All 13 Democrats are voting for the HELP Committee bill
Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in Congress Watch
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The HELP Committee has released their final version of a health care bill, including a public health insurance option and a provision for shared responsibility:
Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.
By contrast, an earlier, incomplete proposal carried a price tag of roughly $1 trillion and would have left millions uninsured, CBO analysts said in mid-June.
You got that cost number right - $611 billion. If you'll remember, the last version of the HELP bill - without a public option or shared responsibility - came in at $1 trillion. Clearly, these changes saved money. (And remember when John Boehner, Republican leader in the House, said the public option would cost over $1 trillion? He's dead wrong.)
On the conference call announcing the measure, Senators Dodd, Brown, and Whitehouse said that all 13 HELP Democrats would be voting for this bill. That's right, every single one.
Richard Kirsch, our national campaign director, had this to say:
The HELP Committee’s bill will give Americans all across this country what they want - a choice of a strong public health insurance option that will provide lower costs and keep the insurance companies honest. The public health insurance option included in the HELP bill will be available on day one, giving Americans a new alternative to the private insurance industry. It will also encourage the delivery of better health care at a lower cost. The public health insurance option, combined with other key sections of the HELP Committee legislation, makes this bill a good prescription for health care reform. More specifically, the bill invests enough resources to make good, affordable health care available to middle-class families and includes strict rules to stop insurance company abuses.
We urge the Senate Finance Committee and the full Senate to follow Senator Kennedy and his fellow Democrats’ lead in giving everyone a choice of keeping their current health insurance coverage or selecting a new public health insurance option. That public health insurance option would be a real alternative to the private insurance companies that have failed to make health care affordable while regularly delaying and denying needed care.
I concur. The HELP Committee is standing up today and doing the right thing for the American people, and indeed, doing something they deeply support. Finance should follow suit.
"The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee."
97%? Not good enough. Who will not have access. What is the 3% demographic? Women with reproductive health care needs? The unemployed? The already sick? Who decides who lives and dies? Sorry. Not happy. Have not had health care of any kind since 1986!
Live my life or walk a mile..etc. and then tell me this is a good thing.
$611 billion isn't the cost of the total plan.
See: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/07/02/here-we-go-again-how-to-read-those-help-numbers.aspx
$611 is the full cost of the HELP bill, but yes, the full package, once Finance adds in their part, will be higher.
Why am I not surprised? Just like the Insurance Companies and their proxies in Congress, are flailing around frantically so they raise enough dust to blind the American People.So is their mouth piece media. Saw the first issue of the Republic and realized it is part of the blinder's on "Oppose Obama No Matter What" even if it means to "Biz Lobbies First, Country Last". No wonder there is good bit of distortion. For starters 3% of 300 million people is 9 million, not 20 to 30 million. Just this indicates that their fuzzy math is just a ploy to distract from the real issue. As their Spiritual Leader Newt said, so what if there are 50-60M uninsured, don't we have 250M insured.
Obama, his administration, the DNC, and every news media other than Fox News has contradicted themselves, worked off a double standard, and been exposed as hypocrits so many times, nothing any of them say is worth dog spit. I wouldn't trust Obama, or anyone who support him, to mow my lawn. Liberals tactics are all out on the table now, and no clear-thinking, logically sound person with an ounce of common sense listens to any of the propoganda and rhetoric anymore. There is no debate now. We conservatives do not negotiate with terrorists. Liberals do, because they think like terrorists; it's like birds of a feather. You will find out soon that conservatives will fight for their liberty with all they have, even their life. Hopefully, it won't come down to that; but who knows?
NEXT WHAT WE NEED IS sixty votes in the senate and to heck with the GREEDED OLD REPULICANS. Help everyone in country in stad of the Insurance Companies Lobbist
People are going to need to understand exactly what's in that bill, how it will affect their own situation, and how much it will cost — both at the individual level, and for the country as a whole.
It's good news that the Democrats on that committee held together. To me, this is a test for the Democratic Party. They've been talking about universal health care since 1948. Now there is a Democratic president, and big majorities including a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate if the Democrats will stand up and keep their decades-old promise.
I'm far from the only one watching the Democratic Party very closely to see whether they screw it up one more time. Frankly, I will believe it when I see it, and not before.
Hello? Before HCAN praises the HELP Committee's "so called" public plan option, please take a close look!!! It is NOT a national public plan option as in the House tri-committee bill, but a state-based "community health insurance option" (Title XXXI, Subtitle A, Sec. 3106). It is not clear at all that a multitude of state-based public plan options will create competition and lower costs the way a single, reliable national plan would do. Please look more closely at the hopelessly flawed design of the HELP committee's weak "public plan" proposal. It is not going to do the job, and I am shocked that HCAN is embracing it.
Not true. It's called a community health insurance option to make folks feel better, but it is indeed national, available everywhere, and available on day one, as well as able to bargain for rates, our criteria for support. No question it could be stronger, as could anything, but it meets our principles and as such will bring about real change and real competition.
It's available on day one, but it's not available to everyone on day one.
Jason, how much power does this thing really give to the states? This is a concrete question for me since I will be losing my health care coverage next month and my life will concretely be affected by this legislation from its inception.
The situation: I live in Arizona. If somehow the crazy constitutional amendment ballot measure, introduced by our wingnut legislators, passes in November, could any state-based elements function in actual practice to shut me as an individual out of the public option under the HELP plan?
This is what I am talking about:
http://www.azhealthcarefreedomact.com/article/arizona-legislature-passes-important-bill-to-protect
Will I be one of the 3% not covered because I live in a state that the HELP bill empowers to deny me an option to opt into the public plan?
