Democrats in House present $894 Billion health package

[bychance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/he.../30health.html



The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, introduced the House health care bill at a rally on Thursday on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Thursday unveiled an $894 billion package to remake the health care system, and celebrated by holding an outdoor rally at the Capitol where they asserted that tens of millions of Americans would soon gain affordable insurance.



The 1,990-page measure, which was months in the making, would broadly expand Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor, by offering subsidies to moderate-income Americans to buy insurance either from private carriers or a new government-run plan.



“It is with great pride and with great humility that we come before you to follow in the footsteps of those who gave our country Social Security and then Medicare — and now universal, quality, affordable health care for all Americans,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a crowd of several hundred people.
The 83-year-old dean of the House, Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, stole the show with a combative speech in which he assailed insurance companies and Republicans, who have been warning that the legislation would slash Medicare.


By expanding coverage and reining in health costs, Mr. Dingell said, the bill would meet “the greatest humanitarian need this country confronts, and the greatest economic problem.”


“The only citizens who will have to worry about their participation in Medicare being cut are the insurance companies,” Mr. Dingell said.



Members of the House Democratic leadership team estimated that the bill, which they said could reach the floor next week, would provide coverage to 35 million or 36 million people, and cut more than $150 billion over 10 years from payments to private Medicare Advantage plans.



Democrats solicited testimonials from five people who said they would benefit from the bill. They included a 70-year-old New Hampshire woman who said she would get cheaper prescription drugs; a small business owner from Chicago; a 33-year-old woman who said she had been denied insurance because of infertility; and a 27-year-old law student with an autoimmune disorder.


House Democrats said the provisions of their bill expanding coverage would cost $894 billion over 10 years, meeting President Obama’s goal of holding the cost under $900 billion.


Democrats lowered the cost of their bill, in part, by splitting off provisions to increase Medicare payments to doctors. Those provisions, which would cost more than $200 billion over 10 years, were put into a separate bill, also introduced on Thursday.


Republicans said the mammoth bill would saddle the government with new financial obligations that would prove unsustainable. With Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund projected to run out of money in eight years, they said, the government cannot afford the commitments it has.


The House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, denounced the bill as “costly and unsustainable.”



“Instead of listening to the American people,” Mr. Boehner said, “Democrats hid behind closed doors and came back with a bill designed to appease the liberal special interests.”


Under the bill, the government would sell health insurance, in competition with private insurers. Ms. Pelosi said the competition would hold down premiums, but Republicans said the public plan could eventually drive private insurers from the market.


The measure includes a new provision that would require the secretary of health and human services to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries, a proposal that is anathema to pharmaceutical companies.
It would require most Americans to obtain insurance and would require employers to provide health benefits to workers or pay a penalty. Small businesses would be exempt from the employer mandate if they had payroll less than $500,000 a year, double the threshold in the Democrats’ original bill, introduced in July.


In the House bill, as in the Senate version, insurers would have to accept all applicants, could not deny coverage because of a person’s pre-existing conditions and could not charge higher premiums because a person was sick. Under a new provision of the House bill, children could stay on their parents’ insurance through the age of 26. A bill approved by the Senate health committee offers a similar guarantee for children through age 25.
The major House and Senate bills would establish insurance exchanges, or markets, where individuals, families and small businesses could shop for insurance complying with new federal standards. The exchanges would have to be in operation by 2013.


President Obama welcomed the House bill as “a historic step forward” and said it met two of his criteria. “It is fully paid for and will reduce the deficit in the long term,” he said.


But Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the No. 3 Republican in the House, said the Democrats’ bill “looks like another freight train of big government with more taxes, more mandates and more spending.” That, he said, is “not what the American people want.”


Republicans noted that the new House bill had 1,990 pages, nearly twice as many as the earlier version.


The new bill, like an earlier version, retains a surtax on high-income people, but increases the thresholds. The tax would hit married couples with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million a year and individuals over $500,000 — just three-tenths of a percent of all households, Democrats said. The original thresholds were $280,000 for individuals and $350,000 for couples.


Ms. Pelosi described the new proposal as a “millionaires’ tax.”
The government insurance plan would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, as private insurers do. Payments would not be based on Medicare rates, as Ms. Pelosi had wanted. Democrats from rural areas balked at the use of Medicare rates, saying they were so low that hospitals could not survive on them.


Scores of lobbyists were “cordially invited” to attend the rally in e-mail messages sent Wednesday by Ms. Pelosi.



