Posts Tagged ‘public option’
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
The public’s support for the public option in healthcare reform is on the upswing, as the Senate debates whether to include such a plan in the ultimate healthcare overhaul bill. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, fully 57 percent of Americans favor a public option, a rise from the 52 percent reported in August. Even so, the statistic is below the 62 percent approval rating the public option received in June.
At present, the Senate is working to reconcile the Finance Committee’s healthcare bill and the Health Committee’s legislation. Only the Health Committee’s legislation includes a public option, which President Obama favors but has said is not a requirement. The public option is a bone of contention in the healthcare reform process, and has strong opposition from Republicans who believe it could drive private insurers from the marketplace and result in a single-payer system.
Patients First, a conservative group, believes the poll’s methodology is flawed. According to Phil Kerpen, the group’s policy director, “The poll is a mirage designed to create the illusion of a groundswell of support for government-forced healthcare when no such support exists. The poll reflects the political aspirations of a few peddlers of failed big-government ideas, not the common sense wishes of the American people.”
President Obama has said he wants to sign healthcare reform legislation by Christmas.
Tags: healthcare reform, House of Representatives, Patients First, President Barack Obama, public option, Senate, Senate Finance Committee, Senate Health Committee, Senator Harry Reid, Senator Max Baucus
Posted in Healthcare | No Comments »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
Corporate giants like Verizon, JPMorgan, General Electric and Wal-Mart are lining up in opposition to the inclusion of a public option in healthcare reform legislation now under consideration in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Business Roundtable, comprised of large companies that in aggregate employ more than 12 million Americans, accuse the federal government of inefficiency and charge that it would underpay healthcare providers. Additionally, the Business Roundtable claims that a public option will increase prices for private insurers and employers.
By contrast, President Barack Obama believes that a government alternative will force private insurers to offer more competitive pricing. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said his bill includes a public option that is an alternative to policies sold by private insurers. States will have the ability to opt out from offering the plan.
“A public plan would neither manage cost nor encourage innovation,” said Antonio Perez, chief executive of Eastman Kodak and head of the Business Roundtable’s healthcare group. “We believe it is the wrong direction for fixing our healthcare system.” Other business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are sponsoring national television ads in seven states opposing the public option. The chamber prefers a national exchange “with an Orbitz-like website” that compares deals offered by various private providers.
Tags: Business Roundtable, healthcare reform, House of Representatives, President Barack Obama, public option, Senate, Senator Harry Reid, US Chamber of Commerce
Posted in Healthcare | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reported that the Senate Finance Committee healthcare reform bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years and reduce the deficit by $81 billion. This report on the bill, which would cover 94 percent of Americans, could bolster President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform initiative. As authored by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and amended by committee members, the bill would fulfill Obama’s preference for healthcare reform legislation that does not increase the deficit.
The Finance Committee is expected to vote on the plan, which does not include the public option that Obama and liberals want, next Tuesday. Instead, the Baucus bill proposes a nonprofit cooperative as an alternative, an option that the CBO report noted was unlikely to attract significant enrollment or spend all the subsidies allocated to it. All three House of Representatives committee bills include a public option, as does legislation passed by the Senate Health Committee.
Once the Democratic-controlled Finance Committee bill is approved, it will be merged with the Health Committee legislation and sent to the full Senate for debate later this month. In the House of Representatives, Democrats are holding meetings to merge their three healthcare reform bills into a single one that could win the 218 votes necessary for passage.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the CBO news on costs is “irrelevant” because he believes that Democrats will pump up the Baucus bill to make it more expensive.
Tags: Congressional Budget Office, deficit, Democrats, healthcare reform, House of Representatives, Max Baucus, President Barack Obama, public option, Senate Finance Committee
Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Healthcare reform is putting Democrats at loggerheads with each other, as the party’s liberal wing failed to include a public option in legislation now being negotiated in the Senate Finance Committee. The two failed votes (which saw some Democrats cross the aisle to vote with Republicans) were a victory for Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), whose committee is trying to finalize the proposed legislation. At the same time, Democrats in the House of Representatives were looking at ways to trim approximately $900 billion over 10 years from their legislation, President Obama’s suggested price tag.
Baucus and four other Democrats voted against Senator Jay Rockefeller’s (D-WV) amendment to include a public option in the proposed bill. “The public option would help to hold insurance companies’ feet to the fire, I don’t think there’s much doubt about that, but my first job is to get this bill across the finish line,” Baucus said. “No one shows me how to get 60 votes with a public option.”
The second failed amendment was a proposal from Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), designed to increase competition into the insurance market. This amendment would have let the government negotiate payments with physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers for two years rather than pay them at Medicare rates.
Advocates of the public option believe that private insurers are placing profits before coverage and vowed to insert this amendment into the legislation once the full Senate votes on healthcare reform. “With some work and some compromise, we can get the 60 votes on the floor of the Senate that will make our system better by providing for a strong, fair and viable public option,” Schumer said.
Tags: Democrats, healthcare reform, House of Representatives, Max Baucus, President Barack Obama, public option, Senate Finance Committee
Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Congressional Democrats are mulling a tax on high-cost insurance plans to pay for overhauling the nation’s healthcare delivery system. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says that such a tax is “under consideration” as Democrats seek consensus before bringing a bill to the House floor this fall.
“We just have to see how much money we need for what,” according to Pelosi. “And if we’re taking the bill down in cost, there are other provisions in the Senate bill that bend the (costs) curve that might be more palatable.” A House tax option likely would be a scaled-down version of the one Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) has proposed.
