House Health Care Reform Bill Released
A few reviews of the House health care reform bill.
Today, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a comprehensive reform bill that would guarantee coverage for 96 percent of the U.S. public.
Among other things, the bill, H.R. 3962, includes a public option, expands Medicaid coverage to families who earn up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, provides help for middle-class families to get coverage and sets tough new rules for insurers, making sure that no one can be denied care or be rejected from coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It’s fairly funded through a combination of employer responsibility, cost savings and a surtax on the extremely wealthy—and does not get its funding from taxes on middle-class workers’ benefits. All that, and it will reduce the deficit in the long term.
Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now:
This bill makes health care more affordable to people, it regulates insurance company bad practices, it is fairly financed and asks employers to pitch in their fair share, and it gives us the choice of a public health insurance option to keep insurance companies honest.
There will be a lot more to say on this bill in the coming hours and days as it is passed through the House of Representatives, but the historical significance of today shouldn’t be understated.
One big thing the bill does that will help a lot of people out is it not only bans denials based on pre-existing conditions, but it also bans premium increases. This was a major concern of mine, because simply mandating that insurance companies cover everyone doesn’t really help that much, if they just jack the rates up on the people with pre-existing conditions. The elimination on caps will also help people with catastrophic illnesses.
What makes reading this summary of the bill really exciting is that not only did the House make sure to get the minimum basic decency standards covered, but they threw in a bunch of goodies on top of the necessities:
# Guarantees that every child in America will have health care coverage that includes dental, hearing and vision benefits.
# Provides better preventive and wellness care. Every health care plan offered through the exchange and by employers after a grace period will cover preventive care at no cost to the patient.
# Increases the health care workforce to ensure that more doctors and nurses are available to provide quality care as more Americans get coverage.
If you think about it, moves like eliminating the co-pay on preventive care will save a lot of money over the long run, because it will encourage people to get that preventive care.
Mcjoan at Daily Kos, following a conference call with Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
Stressing that this bill is the “manifestation of rejecting business as usual,” the theme on which Barack Obama ran and won, Pelosi hit particularly strong on the fact that the House bill is stronger than the Senate bill in a number of ways, but particularly in rejecting the PhRMA deal–which she stressed the House was not a part of–struck between the White House, Senate and PhRMA. Answering a question from Ryan Grim, Pelosi stressed that the provisions included in this bill will recoup $120-130 billion to help bring costs down.
An addition key difference between the House and Senate bills she focused on is the “pay for” strategy. While the White House “clearly prefers” the Senate’s excise tax on high-value insurance plans, Pelosi stressed that “99.7 percent of the American people will be excluded” from the tax increases, which will raise over $400 billion, and “while it’s a few people, it’s a lot of money.”
These two issues–the additional money wrung out of PhRMA and the excise tax–are likely to be key flash points when the bill goes to conference. A third, employers mandates, wasn’t discussed in this call, but will be another point of contention in conference. The Senate bill (as far as we know, since they haven’t released details of which provisions of which bill–HELP v. SFC are going to be used) does not include the employer mandate, the House does.
Tags: health care reform
I called Congressmen Lathem from Iowa to ask him to suport HR3962 and was told he was in session and was going to vote against the bill. I politely replied that I was sorry to hear that because I wanted that bill to pass and then I mentioned that I guess that is why I didn’t vote for him before and probably would not in the future because he doesn’t suport the lower and middle class workers of America who really need his help and suport on issues like health care and then I hung up.
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