rssA White House Back-Up Plan on Health Reform?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 2:51 pm
- 4 Comments
So reports Roll Call, which cites several anonymous sources claiming that the Obama administration is drafting an alternative to the congressional bills in the event those proposals die an early death. Those sources, Roll Call reports, say the effort “includes significant detail and possibly even some legislative language that could ensure the bill is ready to go the moment it is needed.”
“They are getting ready for a backup,” said one veteran observer of health care debates who was knowledgeable about the effort. “It will be parachuted in if necessary.”
They might not need it. Despite sweeping Republican opposition to the Democrats’ plans, the Senate Finance Committee is carving through the hundreds of amendments to its proposal this month, with hopes that the bill will reach the Senate floor next week. With the arrival of Sen. Paul Kirk Jr. (D-Mass.), the Democrats now have a 60 members in the upper chamber. And without a public plan, the Finance proposal just might attract all of them.
4 Comments
Pingback posted September 30, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
[...] Mike Lillis at Washington Independent: They might not need it. Despite sweeping Republican opposition to the Democrats’ plans, the Senate Finance Committee is carving through the hundreds of amendments to its proposal this month, with hopes that the bill will reach the Senate floor next week. With the arrival of Sen. Paul Kirk Jr. (D-Mass.), the Democrats now have a 60 members in the upper chamber. And without a public plan, the Finance proposal just might attract all of them. [...]
Comment posted September 30, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
What's the point in having a bill without a public plan? Sure, you might make denying based on pre-existing conditions illegal, but what's to stop insurers from charging those customers three, four, five times the cost for that insurance? So government will have to provide subsidies for those people to pay for these ballooned costs, and I can't figure out how the government will afford to do this without raising taxes; taxes that go straight to the insurance companies purses!
Obama has only promised that he would limit out-of-pocket expenses for services, but says nothing about limiting the premiums. Insurance companies may not be able to pass the costs of your operation directly to you at the time, so instead they will raise your premiums to a ridiculous rate afterward to make up for those costs. And again, if you can't afford it, the government will subsidize it, which brings me back to the point I made earlier. Or else they'll raise the premiums on the rest of us, thereby bypassing the taxes and taking the money directly out of our pockets.
So how will cost-containment be achieved without a public plan? What we will have is government subsidizing the private insurers by raising all our taxes, and/or the continuation of ballooning premiums for the rest of us, and without a public plan to compete with the insurers, there is nothing to force them to keep their costs down.
Comment posted September 30, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
What's the point in having a bill without a public plan?
This and <ahref=”http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2010&cid=N00004643&type=I&mem=”>this.
Pingback posted October 2, 2009 @ 8:53 am
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