Senate Health Care Roadmap: Hurry Up and Wait
EmailABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Senate health debate roadmap: weeks of waiting, amendments and debate. When last we saw senators in session Nov. 21 they voted on party lines to begin debate of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health reform bill. Now the waiting begins. Senators may have agreed to have the debate; but the parameters of the debate have not been set. The leaders have to agree on which amendments to consider when. The first two amendments were formally introduced Monday afternoon, but when votes will occur remains unclear. For Republicans – Medicare — an amendment to be introduced late Monday afternoon by Sen. John McCain, R.-Ariz., that would strip the nearly half trillionin future cuts to Medicare spending that Democrats hope will pay for a good chunk of the reform effort. Stripping the Medicare cost savings (cuts) would essentially kill the bill and send it back to committee. For Democrats – Mammograms — Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, introduced an amendment that would set a base line of preventive services that insurance companies would have to offer to women. Included in this, and playing off the controversial breast cancer guidelines released earlier this month – annual mammograms. It’s unclear right now exactly how much this amendment would add to the cost of the bill. “For many insurance companies, simply being a woman is a pre-existing condition,” said Mikulski. Cost and coverage continue to be major issues. CBO released a report today on how they feel the Democrats' plan would affect premiums. People on the individual market, those most likely to have no insurance or be under-insured, would see a 10 to 13 percent rise in their insurance premiums. Republicans have seized on this number as evidence that the Democrats' bill fails. But Democrats counter that the bill is creating a new base line for insurance – people who didn’t have it before will now have it and, almost more importantly, they say, people who think they have insurance now, would ultimately have meaningful insurance. People on the individual market receiving federal subsidies (everyone between Medicaid eligibility and $88,000 in income for a family of four) under Reid’s bill would see a 56 percent or more reduction in their premium costs. People who receive their insurance from an employer – most Americans not on Social Security – would see a negligible change or even a slight drop in premiums, according to CBO. None of the amendments introduced on the floor address the real differences Democrats have on issues such as how to find 60 votes for the public option and how strict to make the ban on coverage of abortion for people receiving federal subsidies to buy insurance. The Senate’s consideration of health reform is expected to take at least three weeks. The quickest end date would be around December 18th. But that is an audacious time line. Consider this: Dec. 18th is also when a temporary measure to fund the government runs out. Congress has approved final legislation for five of the 11 normal appropriations bills so far. The remaining will either have to wrapped into another temporary bill – the third since the fiscal year began – or wrapped into an omnibus spending bill for the next year. Senators will also have to vote to raise the federal government’s power to exceed $12 trillion in debt. Republicans are set to showcase debt and government spending – on the stimulus passed early in 2009 and the Wall Street bailout engineered in 2008 as they continue framing themselves as the party of fiscal restraint. Also factor in the surge in Afghanistan. The effect that an internecine struggle between Democrats in Congress and the White House over the infusion of combat troops could have the effect of diverting attention away from health reform. Taking time out of the health reform debate to write government checks is likely to push a health reform vote in the Senate closer to or even after Christmas. And that would not include meetings with House members to create a final conference report that would need votes in both houses.
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I will not sign a health care bill,that raises the deficit one dime.Is this another lie from the Commander-N-chief?
Posted by: lightningF | November 30, 2009, 4:19 pm 4:19 pm
Just as in strict “gun control” which most civilised/industrial countries have, the United States in universal healthcare Lags behind all other industrial counties. We in the U.S. do not take care of the health and welfare of our citizens. I wonder why!
Posted by: Angellight | November 30, 2009, 4:24 pm 4:24 pm
Congress can’t agree on anything…..including what to discuss.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | November 30, 2009, 4:42 pm 4:42 pm
lightningF…..tell me what the Commander in Chief has lied about? Have you been listening or have FauxNews and Wilson beeen listening for you? The Healthcare bill will be paid, in part with cuts of the “wasteful spending in medicare, that the Healthcare Industry is bilking Americans taxpayers for right now. Like the Un-Paid for ADVANTAGE PROGRAM, SIGNED BY BUSH AND NEVER PAID FOR. Ask my 84 year old father in law in Florida how many “TEST” he takes for that is NOT related to his Illness. He even knows it’s a SHAM!!!! So your personal attacks has NOTHING to do with policy. And by the way, John McCain knows this is in part of how Healthcare REform will be paid for…..that’s WHY he’s blocking it. He nor you have gotten over the election….but let me help you. HE LOST!!!
