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On That House Health-Care Bill.
It's been a busy day on the Hill, with the House of Representatives releasing its combined health-care reform bill with an emotional press conference led by Rep. John Dingell (above), the longest-serving member of the House whose efforts on reform -- including his yearly introduction of a Medicare-for-All bill -- were lauded by President Obama during his speech on the subject before Congress.
House Democrats also released this brochure [PDF] in an attempt to make the issues understandable to most Americans. It includes some fun new language -- the public option is now "the Consumer's Choice" -- and tries to communicate simply what's going to happen if the bill becomes law. Think it will convince your grandmother and your uncle?
The best news, though, is that the bill seems to come in at cost, in large part due to the presence of the public option, and cuts the deficit by some $30 billion over 10 years. That's not a bad start. Now we just have floor votes, and a conference committee, and then more floor votes, and, well, you get the idea -- get ready in particular for fights over the excise tax. But health-care reform has never come this far before.
-- Tim Fernholz
COMMENTS (6)
Yes, the fact that the bill is cheap far outweighs the fact that it doesn't actually do anything.
$5000 fines if you use rescission? When Rescission can save a company $15k+ and with massive 'fraud' loopholes? It's beyond a joke to pretend that will be effective, it's an insulting lie. Good luck with ending "pre-existing condition" discrimination with the same pathetically small fines.
IF it costs more to treat a patient than to pay the fine, the fine won't work. This is why we told you that this system was too corrupt for regulation alone to work, because we knew whatever regulations were drawn up would be this kind of a joke.
Healthcare never got this far before because all of those other times, it would have actually been healthcare and not a health insurance industry baillout.
Posted by: soullite | October 29, 2009 10:07 PM
Yes, did you guys read that in one of those 1999 pages, a little line says that by 2014, the insurance companies are going to be eliminated! Marxism is passe and it sucks, can Pelosi get that!
Posted by: Amazing | October 29, 2009 11:32 PM
Yes, it's better than the senate bill (not hard), yes it's "farther" than we've come before. Yes, it also keeps the underlying system in place, so that healthcare and insurance corporations can continue to loot the public and establish prices at the level they choose. I'll be glad to see a few more people get access to care, but it won't be "affordable" in the sense that most of us understand the term. This is more about delivering something -- anything -- that can be called healthcare reform. It's not about actually reforming the system. The president doesn't seem to be interested in that.
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Posted by: Nike Air Max | November 2, 2009 1:05 PM
I'll be glad to see a few more people get access to care, but it won't be "affordable" in the sense that most of us understand the term. This is more about delivering something -- anything -- that can be called healthcare reform.
Posted by: embroidery machine | November 18, 2009 9:53 PM
The rejection of the public option by the Senate is very sad. There is a very large demographic of people that are being overlooked right now, and a public option would benefit them.
Eva Mor author of (Making the Golden Years Golden) responded beautifully to a key part of the problem:
“The administration of the existing health delivery system is bloated with waste and unnecessary cost. If information was shared by all providers of health services and all insurers by using computerized systems to store all medical records, it would cut costs and reduce errors that would save and improve lives.” http://www.ourblook.com/component/option,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,8/view,category/#catid107
To regulate costs in the medical industry and update the existing Information and communication technologies would certainly cut a large portion of spending, which has featured as primary complaint in this debate all along.
I hope that when the two bills come together to be voted on the public option may make its way back into the bill.
Posted by: Maguire | December 20, 2009 1:15 PM