The Democratic House plan wants to increase taxes on upper-income people to pay for covering the uninsured. Baucus wants to tax high-cost “Cadillac” insurance plans often valued at more than $8,000 for an individual and $21,000 for a family and which may have no deductibles or co-payments. Those in favor of the tax, which President Obama supports, believe it will reduce healthcare costs by persuading people to become more cost-conscious consumers.
The insurance tax should reduce the cost of the House’s healthcare reform bill. How to pay for the plan is just one issue that House leaders are trying to settle as they work to merge three committee-approved bills into one piece of legislation. The major issue is that the House Democrats’ 10-year bill costs $1 trillion-plus, higher than the $900 billion that President Obama prefers. Although House Democrats realize that cuts are required, they want to protect the subsidies that will help low-income Americans purchase coverage. Unfortunately, the subsidies are the most expensive part of the legislation.
Tags: Democrats, healthcare reform, House of Representatives, insurance coverage, labor union, Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, public option, Senate committee
Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Senator Max Baucus’ (D-MT) long-awaited centrist healthcare reform bill was met with strong objections by both liberal Democrats (who decried the lack of a public option) and Republicans (who oppose any expanded government role in healthcare).
Still, the Baucus proposal could serve as a blueprint for the ultimate compromise healthcare legislation that President Obama calls the “defining struggle of this generation” when it finally emerges from Congress. Baucus’ proposal would expand consumer protections and require that all Americans have medical insurance with the government providing financial help to pay premiums for low- and middle-income people. Insurers would no longer be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or cancel policies after people get sick. The Baucus bill would create private healthcare insurance cooperatives, which centrist Democrats prefer in place of the public option supported by liberals.
Despite tailoring his proposal to cost less and limit government involvement in healthcare,Baucus’ proposal is unlikely to win much support from Republican Senators. According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), “Americans don’t think a bigger role for government in healthcare would improve the system. Yet despite this, every proposal we’ve seen would lead to a vast expansion of the government’s role in the healthcare system.”
The Baucus bill is unpopular with liberal Democrats who insist that a public option be included in any healthcare reform legislation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House bill, drafted by Democrats, was superior and “clearly does more to make coverage affordable for more Americans.” The Congressional Budget Office said the expansion of coverage would cost $774 billion over 10 years, compared with price tags of more than $1 trillion for the other measures.
Tags: affordable healthcare, Democrats, health insurance, healthcare reform, Max Baucus, Nancy Pelosi, President Obam, private healthcare, public option, Republicans
Posted in Economics, Healthcare | No Comments »
Monday, September 21st, 2009
A random survey of 2,130 physicians found that 73 percent support a public option as one element of healthcare reform legislation. That breaks down to 63 percent of physicians supporting both public and private options; 10 percent supporting a public option only; and 27 percent favoring private options only. The poll was conducted by New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine internists and researchers Dr. Salomeh Keyhani and Dr. Alex Federman.
The majority of physicians who favor giving their patients a choice of public or private insurance are in tune with President Barack Obama’s position and that of many congressional Democrats. Polls of average Americans have found that between 50 and 70 percent support a public option. In other words, physicians support the public option more strongly than the general population. This contradicts one of the canards of the healthcare debate – that doctors will resist reform for fear of seeing their incomes erode.
“Whether they lived in southern regions of the United States or traditionally liberal parts of the country, we found that physicians – whether they were salaried or they were practice owners, regardless of whether they were specialists of primary care providers, regardless of where they lived – the support for the public option was broad and widespread,” Dr. Keyhani said.
The survey was published Monday, September 14, in the online New England Journal of Medicine. It was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a healthcare research organization that supports reform legislation.
Tags: Democrats, health insurance, Healthcare, healthcare research, internists, patients, physicians, President Barack Obama, private option, public option, researchers, specialist
Posted in Healthcare, Hospital Systems | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
President Barack Obama’s prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress made a strong case for including a public option, along with a combination of choices designed to keep the insurance industry in check. Recalling Theodore Roosevelt’s efforts to reform healthcare during the 1912 election, Obama said “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last. Well, the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed,” Obama said. “Now is the season for action.”
That action includes a provision that protects uninsurable individuals from catastrophic healthcare expenses. Another proposal is a series of pilot programs that will study how to reform the medical tort process.
Following is a brief summary of the Obama healthcare plan, which has a projected price tag of just under $1 trillion over 10 years (as a point of comparison, the U.S. spends half this in a single year on military spending):
- Healthcare reform will provide more security and stability to Americans who currently have insurance, and it will provide coverage to those who don’t. It will slow the growth of healthcare costs.
- Americans who already have health insurance through their employers, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, will see their coverage improve. The plan will make it illegal to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurers will no longer be able to place a cap on the amount of coverage a patient receives. Additionally, insurance companies will be required to cover routine checkups and preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies.
- Coverage will be portable (if a person changes jobs or starts a small business) through the creation of an insurance exchange – a marketplace that will provide access to health insurance at competitive prices. The benefit to insurance companies is that the exchange lets them compete for millions of new customers.
- For Americans who currently lack health insurance, Obama proposed a public option where government-subsidies would be available to make premiums affordable. Individuals would be required to obtain coverage, and their employers would have to contribute. Most Senate Republicans and some Blue Dog Democrats oppose this proposal, while Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has said that the House’s version of the healthcare bill will include a public option.
Obama’s flexibility may not please the more liberal members of Congress, but reflects the political reality that exists on Capitol Hill.
Tags: Blue Dog Democrats, colonoscopy, Edward Kennedy, health insurance, healthcare bill, healthcare costs, healthcare expenses, healthcare reform, mammogram, Medicaid, medical, Medicare, Nancy Pelosi, patient, pilot program, President Barack Obama, President Theodore Roosevelt, public option, Republican, security, uninsurable
Posted in Healthcare | No Comments »
