Health Care For America Now

NEWS

Obama Weighs Paring Goals for Health Bill - New York Times

President Obama signaled on Wednesday that he might be willing to scale back his proposed health care overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, as the White House and Congressional Democrats grappled with a political landscape transformed by the Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race.

House Democrats reluctant to take up Senate health-care reform bill - Washington Post

Determined to enact a health-care reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled Wednesday to sell the Senate version of the legislation to reluctant Democrats, even as party moderates raised doubts about forging ahead without bipartisan support.

Conrad opens door to reconciliation for healthcare - The Hill

The Senate Budget Committee Chairman said Wednesday he’s willing to use special rules to force changes to the healthcare legislation through the Senate with a simple majority vote.

Brown's victory in Mass. senate race hardly a repudiation of health reform - Washington Post

While many are describing the election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat as a referendum on national health-care reform, the Republican candidate rode to victory on a message more nuanced than flat-out resistance to universal health coverage: Massachusetts residents, he said, already had insurance and should not have to pay for it elsewhere.

House Liberals To Pelosi: “We Cannot Support The Senate Bill. Period.” - Greg Sargent

In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told  Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.

In a certain sense, nothing really changed last night after the special election in Massachusetts.

The need for health care reform today is as great as it was yesterday. Thousands continue to go bankrupt due to medical costs. Insurance companies still deny care to their customers. People still die because they can't afford the care they need. Thousands of people lost their health care yesterday, and thousands more will lose it today. The fact that health care must be a human right in this country is no less true than it was yesterday.

And voters still want change as much today as they wanted yesterday. In 2008, America voted for change. We voted to stand up to Wall Street. We voted to clean up Washington. And we voted to guarantee everyone quality, affordable health care.

Last night, voters stood up and said loudly and clearly, "We still want the change we voted for in 2008. And politicians in Washington must deliver, or else."

Will those politicians in Washington hear that message? Or will they shrink from history and decide passing real, comprehensive health care reform is too risky?

The American public wants to finish health reform, and they want it finished right, by holding insurance companies accountable and making health care affordable for everyone.

As David Plouffe said this morning, "If you run away from [health care], you're still going to get attacked." He's right. Democrats have been handed a historic opportunity, and if the election last night makes one thing clear, it's that voters still want Democrats to deliver on that opportunity. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have both pledged to get health reform done. We've got to make sure they get it done right.

Congress needs to hear from you today with this message. They need to know it's not acceptable to scale down or not pass health care reform. They need to know you expect them to get it right.

If you've called Congress in the last few weeks, call again today.

If you've written a letter to Congress over the past few days, write again today.

However you communicate with your elected officials, communicate with them today and tell them to stand up for real principles, give the voters what they want, and finish health reform right.

NEWS

White House Warns Against Dropping Health Care As Party Grows Skittish - Huffington Post

Democratic officials were roiled by the news on Tuesday night that the supermajority they held in Congress, and the legislative possibilities that came with it, were lost with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat.

With 60th vote gone, a search for a new strategy - Boston Globe

Republican Scott Brown’s victory has deprived President Obama and his party of the crucial 60th Senate vote they were counting on to pass a sweeping overhaul of the US health care system in the coming weeks, sending Democratic leaders racing to devise an emergency alternative strategy and creating the very real possibility the effort could collapse.

Fallout: Dems rethinking health bill - Politico

Republican Scott Brown’s upset win in Massachusetts Tuesday threatened to derail any hopes of passing a health reform bill this year, as the White House and Democratic leaders faced growing resistance from rank-and-file members to pressing ahead with a bill following the Bay State backlash.

Business Is Booming For Big Drug Negotiators - NPR

If your health insurance covers prescriptions, you are probably a customer of a pharmacy benefit management company. These are third-party administrators for prescription drug programs, and they make up one of the few industries growing during this recession.

Coakley Pollster hits back - CNN

Martha Coakley's top pollster Celinda Lake has a warning for Democrats, insisting that tonight's loss is part of an anti-incumbent fever that threatens to take down Democrats across the nation.

Dean: 'Bush Would Have Had the Health Care Bill Done a Long Time Ago' - ABC

Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean told MSNBC on Tuesday that Republican Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the latest sign that Democrats in Washington need to toughen up.

Plouffe on Health Care: 'If You Run Away from It, You're Still Going to Get Attacked' - ABC

Speaking shortly before the results started to pour in from Massachusetts, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe urged congressional Democrats not to give up the fight for health-care reform.

