heatlh care reform

Thirty Senate Democrats today urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to include a public insurance option in the bill the Democrats bring to the chamber floor, perhaps as early as next week.
We have spent the better part of this year fighting for health reform that would provide insurance access and continuity to every American [...]

The Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill will save the federal government $81 billion over the next 10 years, according to the much-anticipated Congressional Budget Office estimate released this afternoon. CBO found that subsidizing the coverage expansion will cost $518 billion** over a decade, partly offset by taxing high-cost insurance plans ($201 billion), trimming Medicare [...]

Via Roll Call, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said today that he expects the Congressional Budget Office to be done scoring his health reform proposal Wednesday. Baucus has promised panel members that they won’t vote on the measure until after the CBO has estimated its cost.
Baucus did not, however, indicate how long he’d [...]

One of the central elements of the Democrats’ plans to cover the tens of millions of uninsured Americans is a sweeping expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal partnership to cover the lowest-income folks. But the success of that strategy is in doubt for a couple of reasons.
First, Medicaid pays providers at such low rates (roughly 72 [...]

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee have come up with all sorts of approaches designed to kill the Democrats’ plans to expand Medicaid to cover most everyone living beneath 133 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $29,000 for a family of four.
The latest attempt came late Wednesday from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who pushed [...]

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 [...]

It came as little surprise when Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) yesterday moved  to kill efforts to lower seniors’ drug costs by squeezing Big Pharma. After all, Baucus earlier in the year had agreed to a controversial deal with the drug lobby, under which the drug companies vowed to support health reform legislation [...]

Observers skeptical of recent health care coverage that makes Obama’s goal seem out of reach.