Health Insurance Reform

Senior's Matter – Vancouver by Stan Webb

The President points to outrageous premium hikes from health insurance companies, especially those already making massive profits, as further proof of the need for reform. Looking ahead to the coming bipartisan meeting on reform, the President urges members of Congress to come to the table in good faith to address the issue.

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Obama Health Care Plan Targets Insurers, Lacks Public Option ~ from Care2.com

posted by: Ann Pietrangelo

“President Obama released his proposed health care reform proposal on Monday, despite Republican demands to scrap the whole thing and start over with Thursday’s “bi-partisan” health care reform summit.

The White House frames its plan as an opening bid for the summit and sticks fairly closely to the Senate bill, but eliminating the sweetheart deals with individual states and easing the tax burden on high-end (cadillac) health plans.

Key provisions include:

• Providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today, helping over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.

• Setting up a new competitive health insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have.

• Bringing greater accountability to health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.

• Ending discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.

• Reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years – and about $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.

• Eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid.

• Closing the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.

• The threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans will be raised from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and will start in 2018 for all such plans.

• Improving insurance protections for consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to review and rein in unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.

There is nothing particularly surprising here. Certainly, targeting insurers with a Health Insurance Rate Authority is warranted, given the recent uproar over a 39 percent rate increase - (Care2 editorial comment on individual plans in California and some other states.

Absent from the President’s proposal was the public option that he has supported in the past, while the individual mandate remains. He has challenged Republicans to bring their own ideas to the table for Thursday’s “bi-partisan” summit.

As for this “bi-partisan” summit, I’ll believe it when I see it. Every conciliatory measure taken in an effort to win Republican support has been met with failure, from single-payer to public option to reining in insurers. Within minutes of the White House plan being posted online, the familiar battle cry of “massive government takeover” began. It’s all too predictable.

The summit may well prove to be just another round of partisan showmanship in a winner-take-all bout. Then again, there’s always reconciliation - (Care2 editorial comment).

The sad truth is that whatever health care reform might come to pass in the near future will fall woefully short. We will still have Americans going bankrupt or dying for lack of access to health care, and we will be forced to fight this fight all over again. Unless, of course, Washington can break the gridlock and put the country ahead of politics.

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February 22, 2010 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - “The White House unveiled President Barack Obama's plan to overhaul the health insurance system on Monday that it said would provide coverage for 31 million uninsured Americans and set up federal monitoring of private insurers' rate increases. You can read the President’s 11-page proposal in its entirety at: The Whitehouse Blog – “Putting Americans In Control of Their Health Care” ... [http://www.whitehouse.gov/health-care-meeting/proposal

The plan would cost $950 billion, but would also cut costs enough that it would not only be paid for, but would reduce the budget deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years and $1 trillion over the second decade, White House officials told reporters in a conference call.

They stopped short of saying the White House would support pushing the plan through the Senate without Republicans if the Republicans to try to prevent it from coming to a vote.

But Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said the plan was designed to survive any such procedural moves. "The president wants and believes that ... people deserve an up-or-down vote on health reform and this package is designed to provide the flexibility to achieve that if the Republican Party decides to filibuster," he said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Beech)”

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VP Biden Sets the Record Straight on Medicare

September 23, 2009 | 5:04

Travel with the Vice President as he reminds seniors that those who have always defended Medicare would never do anything to jeopardize the plan or those who rely on it. September 23, 2009 (public domain) [http://www.whitehouse.gov/video/VP-Biden-Sets-the-Record-Straight-on-Medicare]

Backlinks: The Whitehouse Blog [http://www.whitehouse.gov/]; Care2.com [http://www.care2.com/]; MS Maze [http://www.msmaze.com/].

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