Their blog provides serious responses by the public, and this one
drew many such, mostly negative. I've added only two of the first
four. Check it out below, maybe go to the site for the full discussion.
And consider getting their daily digest. Today's had a varied dozen
of single-paragraph, well-written descriptions of topics of interest.
Anyway, this one's a doozy.
Ed
http://www.truthout.org/1228096
We Won Round One on Health Care
by: Scott Galindez
t r u t h o u t : 28 December 2009
There are widespread opinions out there on the Senate version of health care
reform. I understand people's frustration with how "Traitor Joe" Lieberman
and "Ben Arnold" Nelson held the Senate bill hostage. A robust public option
would have been a great start to the real reforms needed to fix our broken
health care system. Traitor Joe and Ben Arnold succeeded; there will not be
a robust public option.
Many progressive groups have not given up on getting a public option this
time around. Putting energy into pressuring Congress to come out of
conference with the public option restored is a waste of valuable resources.
One group goes as far as calling for the Democrats to call Lieberman's bluff
and force him to filibuster the old-fashioned way by holding the floor for
days. The problem with that is the need for 60 votes in the Senate has not
gone away with the Christmas Eve passage of the Senate bill.
When the House and the Senate complete their next task and merge the two
bills, the final version will go back to the Senate and the House for a
final vote. While it is true that there can be no amendments and the final
bill is not subject to debate, it is subject to one more cloture motion in
the Senate. If the Senate doesn't reach 60 votes on that motion, they can't
vote on final passage.
With the need for 60 votes in the Senate, the reality is the final bill
coming out of conference will look a lot like the bill that passed the
Senate. If the House version of the public option comes out of conference, I
believe Traitor Joe and his 40 GOP Republican colleagues would kill the
bill.
I know many groups are telling people that after conference there is only a
need for 51 votes. They are wrong; I thought the same thing in August only
to have many Congressional sources tell me I was wrong. Over the last few
days, I confirmed the continued need for 60 votes with Senator Reid's office
as well as Senators Levin and Feingold.
Many are saying it's better to just let the bill die and start over. I
disagree, and here is why.
Access to the Same Options as Members of Congress
Does everyone remember cheering when many Democratic Party candidates for
president called for allowing the American people to buy into the same
insurance plans as members of Congress? Bill Bradley was the first; I seem
to remember Howard Dean, John Edwards and John Kerry proposing the same
thing. I know that it was in most of President Obama's stump speeches last
year. It's in the Senate bill - well, not exactly.
Remember the confusion when most were reporting the public option was dead
and Harry Reid unsuccessfully tried to deny that, saying there was still a
public option in the bill? He wasn't referring to the Medicare expansion; he
was referring to the compromise on the public option. It wouldn't be a total
public option; private insurers, at least one of which would be a nonprofit,
would offer national plans that would be administered by the same government
agency that administers the federal employee health plan. That is what
members of Congress have, so it is what President Obama and many past
Democratic Party candidates campaigned on for the last decade.
It is not as good as the public option in the House bill, but it is better
than what we have today.
Needed Reforms
a.. It will be illegal to deny people based on pre-existing conditions;
that, in itself, is a major reform.
b.. There will a cap on out-of-pocket expenses.
c.. Small businesses will be able to buy from a national exchange, giving
them increased buying power.
d.. A new benefit will allow workers to buy into a plan that will provide
them a cash benefit if they become disabled and need in-home care.
e.. Access to Medicaid will be increased to people making 130 percent to
150 percent of the poverty level; the percentage will be worked out in
conference.
f.. There will be limits on insurance company profits, requiring that 85
percent of revenues be spent on delivering health care.
g.. If insurance companies exceed those limits and more than 15 percent go
to advertising, profit etc., they would have to pay rebates to those they
insure.
h.. The Senate bill requires all insurers to fully cover federally
recommended preventive health services, such as immunizations, colonoscopies
and HIV testing.
i.. Insurers would not be allowed to rescind a policy for someone who gets
sick.
j.. State and federal regulators would be required to review rate
increases and determine if they are justified.
