Reid's Bill Is Ready And Goes To The CBO Today. What About Our Costs?
Unfortunately, there's still one big elephant in the reform room: There are no restrictions on increases based on age. Unless something changes drastically in the final version of the bill (and if you don't call your congress critter, it definitely won't), this is a giant shell game in which health insurers will get their profits from one new underwriting emphasis rather than another.
WASHINGTON -- Top Senate Democrats are close to finalizing their health bill and could unveil a measure as soon as early this week that would include stiffer penalties on employers who fail to provide health coverage.
Senate leaders plan to submit the bill to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate as soon as Monday, and make the legislation public as soon as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
Details of the legislation could change, but its broad outlines are becoming clear. Employers with more than 50 workers wouldn't be required to provide health insurance, but they would face fines of up to $750 per employee if even part of their work force received a government subsidy to buy health insurance, this person said. A bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee had a lower fine of up to $400 per employee.
The bill to be brought to the Senate floor would create a new public health-insurance plan, but would give states the choice of opting out of participating in it, a proposal that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada backed last week.
The bill is expected to expand health coverage to tens of millions of Americans by giving low- and middle-income Americans subsidies to offset the cost of insurance, and expanding the Medicaid federal-state insurance program to cover a broader swath of the poor. Most people would be required to buy insurance or pay a fine, though exceptions would be made for those deemed unable to afford it.
Also expected are new rules on insurers to prevent them from denying coverage to people with pre-existing health conditions and from dropping customers' insurance once they become ill.
The PR nightmare if health insurance providers try to push costs onto us.
Let them try, it will surely be the end of them.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
And it won't.
The health insurance industry is ready for us. They already are hefting huge increases onto small-business group insurance policies, and onto Medicare supplement policies.
Boss man's Blue Cross just arrived, and it's up 25%.
0498 or 1.877.264.4226...The Congressional ponzi scheme written by the HC lobbyists are a nightmare of gouging to the public...Half the time the congress person does not read or understand more than 20% of the bill they are supporting.. Yes, they can not drop you for a pre-existing condition but how much will it cost you..Need caps for sure!
Call them..loudly and often!
is toast.
They already do that :(
The bill is one half of the solution. We also need to remove the anti-trust exemption. Then we can really begin kicking some bootie. I will shed no tears when the last of the "insurance" companies goes away. I wouldn't mind a government run plan for liability insurance.
I'm 17 years younger than my husband, and about to embark on my first year as a Medicare-supplement insurance beneficiary; my premiums are only a bit over half what his are, and except for Alzheimers, he's been healthy as a horse. But his Medicare-supplement insurance company is still dinging him for his age, 82, @ $340/month (we have a problem with poor choices/poor service in a high-retiree somewhat rural county). I'm going to see if I can change his program to the one I just signed up for.
if we do nothing? ask a republican and/or a libertarian that......and get that perplexed # look in their eyes......... but but but but the "free market" will figure it out......it's perfect.
with a libertarian or republican.
At some point people who follow a political and social ideology which has been proven to be so wrong and to impact so negatively the rest of us... in such a repeated fashion through history... at some point these people need to be told to shut the f*ck up already.
The free market has already figured it out. Healthy people go without insurance, and the companies cannot subsidize their payouts on claims without premiums from the healthy.
That's why health insurance companies will pay lip service to complaints, but want compulsory coverage with fines for the uninsured.
Car accidents--especially from organized or individual collision for profit-- go up with compulsory auto insurance, but the company has more good drivers who pay premiums to keep from losing their licenses and jobs.
If we are to be compelled to use our tiny wages to subsidize big rich tyrannical companies, make sure that we get our money's worth with as little tyranny as possible. The libertarians also counsel self-defense against the use of force by governments and individuals.
the more complicated the bill, the more inefficient and unhealthy it will be.
This is totally bizarre compared to any other developed country's system.
Single Payer is lost and so is reform.
To say that this:
"Most people would be required to buy insurance or pay a fine"
Is a serious problem. That would be what the republicans were talking about when they said this wasn't actually an option. This can't be allowed to pass. Especially not in conjunction with the one obvious loophole (increases based on age) that has already been discovered.