On Monday, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, that he too had decided to include a government plan, with negotiated rates, in the bill he intends to take to the Senate floor for weeks of debate.
For now, House Democrats do not have firm commitments from enough lawmakers to guarantee passage of their bill. But their aggressive schedule suggests they are confident they can round up the votes they need. Speaker Pelosi evidently fell well short of the votes needed for the “robust” public option.


A whip count, prepared Tuesday, shows that 47 House Democrats opposed that approach while 8 more were “leaning no.” That suggests that Ms. Pelosi had lined up, at most, 201 votes of the 218 she would probably need.

[Grimmlok]

Members of the House Democratic leadership team estimated that the bill, which they said could reach the floor next week, would provide coverage to 35 million or 36 million people

fail.

how about EVERYBODY.

How the fuck does this help people when insurance premiums are being jacked into the stratosphere making it unaffordable?

Useless retards.

[Penny Lane]

Dear god, that's a big number.

[kingcap72]

Republicans said the mammoth bill would saddle the government with new financial obligations that would prove unsustainable.

I love how Republicans are so concerned about fiscal responsibility now. And they act as if the current form of healthcare is actually sustainable, despite the fact that it keeps driving people into bankruptcy.

“Instead of listening to the American people,” Mr. Boehner said, “Democrats hid behind closed doors and came back with a bill designed to appease the liberal special interests.”

I guess Mr. Spray Tan forgot that the majority of the American people want healthcare reform, but the GOP is just concerned with appeasing the far-right wing base.

And since liberals want a single-payer system, how is this non-single-payer bill appeasing them?

[visitor42]

Originally Posted by Grimmlok

fail.

how about EVERYBODY.

How the fuck does this help people when insurance premiums are being jacked into the stratosphere making it unaffordable?

Useless retards.

It helps people with low to moderate incomes. It's not perfect, but it's far far better than the current system. It's better than any plan that has gotten this far in a generation and a half.

[Grimmlok]

yeah, and does nothing for the middle class people whose premiums are jumping up astronomically while coverage is reduced drastically. These people won't be able to afford said insurance by the time this thing kicks in in 2013!

so it's a patchwork quilt of stupidity, really.

Goddamn i'm glad i live in Canada.

[travelbug]

yeah, and does nothing for the middle class people whose premiums are jumping up astronomically while coverage is reduced drastically. These people won't be able to afford said insurance by the time this thing kicks in in 2013!

I'm part of that group, and ITA. And, if this type of healthcare reform gets passed, I'm afraid that insurance companies will increase premiums astronomically as a punitive measure.

[Grimmlok]

They've already started! some people have theirs going up by 30%!

[Mivvi21]

^^Yep. My mom is one of them. Her co-pays are doubling as if they weren't expensive enough already. It's ridiculous.

[travelbug]

We haven't found out yet what our rates for 2010 will be. We should be getting the enrollment package any day now. I am dreading it...

[AliceInWonderland]

^ i DONT see your old name in your signature

[Grimmlok]

• It will not put any meaningful pressure on private insurance companies to moderate their premiums.
• It will not have the market power to pay lower fees to doctors and hospitals than private insurance and will thus not be less expensive than private insurance.
• It will not even be available to most Americans.
• Since it will be unable to effectively compete with private insurance, it will end up with few, if any customers.


Read more at: Miles Mogulescu: The Public Option in Congress is Now a Sham. Who Cares if Lieberman Kills It?

[travelbug]

Originally Posted by AliceInWonderland

^ i DONT see your old name in your signature

Sorry...my man started reading my posts so I had to change it STAT! The damage is already done, though...sigh.

[CornFlakegrl]

This plan sucks because this whole idea does not address the root issues.

Health Insurance premiums go up in large part because HEALTH CARE COSTS A FUCKIN' FORTUNE.

With Uncle Sam now saying that everyone must be covered and no pre-existing (which I agree with) the costs will rise even more.

The only mitigating factor is requiring insurance. But that won't help enough.

My friend is undergoing chemo and got billed 75 thousand (yes, thousand!) dollars for ONE DAY of treatment. WTF?!?! BTW, her insurance paid it.

Note this plan admits that the feds cannot negotiate lower fees for hospitals / providers. So..... taxpayer money will be used to continue to pay outrageous amounts of money for healthcare. We're doing nothing but subsidizing an out of control healthcare system.

I'd rather we used the taxpayer money to open government run healthcare centers. Centers that treat you regardless of insurance with top notch care mandated by law. At least then the money is going to treat sick people and costs can be controlled.

[cupcake]

Originally Posted by Mivvi21

^^Yep. My mom is one of them. Her co-pays are doubling as if they weren't expensive enough already. It's ridiculous.

YEP!!! Watch the small businesses drop their employee heathcare