Let's face it, if this bill was the first offer and we were not teased by
the "robust public option," we would all be ecstatic.
Reform Doesn't End With the President's Signature
FDR has a legacy as a great reformer, but let's not forget that Social
Security was weakened to get it through Congress, and then reformed over the
years to make it a better program. Advocates for universal health care need
to continue to fight until every American has full health care coverage.
There are short-term fights that can be waged right away: How about
eliminating the three-year exemption on pre-existing conditions? Let's make
it an election-year issue to make the law outlawing denial of coverage based
on pre-existing conditions go into effect immediately instead of in 2014.
Expanding access to Medicare to younger Americans would be a powerful
election-year tool; let's make Republicans come out on the record against
that without the ability to hide behind other parts of a larger bill.
I understand everyone's frustration, but let's get strategic and accept this
as a first-round win, and continue to fight until the American people get
what we deserve: universal health care delivering as good an outcome at as
good a cost as other industrialized countries. Until someone proves me
wrong, I believe that means single payer.
Comments
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One of many Responses:
Mon, 12/28/2009 - 21:05 - John Watson (not verified)
It's as if this writer hasn't seen or thought about the bill. I could go
down the whole list, but just a few of the big things: 1. Pre-existing
conditions. There are annual caps on coverage, which means that anyone with
a serious illness that takes intensive care ( often, a pre-existing
condition expressing itself: cancer, heart etc.) will end up paying most of
the bills, which means that, as now, people will be going bankrupt due to
medical problems. 2. Premiums will be skyrocketing within a few years -
there are no restrictions! And no way to enforce the 80% (not 85%, as far as
I know) portion outside of 'profits'; compsnies that I've worked for make
sure that very little is called a 'profit', to save money on taxes. it's
easy for accountants and lawyers to skate by such a publicity stunt anyway.
3. 'Exchanges' are a codeword for keping the current system. Gee, you get to
choose between the current set of companies in an oligopolic market. Good
luck finding affordable premiums. 4. "State and federal regulators would be
required to review rate increases and determine if they are justified." What
can they do at that point, and why would 'regulators' ever cross the
insurance industry anyway? Various states have tried something with the same
wording, to no effect. Expanding Medicaid is good, I agree, but most of the
other good changes listed will simply be used as an excuse to raise rates.
Justifiably so, if you consider that the goal of insurance companies is
profits (real ones) and the changes will be expensive to them. And the
'incremental' argument is dead now; the bill freezes in insurance-dominated
health care - there's nothing to build on (as there would be by changing age
limits on Medicare), and no one will be raising this subject again after the
'great victory', especially the fundamental issues. Single Payer is dead for
at least 20 years, whereas if no bill had passed fundamental policies could
have been challenged again in the nearer future.
These are good points, but I
Mon, 12/28/2009 - 21:58 - BillyDoc (not verified)
These are good points, but I strongly disagree with the conclusion.
Experience has shown that this "baby step" bill will be thrown up in all our
faces as "the job is already done" exactly to prevent further improvements.
Also, the main culprits in our current health care extortion racket . . .
which costs twice as much as the health care systems of civilized countries,
with what are generally the worst or nearly the worst outcomes of any
industrial country . . . will still be with us and will still be conniving
to circumvent any legislation that dares to interfere with their profits.
And the loopholes to do this are no-doubt already in place. On the other
hand, if this bill goes into the trash heap there will be real pressure to
do the job right from the public, and it will be very hard for our
coin-operated congressmen to hide the fact that they have betrayed us all
for money. There is nothing quite like being surrounded by an angry mob of
"villagers with pitchforks" to focus the thought processes on whether or not
further betrayal is a good idea or not. That's what it will take, I fear, so
scuttle this bill and bring it on.
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