All 13 Democrats are voting for new HELP health care bill
The HELP Committee has released their final version of a health care bill, including a public health insurance option and a provision for shared responsibility:
Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.
By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.
You got that cost number right - $611 billion. If you'll remember, the last version of the HELP bill - without a public option or shared responsibility - came in at $1 trillion. Clearly, these changes saved money. (And remember when John Boehner, Republican leader in the House, said the public option would cost over $1 trillion? He's dead wrong.) The full text of the bill can be found here. [pdf]
On the conference call announcing the measure, Senators Dodd, Brown, and Whitehouse said that all 13 HELP Democrats would be voting for this bill. That's right, every single one.
Richard Kirsch, Health Care for America Now's national campaign director, had this to say:
The HELP Committee's bill will give Americans all across this country what they want - a choice of a strong public health insurance option that will provide lower costs and keep the insurance companies honest. The public health insurance option included in the HELP bill will be available on day one, giving Americans a new alternative to the private insurance industry. It will also encourage the delivery of better health care at a lower cost. The public health insurance option, combined with other key sections of the HELP Committee legislation, makes this bill a good prescription for health care reform. More specifically, the bill invests enough resources to make good, affordable health care available to middle-class families and includes strict rules to stop insurance company abuses.
We urge the Senate Finance Committee and the full Senate to follow Senator Kennedy and his fellow Democrats' lead in giving everyone a choice of keeping their current health insurance coverage or selecting a new public health insurance option. That public health insurance option would be a real alternative to the private insurance companies that have failed to make health care affordable while regularly delaying and denying needed care.
I concur. The HELP Committee is standing up today and doing the right thing for the American people, and indeed, doing something they deeply support. Finance should follow suit.
(also posted at the NOW blog)
Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/j_ro
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Appears Hawaii is exempted.
I will be very disappointed if we get a watered down version of the senator's healthcare coverage!
I shall let them know when I vote next time!
Nearly all members of the House and Senate--BOTH major parties--are paid employees of the HMOs and Big Pharma, through the legalized bribery of campaign contributions. In the 2008 election cycle alone, Democrats slopped up $90 million in health-sector cash compared to the Republicans’ 72 million. (See http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H)
Those numbers explain why, despite the strenuous daily rehearsal of "differences" over the details of a public plan, pols of both parties agree on a much more fundamental matter: keeping the health-care system in the death grip of the profiteering HMOs. And let"s be clear :the public option plan being proposed would not make a dent in the dysfunctional cost bloating and coverage gaps bred by the profit-driven system.
The numbers also explain why BOTH parties have conspired to push aside the only reform with a PROVEN track record of cost control, universal coverage, and quality health outcomes in the rest of the industrialized world: nonprofit single payer MEDICARE FOR ALL.
If you aren't demanding that, you're demanding nothing. Here's how to get active to demand MEDICARE FOR ALL--no public option shams, no more fake reforms that keep the blood-sucking HMOs in control:
http://www.healthcare-now.org
www.pnhp.org
www.singlepayeraction.org
Thanks for continuing to hammer on these points. Everyone who is excited about this public option owes it to themselves to follow the above links. Adding one more payer to the mix isn't going to change, or help, anything. Especially since the deck seems stacked against it. We need genuine reform, not band-aids.
Thank you, Senator Kennedy! Keep the pressure on, everyone!
Again, this preoccupation with cost. Where were the cost concerns for war? We need health care, we deserve it; the system is broken and must be fixed. Pay what it costs.
Jesus!
I skimmed through the pdf file of the bill and it looks pretty decent from first scan. It prohibits discriminating against pre-existing conditions and also does not include any annual or lifetime caps on coverage. And everybody is guaranteed coverage if they want it. Great job so far! It follows much of what I've been pushing for - http://bit.ly/9QLV8
It also sets a limit on how much higher a premium can be for someone with a pre-existing condition, which is great -- because we know they would charge double in order to recoup their $$$$$$.
So they can charge more for pre-existing condition, but above rxvette says that "It prohibits discriminating against pre-existing conditions" ... which is it?
I understand they plan on fining poor people $1,000 if they don't pay for health insurance. Somebody up there just does't get it. Minimum wage people and unemployed people can't afford food, let alone anything else.
I didn't see anything about a fine. i did read that people who can't afford it will be subsidized by the government. You can read the bill, but I didn't see a mandate.
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/HELPbill.pdf
I tried to w through that, I can see why people don't read bills. Didn't see anything there. That is what I read elsewhere. The Massachusetts law fines people $912 if they don't sign up for insurance or get an exemption. Maybe the feds are not following their lead. Being unemployed and living on savings, I am concerned.
And if it were free for poor people, conservatives would whine about that too.
No matter what happens, conservatives will whine. So realistically speaking... just ignore the ever-present whining of conservatives.
Some important principles should be incorporated into the system:
- make it viable and an entitlement for each individual to be able to purchase health insurance for a morally justified minimum level of health care,
- remove from employers the burden of health care which damages their competitive position internationally,
- tax any health care benefits from employers,
- preventable health problem causes such as smoking, drug use, violent criminal activity, refusal to excercise, refusal to address preventable obesity and the like should affect the level of minimum medical care an individual is entitled to purchase, In return for public guarantee of morally justified minimum care, individuals need to take responsibility for the lifestyle choices necessary to justify that guarantee.
