGuy]

01:28 PM on 10/28/2009

A public option, that would compete with private plans, is essential. The for-profit focus of our insurance companies has gotten out of hand, not unlike AIG and Wall Street.

Health insurance companies play a major role in our current healthcare crisis. These companies make huge profits and their CEOs make millions,. Physicians and patients are being squeezed mercilessly while the insurance companies rake in the profits.

HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY PROFITS IN 2007:

1. UnitedHealth Group -- $ 4.654 BILLION. UnitedHealth Group owns Oxford, PacifiCare, IBA, AmeriChoice, Evercare, Ovations, MAMSI and Ingenix, a healthcare data company

2. WellPoint -- $ 3.345 BILLION. Wellpoint owns BLUES across the US, including Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin, Empire HealthChoice Assurance, Healthy Alliance, and many others

3. Aetna Inc. -- $ 1.831 BILLION

4. CIGNA Corp -- $ 1.115 BILLION

5. Humana Inc. -- $ 834 million

6. Coventry Health Care -- $626 million. Coventry owns Altius, Carelink, Group Health Plan, HealthAmerica, OmniCare, WellPath, others

7. Health Net -- $ 194 million

The huge insurance company profits—BILLIONS EACH YEAR—could be used to provide quality healthcare for millions of people, and to pay physicians adequately for their work.

We need to get the insurance companies OUT of healthcare The only long-term solution is a NON-PROFIT Single Payer system – and the single payer should not be an insurance company or a group of insurance companies.

[bmull]

11:43 AM on 10/28/2009

Can't wait to see the bill. The last version covered 11 million new people with Medicaid, so presumably that means up to 25 million are going to be "covered" by *forcing* them to buy private insurance. This is not the change I voted for.

[mcantwell]

08:41 AM on 10/28/2009

This should be the Main.

[gulfofmexico1]

07:36 AM on 10/28/2009

How can it insure 35 million uninsured when Obama said in his last national address that their were only 25 million. They are all such liers. Please leave my health care alone, I like it.

[vippy]

06:56 AM on 10/28/2009

At what cost to us? It is outrageous what the politicians dare to pull on us. They should immediately lose their tax payer provided healthcare following this! In fact, we need to rewrite what they get, how much they get in compensation, retirement, healthcare, etc. since they make so much money behind
our backs. We have a 25% plus unemployment and we need to seriously consider firing 25% of the senate. We simply can't afford them. Why should they be excluded from the bad decisions that caused our fallout? We already know the insurance companies won this battle, therefore, it cannot be good to us. And who keeps voting this despicable gnome Lieberman in office?

[tiredofthesameoldstuff]

07:37 AM on 10/28/2009

The public plan actually has a savings in the long run of hundreds of billions not a cost.

[PhillyQuaker]

06:55 AM on 10/28/2009

http://www.insurancejournal.com/comments/?a=/news/national/2009/10/27/104828.htm&c=144196

Check out these comments. Some Insurance folks are feeling the public option will be the ruin of America!

Funny, everyone I personally know in the business is for the public option.

[RightsGuy]

01:48 PM on 10/28/2009

Nah . . they are just worried about maintaining their salaries and profits . . .

HERE’S WHERE YOUR HEALTHCARE DOLLARS GO:

ANNUAL COMPENSATION OF HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY EXECUTIVES (2006 and 2007 figures):

• Ronald A. Williams, Chair/ CEO, Aetna Inc., $23,045,834

• H. Edward Hanway, Chair/ CEO, Cigna Corp, $30.16 million

• David B. Snow, Jr, Chair/ CEO, Medco Health, $21.76 million

• Michael B. MCallister, CEO, Humana Inc, $20.06 million

• Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO, UnitedHealth Group, $13,164,529

• Angela F. Braly, President/ CEO, Wellpoint, $9,094,771

• Dale B. Wolf, CEO, Coventry Health Care, $20.86 million

• Jay M. Gellert, President/ CEO, Health Net, $16.65 million

• William C. Van Faasen, Chairman, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3 million plus $16.4 million in retirement benefits

• Charlie Baker, President/ CEO, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, $1.5 million

• James Roosevelt, Jr., CEO, Tufts Associated Health Plans, $1.3 million

• Cleve L. Killingsworth, President/CEO Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, $3.6 million

• Raymond McCaskey, CEO, Health Care Service Corp (Blue Cross Blue Shield), $10.3 million

• Daniel P. McCartney, CEO, Healthcare Services Group, Inc, $ 1,061,513

• Daniel Loepp, CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, $1,657,555

• Todd S. Farha, CEO, WellCare Health Plans, $5,270,825

• Michael F. Neidorff, CEO, Centene Corp, $8,750,751

Our fight for equal access to healthcare for all is about democracy, human rights, civil rights, and basic human decency.

[DonCosenza]

04:37 AM on 10/28/2009

They gonna make providers accept it? Why else would providers agree to accept Medicare 5% rates?

[Chernynkaya]

04:22 PM on 10/29/2009

Please read more. Medicare +5% would be good. This is NOT that, even thought that would have saved billions. CBO estimated that a Public Option, paying providers Medicare rates + 5 %, would have saved the federal budget $110 billion over ten years. Savings would be only $25 billion if the PO were required to negotiate rates with providers. The House bill goes with negotiated rates with medical providers.

[DonCosenza]

12:45 PM on 10/30/2009

My point is even if you had a plan with Medicare +5%, if providers aren't required to accept it, why would they?

Medicare can dictate prices because it's about the only health insurance that retirees have, and so it dominates a huge market (even so, doctors are increasingly turning away medicare patients). A public option has to compete with private plans, and as far as I've heard, all of the various forms of the public option will be limited in who is eligible at least at the onset: e.g. people with no employer-provided insurance. With such a limited market, how do they expect they'll get providers to accept rates considerably below what private plans pay?

[Tim303]

03:53 AM on 10/28/2009

Good news.

[darker]

02:58 AM on 10/28/2009

CORPORATE PROFITEERING at the expense of sick people
shows that GREEDY CORPORATE PARASITES won't stop
stealing until WE THROW THEM IN JAIL!

And their lobbyist congress people, too.

[goodog]

02:57 AM on 10/28/2009

Ahitler told the P O survives:
http://www.isle-of-avalon.net/DerInsuranceUntergang.html

[Tim303]

03:51 AM on 10/28/2009

"The national government will maintain and defend the
foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer
strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective
morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to
fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out
all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and
in the press — in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality
which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of
LIBERAL excess during the past years" — Adolph Hitler (Taken from The
Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, Michael Hakeem, Ph.D.
(London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 871-872.)

[GermanGoodness]

07:44 AM on 10/28/2009

Thanks for posting that quote, Tim. I'm going to use it every time I come in contact with a r@bid right-w---n-t.

[darker]

02:52 AM on 10/28/2009

Chamber Of Commerce To Begin Ads Against Health Care Reform?
NOT SURPRISING since the C of C is a front group for BILLIONAIRES
STEALING YOUR MONEY for years, and destroying the middle class in America.

[McCauley]

02:04 AM on 10/28/2009

C Pollard has been duped by Faux News.