Health Insurance Reform Priorities
posted by: Marc Seltzer 42 days ago
Have your say.
The passage of five health care legislative proposals out of committee and into the hands of the Congressional leadership is a big step forward.
Now, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and a hand picked team (Sens. Baucus, Snowe, and Dodd) will assemble a Senate bill that can skirt a potential filibuster and obtain a majority vote on the Senate floor.
Speaker Pelosi and her team in the House must also craft a single bill from three House proposals. The strategy there will be to create not just a bill that will win approval on the House floor, but that will stand the chance of being incorporated into a single piece of comprehensive legislation when merged with the Senate bill.
The American public has so far been sending mixed signals about their reform goals. They appear to want reform, but they don’t trust the reformers. They want to help insure more Americans and lower the deficit, but they don't like the provisions designed to do so.
The process of making health care affordable for more Americans and at the same time, less costly to the U.S. government, involves competing, sometimes contradictory, goals.
The following primary elements in the current reform proposals are significant agents of change. However, there are still questions of what must be compromised in order to achieve final legislation.
How would you prioritize the list (1-13) below? Please list at least five of the following goals in your order of importance, with “1” being the most important.
If you seek to comment further, please do so, but start your comment with a list of your goals in order of importance (use "short titles"). If you oppose reform it will be difficult to register that using the list, but, for simplicity's sake, this an affirmative priority list.
1. “Providing public subsidies” so that uninsured Americans are able to obtain insurance.
2. “Lowering public spending program costs” to reduce the deficits and debt.
3. Requiring the purchase of insurance by all Americans so that those who can afford to pay, healthy or not, contribute to the insurance system (“individual mandate”).
4. “Introducing a public insurance entity” to the system
5. “Introducing a non-profit” insurance entity to the system
6. “Providing small businesses with tax credits” to underwrite employee health insurance
7. “Stopping insurance companies from considering pre-existing illnesses” (portability) in denying coverage or setting rates.
8. “Protecting existing health insurance" plans from changes in rates or coverage.
9. Requiring that businesses purchase employee insurance or pay a fee (“business mandate”).
10. “Tax on high income” individuals to finance health care reforms.
11. “Tax on upper portion of health insurance” plans to cut costs and finance reforms
12. "Cuts and/or cost savings in Medicare" and existing programs to lower public spending.
13. "Cuts and/or cost savings in Medicare" to subsidize insurance for uninsured Americans.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 21, 2009: A letter to President Obama from leading economists specify four priorities for fiscally responsible health care reform. Reprinted in the New York Times.
Senate votes 60 to 39 to begin debate on health care legislation. C-Span coverage of Sen. Blanche Lincoln D-AR speech on the floor of the Senate is worth watching. She was among the hold-outs, but speaks passionately for reform.
Follow my writing on Twitter.
Read more: reid, insurance, health policy, health care reform, health insurance reform
comments
Read an interesting report this morning, evidently 9 months into this administration no head of Medicare or Medicaid has been appointed. This administration has more "czars" like the Special Master of Compensation, Kenneth Feinberg, than any previous administration but important positions like those that require Senate confirmation, ie., Medicare, have not been appointed and sent to congress for confirmation. Could it be that the new administration made a savvy move, because by avoiding confirmation hearings they have avoided public conversations on the Senate floor about the financial solvency of Medicare. Instead, they push for a massive health bill that will not pass the Senate.
The administration has taken the position, pushed by the very partisan Rahm Emmanuel, that they do not need any Republican support. A bulldozer approach turns out to be the wrong one. With Senators like Specter and Lieberman needed to block filibusters, the administration should have used carrots instead of sticks.
For those of you that want this bill to pass, your anger should be at those who mismanaged the huge majority in both houses of congress. For those, like me, that think health care reform should be limited to eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions, repealing anti-trust exemptions, and ending discrimination by health insurance companies, without a gov't or single payer plan, the administration's apparent incompetence is a surprising, but welcome, development.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Maybe, if the insurance industry was bank-rolling me, I wouldn't worry about health care either, but, unlike those in Congress(who recieve ins. bribes, errr payments, err contributions), I need to be concerned about growing old and not having the health coverage I need. WE, as a country, need to stop trying to be the big time leaders, best of everything, whatever it is we tell ourselves we are, and learn from the very well delivered systems in other countries, who are among the 36, who lead us in better health care for all it's citizens. Remember the insurance indutry has been promising higher than expected rates- what do you think they're telling us?? Only the very rich will be allowed to live, they don't need anyone else, they can import them from some other country and tell them for a few generations that they are privileged to live here, it worked for over 200 years this time around. You don't really think our forefathers made this country for the poor do you???? And yes, I had some Mayflower ancestors, so don't get too out-of-sorts!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Bingo, Judith, in re: anecdotal "evidence." When will the brain-dead right-wing learn to separate fact from opinion?