- the definition of "minimum level of care" needs to have economic justification. There are real limits on what can physically and sustainably be provided. The system needs to actuarially account for that.
This sounds hostile & judgmental-- You can't get people to engage in healthy living by being punitive. Think about it- take, for example, an overweight, diabetic single mother living in a poor urban area and working multiple low-wage jobs. You would penalize her for "refusing to exercise"? But suppose she is dealing with exhaustion, lack of child care, lack of time, no place to exercise (including no safe place to walk)? That's anything but far-fetched- it's quite a common scenario. If you want to encourage prevention of disease through healthy living, it will require creating opportunities. Quality subsidized child care? A living wage? low-cost public gym facilities? (Chicago is ahead of the game with this one, but there is a long way to go). Farmer's markets and community gardens and simply adequate grocery stores in poor urban neighborhoods (a real problem). Sidewalks in all communities, and safe parks? Work laws that make it easier for workers to actually take time to exercise? We have created systems and communities that have made it increasingly difficult for people to live in healthy ways. you can't just turn around and blame people for adjusting to the system - it has to be changed.
Great post Clare!
I support a strong public option ,but i also think we shouldn't jump to any conclusion until we see the final product of this health care bill.
http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/HELPbill.pdf
How would you define a "strong public option." How would it work? How would it be financed? Would it impose premiums and deductibles? Have you thought this through, or are you just parroting MSM and K street buzzwords?
This plan claims 97% covered, who are the remaining 3% and what happens to them?
I suspect that 3% is like the governments unemployment number. Bogus. There are over twice as many unemployed as the unemployment number.
That number has been cooked so hard over the last eight years, it;s almost meaningless now.
The Conservatives desperately needed to cover up the fact that job growth has been, at best, stagnant for eight years. Undoubtedly why we are having a "Bush Boom" right now.
They are expanding medicaid, my guess is 3% will become eligible for that!
Yeah, but we are not getting what we deserve: a top quality, non-profit system similar to that in France.
The President messed up on this issue.
How did the President mess this issue up?
You know you can't please everyone, maybe Bush's NO plan was good enough for "HumeSkeptic"!
France has both a non-profit, and for-profit system. The majority of surgical procedures are done in the private hospitals under a fee-for-service system. And it's not free. The average reembursment is 70% for a GP or specialist, other amounts vary by procedure. Drug reembursment can be as low as 15%. Due to rising costs, the government is looking to lower reembursment percentages, and families are starting to buy private 'gap' insurance.
@Tkevan, please, are you just an AMA shill? The Canadians have far better health care (as do the French) than we do in this country. From
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5i2jorn4ZqOeTZufiwKbQsSEFlPJg
"From hair salons to hospital waiting rooms and Georgetown dinner parties, Americans have wanted to know: "What's health care really like in Canada?"
"Is it true no one can get a family doctor in Canada?" came the query from a Commerce Department employee earlier this week at a Canada Day barbecue at the Canadian Embassy.
No, it's not true, came the reply.
"But don't people have to wait weeks or months for special services?" Occasionally, was the response from another Canadian.
"Is it really true that every single Canadian is covered?" Yes, came the rousing, in-unison answer from the entire group of Canadians involved in the discussion."
PART 2 on France:
Coverage, both medical and drugs, is comprehensive. According to the report, "bout seventy five percent of the total health expenditures are covered by the public health insurance system. A part of the balance is paid directly by the patients and the other part by private health insurance companies that are hired individually or in group (assurance complémentaire or mutuelle, complementary insurance or mutual fund)."
For serious and/or long-term illnesses, coverage increases on a sliding scale to 100 percent.
Citizens can purchase supplementary coverage for the other 25 percent from private insurers, but they are all NONPROFIT as well--by law.
It is true that some of the surgically oriented hospitals are private and operate for profit, but the financing of their fees comes from the main NONPROFIT and the supplementary NONPROFIT private insurers. The public hospitals make up 65 percent of the system, and "There is no significant difference in the quality of care between public and private hospitals."
It is preposterous to equate this predominantly public, nonprofit system with the U.S. public-option farce, which creates an enfeebled pseudo-public HMO alongside 1,300 other ffor-profit HMOs, which continue to bloat costs and deny coverage in this dysfunctional and collapsing U.S. system.
PART 1 on France:
This is completely false. The financing of the French health-insurance system is 100-percent NONPROFIT. The main public funding, according to Medical News Today, "is supported by employers, employee contributions, and personal income taxes. The working population has twenty percent of their gross salary deducted at source to fund the social security system." These funds are disbursed by several quasi-public NONPROFIT funds that act in concert to achieve de facto single payer leverage over costs--the reason that France has HALF the per capita costs of the United States with BETTER health outcomes--better life expectancy and lower infant-mortality rates. The World Health Organization ranked the nonprofit French system first in the world, the for-profit U.S. system 37th (not coincidentally the only predominantly for-profit financing in the industrialized world), only two notches ahead of Cuba and dead last among industrialized nations.
(Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/9994.php)
Some people you just can't please!
Check out this ad being run against blanch lincoln http://www.dailykostv.com/w/001891/
I just read this on a blog:
"What hypocrisy to advocate for a strong military but at the same time trivialize public healthcare! If we trust the State's military to protect us why can't we trust the State's doctors to heal us?"
My question precisely. Seems the Republicans and conservatives (opportunists?) from both sides have a lot of faith in government operated military (or police for that matter) but their faith fails when it comes to medical care. By their logic all government run services should be terrible and worthless!
You must love trips to DMV or the Post Office. I work in a state-run hospital. If you think it's a model of efficiency, your nuts. Politicians have no common sense, and they fix imagined problems by creating larger issues.
Why do I work there? It's a teaching hospital, and I'm a learning junkie.
Well, first, may be the reason it is not efficient is because there are people like you who work there with no real commitments or passion for healthcare. Clearly you don't work there because you care about the health of the patients, but because you are a "learning junkie".
By firing you and hiring someone who actually wants to work in a hospital because that's what they are passionate about, the inefficiency of the hospital would be reduced by a small amount almost instantaneously.
Imagine what could happen if we fired all the non-committal people like you from the hospital and filled it with doctors, nurses, techs and administrators who actually love their job?
And even if I choose to respond in the silly argument you attempt to make, my DMV trips usually take 15-20 mins, Post Office trips take 5-15 mins and the entire task is done after that. Also keep in mind, I can simply walk in whenever I choose to and come out with my requirements fulfilled.
On the other hand, my trips to the PCP or specialist funded by private insurance, normally take an hour or more. Of that time, however, the actual visit is only 10 min or so, the rest is simply wait time, first in the lobby and then in the examination room. And don't forget to see these doctors I have to make appointments way ahead of time, usually a week, sometimes a month.
There you have it. Which do you think is more efficient?
my friends who work for the government tell me that they don't have enough to do, that they stretch five hours of work into eight. When they ask for more they are told to go read manuals on procedures and policies. Supervisors don't want to admit they are over staffed because than they will get less money in their budgets. Sounds like a model of efficiency to me. Granted right now, I only know two people in government jobs, but they both say the exact same thing. It infuriates me, that this is how are tax dollars are spent.
Yeah, that's a good excuse.
I'm in and out of the Post Office in minutes, and even at a busy DMV, I'm out in less than 30 minutes.
I've waited 45 minutes for my family doctor to keep our appointment. But by gOD, if I'm late, I lose my appointment.
The single-payer system proposed for the United States is NOT government run--it is publicly financed but PRIVATELY administered, as is the case with Medicare and the Canadian.
First you spread falsehoods about France, now about single-payer in the U.S.
Why don't you inform yourself a bit better before charging into print with your chronic disinformation?
Here's a good place to start: the FAQ of Physicians for a National Health Plan.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php
Make the government system compete with the private system. Make them both prove their merits. Enough talk.
They can't. The private system can't take money from you to improve their bottom line. The government system will always cost the patient less money, not because it cost less, but because it can subsidize it with others money.
Tkevan writes: "The government system will always cost the patient less money, not because it cost less, but because it can subsidize it with others money."
This is a right wing talking point. While it is true that a government owned company could unfairly, incompetently, corruptly be subsidized..... it is true in the same way that a private company could unfairly, incomptently, corruptly deny reasonable service, over reward executives and shareholders, and perversely burn 30% of revenue on administration resulting in inflated costs and degraded health results.
In each of these cases there are ways to prevent to corruption and make the organizations attend to the matter at hand which is efficiently and fairly competing to provide health outcomes. It is better to put the emphsis on doing that rather than doggedly sticking to an ideological position and painting the other side as hopelessly corrupt. Neither system is inherently corrupt, but both are prone to it if left to their own devices.
Let them compete.... with competent and fair minded oversight. The idea that "government will ALWAYS unfairly subsidize" is just as not true as the idea that the private sector will ALWAYS be efficient.
Private health insurance lovers/defenders....please defend this
Ex-executive accuses insurance giant of 'purging' customers
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/02/insurance.purging/
oldvet writes: "I am a retired army officer covered by the VA, with a combat related disability to boot. I choose my own doctors and do not have to wait any longer than other patients. I have never had any procedure turned down and do not have to fill out any paperwork. The proposed public plan should not be any different."
Well this Dodd Lovefest with the Insurance companies is certainly not that.
You chose your doctors? At the VA? Or you chose your doctors with TRICARE Standard?
It is odd, isn't it, that in this age of highly sophisticated business administration models, we have a public option that immediately creates 50 new bureaucracies, gives them a 4% slice of our total health budget (I think that comes to 80 billion based on 4% of 2 trillion) to basically go out and find insurance cos to participate in a public plan that apes medicare.
I don't know a lot about health insurance but I wonder what solution a group of savy independent entrepreneurs would come up with if they started from scratch. You can do some amazing things with technology these days.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