Here's the bottom line: an enormous amount is at stake in Tuesday's election in Massachusetts to fill Senator Ted Kennedy's seat. So much is at stake that every Democrat — and every independent who wants fundamental change in Washington — has to vote, no matter how hard it is to get to the polls, no matter how inconvenient, no matter how disappointed you are with the pace of change in Washington.

Not only that. If you don't live in Massachusetts, get on the phone, call every friend you have in Massachusetts and tell them to stop what they're doing and go vote. Tell them that what they do will have a dramatic impact on you and your life no matter where you live in America — that if they care about you at all, they have to go vote to defeat Republican Scott Brown and elect Democrat Martha Coakley.

Just think how outrageous it would be if an election to replace the nation's most ardent champion of health care for all, stopped health care reform. That's exactly what Republican Scott Brown has said he will do — be the 41st vote to stop health insurance reform dead in its tracks.

Read more…

NEWS

Pelosi: We Will Have Health Care – One Way Or Another - ABC

ABC News' Jonathan Karl reports: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says Democrats will charge ahead with health care reform regardless of what happens in the Massachusetts Senate race.

Hoping It Won’t Be Needed, Democrats Ponder a Backup Plan on Health Care Bill - New York Times

With the Massachusetts special election for United States Senate increasingly unpredictable, Democrats in Washington are contemplating a fall-back plan to advance far-reaching health care legislation, even if a Republican victory on Tuesday deprives Senate Democrats of the crucial 60th vote they need to overcome filibusters.

Misleading claims about Safeway wellness incentives shape health-care bill - Washington Post

It's a seductively simple solution to rising health-care costs. Require workers to pay higher premiums if they flunk tests for measures such as weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. Then, bingo: You not only get a fitter workforce, you slash medical expenses.

The Price They Paid - Kaiser Health News

How a Virginia family got permission to get out-of-network treatment for one son's heart defect, and still ended up drowning in debt.

Three ways healthcare reform could pass even if Coakley loses - Christian Science Monitor

The Democrats will lose their filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the US Senate if Scott Brown defeats Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election Tuesday. There are at least three ways Democrats could still pass healthcare reform, but each would be problematic.

Confronting The Affordability Gap in Health Care Bills - NPR

As congressional Democrats work feverishly to bridge the gaps between the House and Senate health care overhaul bills, one issue is becoming a subject of considerable debate: affordability.

An agreement has been reached that would alter the excise tax in the Senate health care bill to exempt millions of middle class workers from a tax on their health care benefits. The deal would:

• Raise the threshold at which family plans are taxed from $23,000 to $24,000 per year in 2013. The threshold for individual plans would be $8,900.
• Exempt dental and vision costs from that calculation beginning in 2015 (which could raise the overall
  threshold as much as $2,000).
• Raise the threshold for higher cost plans in these categories: plans that have large numbers of women and/or older workers in them, plans that cover high-risk professions (affecting 9 million workers), and plans that cover retirees age 55 and up.

The $24,000 threshold will also move upwards if health care costs inflate more than expected in future years. In other words, people won't be penalized if insurance companies, doctors, and drug companies accelerate their rate increases.

There are also features of the deal that would ease the transition into this tax or otherwise allow workers to seek more beneficial arrangements that don't cut their benefits or raise their costs:

• States with high health care costs will see thresholds for their workers temporarily raised, affecting more than 38 million workers
• State and local employee benefit plans and union-negotiated plans would have five years to renegotiate their agreements before the tax is applied, a window that is typically given when federal laws affecting workers are enacted so that hard-won agreements will not have to be immediately renegotiated

And there's a final piece that will make the entire system stronger: Union-bargained plans have the option of purchasing their insurance on the newly-created health insurance Exchange in 2017. More people buying insurance in the Exchange means more leverage for people against the insurance companies. Allowing these large plans into the Exchange will help everyone who buys insurance in the Exchange to get lower prices and higher quality.

There is no doubt this new deal is a big improvement over the original Senate language. It keeps millions of middle class workers from having their benefits taxed, and it makes the Exchanges stronger.

Though the excise tax hasn't been completely abandoned, a step has been taken towards finishing reform right. And there are more things to fight for, like national exchanges, stronger insurance regulations, employer responsibility, and a public health insurance option. Congress and the President must listen and fix these issues so reform can work for everyone.

NEWS

Accord Reached on Insurance Tax for Costly Plans - New York Times

The White House, Congressional leaders and labor unions said Thursday that they had reached agreement on a proposal to tax high-cost health insurance policies, resolving one of the major differences between the House and the Senate over far-reaching health legislation.