Micheal S,
While Canada is by no means the best healthcare system in the world, they're better than us, based on key factual indicators:
Cost as a percent of GDP: CN=9.8% ; US=15.4%
Cost per capita: CN=$2,535 ; US=$4,631
Life expectancy: CN=81.23 ; US=78.11
Infant mortality (per 1000 births): CN=5.04 ; US=6.26
They are superior in every key indicator, and they're not even that great compared to the UK, France, Netherland, etc.
-cindy
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Michael, one more comment. I seem to have missed this one:
"Yet when all is said and done do I want health care from a money making organization that will go out of business if it fails or would I rather have a government run health care system that will fail all Americans and offer no help to the 45 million not covered today?"
If you have not noticed, we just spent billions upon billions of dollars bailing out "money making organization that will go out of business if they fail." What is your point?
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Michael S.,
"Frankly, you may be so blinded by you[r] politics that the 'facts' presented will have no impact on you or your ilk!"
The problem is you aren't presenting any facts, just lots of anecdotes.
Since you seem to like anecdotes, here are two from my own experience:
In the hospital where I work, in the busy winter months the hospital gets so full that doctors have to get on the phone, calling around to all the hospitals in the area to see if they can find beds for all the patients. In the meantime, patients stay in the emergency room or out in the hallways until empty beds can be found, sometimes for many hours.
Also, I recently needed to be admitted urgently and was told by my doctor that he had filled out paperwork for me to be direct-admitted and to go to a nearby hospital for a direct admission. The correct paperwork was filled out and I had the "good" insurance. Yet, when I got to the hospital, I was told that for a direct admission I needed to go through the emergency room and that I would then be admitted after that, and that the average wait time was 16 or 17 hours. This was in the good old U of A, NOT Canada!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
And Michael S - you're darn right:
"This is not about you or me - this is about our children and their children and what health care will be like with a government health care system."
Let me tell you what health care will be like in the future WITHOUT a PUBLIC OPTION, which by the way, is NOT GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE!
The top 10% of the people of this country will be able to get whatever they want while the other 90%, including you, me, your children, my children and our grandchildren will be left to die like the undeserving rats that they deem us to be, because we CAN'T AFFORD IT.
The best predictor of future behavior is PAST BEHAVIOR. Look back buddy - look back to before Medicare, and BE AFRAID!
Then please stop talking crap and instead of wasting our time on here arguing AGAINST a public option, argue constructively FOR WHATEVER YOU THINK IS BETTER!
I have yet to see you offer ANY alternatives whatsoever!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Oh no - Michael S is back again - with EXACTLY the same argument that everyone has already debunked.
Michael - don't you have anything better to do than spread rumors?
You think there are no hospitals and emergency rooms in the USA that TURN PEOPLE AWAY because they're JUST TOO BUSY?
That send people ELSEWHERE because they don't have the right equipment or resources?
Get REAL already!
I REPEAT - we don't give a damn if we have to wait in line. We don't give a damn if we have to come back tomorrow.
What we DO give a damn about is that we are GUARANTEED that we CAN get health care and don't have to go bankrupt in the process.
Perhaps you should ask your Canadian friends how many of them have ever had to LOSE EVERYTHING and go BANKRUPT because of HEALTH CARE COSTS?
Geez - you just can;t get through to some peopel!
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Michael,
Where you went to school? You didn't say. LOL
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
P.H. I did say - I guess you didn't read my previously posted comment. Frankly, you may be so blinded by you politics that the facts presented will have no impact on you or your ilk!
Anyway, please read on if you dare:
To those not aware of the truth of government health care - please read the following:
"The head of trauma care at Vancouver's largest hospital announces that they turn away more cases than any other center in North America. He's quoted as saying this would be unheard of in the United States.
New Brunswick announces that they will send cancer patients south to the United States for radiation therapy. New Brunswick, a small maritime province, is the seventh to publicly announce its plans to send patients south. In the best health care system in the world, the vast majority of provinces now rely on American health care to provide radiation therapy. Provinces do this because the clinically recommended waiting time for treatment is often badly exceeded. Ordinarily, oncologists suggest that there should be a two-week gap between the initial consult by the family doctor and the referral to the oncologist, and then two weeks more from the oncologist to the commencement of radiation therapy. In most Canadian provinces, we exceed that by one to two months, sometimes three."
These are facts and when viewed in light of our government's failures - the impending bankruptcy of Medicare, Medicaid, US Post Office, etc... Where is the logic to think that a gover
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Michael,
guess you'd rather not say.
Empirical! You have not provided one bit of empirical data. LOL
We need universal health care and a new model, the insurance model only benefits the insurance companies and big pharma. Extending medicare to all would be a good start to overhauling our health care system. If you agree contact your senators and reps about the following amendments.
The Weiner amendment--Medicare for all.
The Kucinich amendment which allows states to more easily implement single payer plans is already within the bill and must be retained.
Sen Sanders is sponsoring a Medicare for
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Facebook account:
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
1280507