That is NOT acceptable.
Without cost controls any sort of "can't deny coverage rule" will be meaningless. Insurance companies will just raise cost on certain people till they can't afford coverge. The public options is looking more and more like a faluire.
Sorry Obama the idea that you will get a 2nd chance is just plain silly don't get it right and we vote you out.
This seems like a huge disaster in the works, not just a simple failure. The combination of being forced to buy insurance AND for the price of that insurance to be jacked sky high will be intolerable for people. Something like that can crash our economy at best and lead to civil discord at worst.
This will validate the Republican party at least as far as their health care debate goes. If this passes the question should be whether WE will have a second chance and recover.
brand new bottle.
Well we give them the election
That keeps filling our heads full of lies
Can we trust in new directions
When their promises are in disquise
Well someday the truth will catch up
I just hope it don't catch us all by surprise
There's no reason why, if we can get everyone in the country to take a holiday day off, we can't get everyone to call their insurance company and opt out.
When they lose all their customers, they'll come to the bargaining table, begging for a real bill to be passed.
Simple, cost-effective, and it would save all 45,000 people that ARE going to die this year because congress wouldn't get off their lazy, corrupt asses and do the right thing.
Thanks for nothing, Harry Reid.
I'm not getting excited , face it , we know nothing for sure right now , they are not done yet and there is a real battle going on behind the scenes , can only let em know what you think , write , make phone calls and wait and see what we get .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
The public option with state opt-out may have an inadvertent positive effect. The reason: the states most likely to opt out are red states, which have the worst health indices and also the highest percentage of people without health insurance. Examples: Louisiana – rank on the 2008 “America’s Health Rankings” – 50; health index = -15.2; percent without health insurance = 20.2%. Other states in the bottom tier: MS, SC, TN, TX, FL, OK, AR, NV, GA, and AL.
That will have two effects. The first is that the risk experience for the public plan will likely be better than expected since the least healthy people will be prevented from joining by their politicians. That will help keep prices for the public option down.
The second effect is that people in those states will eventually see what they are not getting and they will know why. That may inspire them to give the heave-ho to some of the most conservative incumbents.
Unfortunately, thousands of people in those states will die in the meantime. Most of those people will probably be poor and have little education. Ironically, a good number of them will probably be teabagger-types.
Many more will have been duped by the insurance industry into opposing the public option – and they will never realize what’s been done to them for the sake of corporate profits.
Many people in those states will die from lack of health insurance if nothing is done. If those states opt out maybe some of the ignorant will actually see what is happening. Maybe they will move to states where health care is available, further accentuating the difference.
Sixty Minutes' expose of Medicare fraud, night before last, demonstrates exactly why the red states will not opt out. Fraud is a billion-dollar business, and our crooked politicians want in on it.
Watched that one with the boss, who was howling mad--but not at Bush or Clinton, who let the fraud rings run amok. No, he blamed the fraud on Obama, whose admin is prosecuting it, and said of Eric Holder that he'd "like to tear his nose off". Abusers always scapegoat.
Eliminate private insurance and its 30% profit and overhead and there will be 30% more to spend on real health care.
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and there will be $120 billion more annually to spend on health care.
Reduce the
defenseoffense budget 20% and there will be $130 billion more to spend on health care.End corporate welfare in the form of subsidies to agribusiness and other sectors and there will be at least $100 billion more to spend on health care.
End the bailouts of Wall Street and the financial sector and there will be a trillion more to spend on health care.
If premiums go up on older folks, how about lowering the age for Medicare eligibility? Take it down to 50 or 55 and watch the public option premiums go even lower as the demographic skews younger. It might even improve the numbers for Medicare if you have slightly younger, slightly healthier people in that pool.
Howard Dean and a few others have recommended doing this before 2010 anyway to show some of the benefits before the election. It could be a way to counter the age provisions if they stay in whatever bill comes out of joint committee.
I wonder how this bill will affect my SC Medicare rates. I think that health care should largely be the responsibility of the employer, but I understand the opposition as well.
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