Could you help me understand this situation, please? The ballot initiative here will no doubt be heavily funded by insurance lobby and given how confusing initiatives usually are, it could pass.
It's hard to say at this stage of the game, but as I've read the bill, the states are the administrators, but they don't have a huge say in who's allowed to be in the system.
And that's a problem. As I recall, the House bill ramps up to everyone being able to buy into the public option in the fourth year, which is as much of a compromise as we should accept. The HELP bill works instead to keep people out, which undermines the competitive power of the public plan. Also, what if you're in the public plan and then get a job with benefits that aren't as good a deal but are considered affordable, do you have to take them? The public plan is supposed to be portable and encourage all plans to be portable - without that portability people lose security and insurance providers (public and private) lose the ability to plan long term and lower costs. This firewall is a big, bad (and economically dopey)deal.
It's not only affordable. Employers would have to offer a plan with a decent, standard level of benefits, or allow you into the exchange.
It is a embarrassment that the government would even offer something like this.
It is horrid. Read about the exchanges; how many people are allowed, the % of income that is acceptable.
I hate these people.
The relationship between the Gateways and the public health insurance option in the HELP bill is unclear to me. The HELP bill seems to give states 4 years to establish a Gateway, after which the Federal government will do so if the state has not. The public health insurance option seems to be provided by the Gateways. This implies that the public health insurance option may not be available in some states for 4 years or more. Is that right? If so, how is it true to say, "the public health insurance option included in the HELP bill will be available on day one, giving Americans a new alternative to the private insurance industry?"
I think the four years is to give time to set up this new, huge piece of infrastructure. Maybe a tad long, but certainly a couple years lead time isn't unreasonable.
When we say available on day one, we mean within the limits of startup time, and we mean guaranteed to exist, not available based on conditions (like the trigger, where you'd only get a public option if the insurance industry failed even more in a given market).
This is a mockery, if the states wont do it for 4 years, Feds will step in. What is all this pandering to the Insurance Companies and their promoters in Congress; like Bachus,Conrad & co. In rather than reducing on DAy One ,the rapacious premiums locked in today by the Insurance oligarchy the Bill gives them an additional 4 years of Govt sanctioned looting power. Won't hundred of thousands die due to inadequate or no Insurance. Smacks of an improved version of the Conrad PPO's the biggest blatant canard.
Certainly does not sound like the strong Medicare like option, for which I have been signing your petitions.
Hardly a revolution!
I hope I am going wrong some place. Hcan say you what?
Agreed, this is pretty weak. Essentially it is the fatally flawed Massachusetts plan writ large.
Um, how so? Isn't the whole problem with the Massachusetts plan that it doesn't have a public option, while this one does?
I think the problem is the strength of the public option. If it isn't allowed to compete on a level playing field - and it seems that the HELP bill does not all that - then it's going to be a lot of money wasted and a big opportunity missed. The compromise is the House bill, beyond that, we're in trouble.
While I wouldn't disagree that the House version is stronger, how does the HELP version not compete on a level playing field?
It doesn't allow for anyone who wants to to buy into the public plan.
"anyone" should be "everyone"
In a NY Times article, “Talking Business; Resolving to Reimagine Healthcare Costs” (November 18, 2006), Theodore R. Marmor, a professor at Yale School of Management said “The linkage of employment and health care benefits are a product of another age, when American business was utterly dominant, when it didn't have to worry about global competition, and when unions made up a much larger portion of the work force.”
- A single-payer system would relieve a great deal of burden on American businesses, especially small businesses. How will a public option achieve comparable relief?
The answer from HELP is "It won't." It's not even close to a public option, mostly those without coverage now can enroll, that's not public!
It keeps the fragmented and bloated mess we have.
I can't afford to pay 12.5% of my income for coverage. i won't qualify for a subsidy. I did the math. I don't have thousands sitting around.
Get real. Support SINGLE PAYER.
What happens with the other 3%? That's still unacceptable. Why not universal coverage?
Also, it is not clear what is being covered, whether there is a deductible, and how much it would cost an individual or family. What happens to Medicare and medicaid with this plan? I have heard talk about cutting "end of life" services. Does that mean hospice care will be cut or eliminated?
Sorry, I cannot join the parade. There are plans out there that spell out all these issues and that would cost a lot less and that cover everything, including dental and eye care and even long term care and at a very reasonable price for businesses and individuals. Why are they not being considered?
Regarding the 3%, I would imagine the CBO would never score anything at 100%, no matter what it was. They're a statistical-based organization, nothing is ever 100% with them.
As for what it costs, that question is more directed at the affordability provisions in the exchange. So far, we're talking about giving people subsidies up to 400% of the poverty level, which does make health care affordable.
Please check out this analysis of proposed health care reform now in Congress. It is from Physicians for a National Health Program blog. (I found it posted on Open Left blog.) Is there still time to be COURAGEOUS and backtrack to Single Payer? Or, will Democrats fail to take advantage of this historical opportunity for progressive change? If HR 3200 passes, or the HELP Committee's plan, health care reform will fail. It will be the fault of the Democrats and Pres. Obama.
http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/07/20/bait-and-switch-how-the-%E2%80%9Cpublic-option%E2%80%9D-was-sold/
I haver heard over and over that about 85% of Americans are happy with their current healthcare plan, so why not just offer this plan to the uninsured? About 50 million people (counting unregistered foreigners), do not have insurance, and only insuring those without insurance–the President has said many times he wants EVERYONE to be insured–would cost about $30B, which is better than $600B. That way, at least the plan would have two or three years to work out the kinks before going national. I am very worried about this national debt, and concerned about spending money we do not have on something that won't truly be needed for 5-6 or so more years.