Feds Vs. States: Who Should Run Proposed Health Insurance Marketplaces? - Kaiser Health News

The fight over whether states or the federal government will have more clout in a proposed health insurance marketplace is escalating – and the outcome has big implications for consumers.

Obama talks biotech treatment protections with Dems - Politico

President Barack Obama told House Democrats on Thursday that he wants to reduce the amount of time certain biotechnology treatments are protected under an agreement in both the House and Senate bills.

Now that the Chamber of Commerce has been exposed as nothing but a hack-for-hire for the insurance industry, it's worth looking at where exactly the insurance company/Chamber ads ran and how much media they bought to gauge the full breadth of duplicity and impact.

Here's how much the insurance industry, working through the Chamber, spent in their latest untruthful ad buy, which lasted from mid November to the present. The ads, not surprisingly, ran in nine states with Senators and House Representatives who have been on the fence about reform.

Arkansas: $1,076,405
Connecticut: $1,883,845
Indiana: $1,813,915
Louisiana: $1,953,065
Maine: $1,558,285
Nevada: $276,770
North Dakota: $538,995
Virginia: $1,342,545

Those are not small numbers. Take North Dakota as an example, where Senator Dorgan recently announced he would not seek re-election and Representative Pomeroy has been swinging between voting yes and no on health reform.

Some very rough calculations lead to the conclusion that the insurance companies bought enough air time so that every household with a television in North Dakota would have seen their ad 100 times over the course of their two month ad campaign. That works out to between one and two viewings every day. In a state like Louisiana, the numbers are higher, with viewers seeing these ads over 160 times, or almost three times a day.

The numbers in other states are similarly high. Here's the breakdown by state:

Arkansas: Average viewer saw ad 152 times - 2.5 times/day
Connecticut: Average viewer saw ad 71 times - 1.2 times/day
Indiana: Average viewer saw ad 101 times - 1.7 times/day
Louisiana: Average viewer saw ad 163 times - 2.7 times/day
Maine: Average viewer saw ad 107 times - 1.8 times/day
Nevada: Average viewer saw ad 13 times - 0.2 times/day
North Dakota: Average viewer saw ad 100 times - 1.6 times/day
Virginia: Average viewer saw ad 107 times - 1.8 times/day

Every day, voters were being bombarded with lies about health reform. These ads made preposterous claims like calling out "hidden taxes" in the health care bills where none exist. And they're ubiquitous on the television screens of voters in these states. And all along, these voters didn't know the insurance industry was behind these ads and was simply protecting its profits.

NEWS

After learning of campaign donations, Dems turn up heat on insurance companies - The Hill

Nineteen Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for the health insurance industry to lose its long-held anti-trust exemption after news surfaced that insurance companies have spent millions in a concealed effort to oppose healthcare reform.

Tax expansion could pay for healthcare overhaul - LA Times

White House and congressional Democratic leaders consider applying the Medicare payroll tax to investment income. The move could bolster Medicare and would affect mainly the wealthy.

Proposals Clash on States’ Role in Health Plans - New York Times

Should someone in Idaho or Nevada have significantly different health care coverage from someone in Massachusetts?

Democrats Make 'Signficant Progress' in Health Talks - Wall Street Journal

President Barack Obama and top congressional Democrats reported "significant progress" toward an agreement on a final health bill Wednesday after negotiations at the White House that stretched for more than eight hours.

Harry Reid: Lieberman 'Double-Crossed Me' On Health Care - Huffington Post

In an article set to appear in Sunday's New York Times magazine, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that Sen. Joe Lieberman blindsided him on health care reform.

Drugmakers Asked For $10 Billion More - CongressDaily

Congressional leaders are asking the pharmaceutical industry to cough up an additional $10 billion to help pay for the healthcare overhaul as they search for revenue to fund what will likely be a more expensive final bill than the …

This is a special alert about breaking news showing that health insurance companies secretly gave the Chamber of Commerce millions of dollars to run third-party attack ads at the same time they were telling Congress they continued to "strongly support reform." On the one hand, we're not surprised, but on the other hand, we're outraged by the lies and deception that have been documented.

The new story in the National Journal proves what I have been talking about, since I switched from being a spokesman for the health insurance industry to being a vocal critic of it. The industry is laundering millions of dollars through third parties to influence health care reform legislation and kill provisions that might hinder insurers' profits.

The revelations are so significant that Congress should launch an immediate investigation and hold public hearings before the House and Senate schedule final votes on health care reform. Please sign our petition demanding an investigation now.

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