The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged heatlh care reform

Thirty Senate Dems Urge Public Option

By | 10.08.09 | 4:23 pm

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

More…

CBO Says Finance Health Reform Bill Will Save $81 Billion Over a Decade

By | 10.07.09 | 4:42 pm

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 More…

Baucus: CBO Score to Come Wednesday

By | 10.06.09 | 3:12 pm

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. More…

Governors Still Resisting Dems’ Medicaid Expansion Proposal

By | 10.05.09 | 2:27 pm

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 More…

Finance Dems Block GOP Effort to Kill Medicaid Expansion (Again)

By | 10.01.09 | 8:42 am

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 More…

A White House Back-Up Plan on Health Reform?

By | 09.30.09 | 2:51 pm

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 More…

Big Pharma Showers Home-State Senators With Campaign Cash

By | 09.25.09 | 9:56 am

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 More…

Health Care Reform Hits Bump, Not Derailed

By | 07.21.09 | 1:43 pm

When Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers last week that the Democrats’ health reform plans wouldn’t control long-term costs, the reverberations were as immediate as they were inevitable.

Republicans blasted the majority’s health strategy as a failed approach that More…