Posted by: sara | November 30, 2009, 5:25 pm 5:25 pm
Will the Democrat Health Care Reform make health care worse? Answer: Yes. As soon as the people hear about the CBO’s report that shows the bill will increase their insurance premiums they will start bringing out the pitch forks. According to the CBO Individual insurance premiums would increase by an average of 10 percent or more, About half of those enrollees would receive government subsidies that would reduce their costs well below the premiums that would be charged for such policies under current law,” the report says. Those enrollees that get subsidized insurance premiums would either effect a tax hike to taxpayers of all stripes or the subsidies would just be added to the annual deficits. The subsidies are unsustainable and just hide a major budget gimmick in the Senate Bill.
Here are some questions that need to be answered about the Democrats’ Health Care Reform Bill.
* When health insurance premiums continue increasing isn’t time to kill the Bill?
* When taxes are raised by hundreds of billions of dollar isn’t it time to kill the bill?
*When the deficit will increase by half a trillion dollars (That’s what will happen when you add in the doctor fix of $210,000,000,000 and you don’t cut Medicare by $470,000,000,000n and you don’t get the 200 billion dollar in taxes from taxing the “Cadillac” plans according to the CBO.) isn’t it time to kill the bill?
* When many costs are shifted from the federal government onto states in the form of an underfunded mandate for Medicaid expansion isn’t it time to kill the bill?
If this pile of crap is what the Democrats thinks is worth working weekends over so it can be rammed through Congress before Christmas they must all have a screw loose or have a deep seated hatred of America as this bill will: Destroy Medicare, Raise taxes, Raise premiums, Raise the deficit and Destroy the best health care system in the world.
Posted by: Nancy | November 30, 2009, 5:27 pm 5:27 pm
On both sides of the aisle, the U.S. Senate is an embarassing collection of self-important, disengaged, elderly men and women lacking in political courage, common sense, and any kind of serious work ethic.
Posted by: B. Bear | November 30, 2009, 5:55 pm 5:55 pm
What happens in 5 years when those subsidies are stripped or reduced because there is no money available for them? What are the people who have to buy insurance going to do then? And what will the increase in people covered by Medicaid do to state budgets? The Obama administration is all about the middle class alright…they want to destroy it. Obama wants to make the USA just like overseas where you have the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” with no middle class. Think about it. A kid graduates from college today with on average $50,000 of debt. The job market isn’t paying much and will pay even less after this health care bill is passed. To buy a house your looking at $300k and try that when interest rates are double digits in a few years. Bye-bye middle class.
Posted by: MiddleClassAmerican | November 30, 2009, 6:11 pm 6:11 pm
WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND TELL THEM THAT FOR CHANGE WE CAN REALLY BELIVE IN TO SUPPORT PROPOSED SENATE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT COE09E33. You can Google COE09E33 to read the simple TWO page bill which is written in simple to understand plain English.
Posted by: Sandcrab1612 | November 30, 2009, 6:50 pm 6:50 pm
Of course health insurance rates are going up 10 to 13 per cent this year. Health insurance companies need to pay off a lot of expenses.
About two weeks ago Goldman-Sachs released a report on the impact of health care reform. According to this report, if the proposed health care reform contains no public options, stock earnings for private health insurance would grow 5% a year from 2010 to 2019. If health insurance companies kill health care reform, the stock earnings would grow 10% a year and by 2019, the value of stock in health insurance companies would rise 59%.( SOURCE: The Progress Report, November 13 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Colrey, Benjamin Armruster, pat Garafolo Zaid Jilani.)
So first of all health insurance companies need to pay attractive dividends to their investors. They also have to pay their CEO’s 8 digit salaries. They must pay for a whole army of lobbyists who descend upon Washington like locusts from a Biblical plague. They must pay for all those commercials you see on TV. They have to pay off the organizers of the Tea-Baggers. And them must make generous campaign contributions.
For example, if you check on to Center for Responsive Politics, Senator Mitch McConnell gets $ 2 million in political campaign contributions from the health sector.He gets $ 1 million from lobbyists. His top political donor is Kindred Health Care. Among the other top 20 campaign donors are Humana Inc, Blue Cross, and GalaxoSmithKline.
Orrin Hatch gets $ 977,000 from health care sector. His top industrial donor are pharmaceuticals and health products. Other top industrial donors include hospitals, nursing homes, and health insurance companies. Of top 20 individual political donors, Blue Cross takes 2nd place. Amgen, Eli Lilly Kindred Health Care are also among the top 20.
John McCain gets generous campaign contributions from Goldman-Sachs, which issued the report I cited earlier.
This is only the beginning. Every senator who obstructs health care reform is getting bribery money from health insurance companies and Big Phrama, whether they are Republicans or Blue Dog Democrats. The current health care overhaul has created a truly BUY-Partisan opposition.
And you will foot the bill. This is the big reason European countries can provide health care for all their citizens for a lower price than the US, which has the most expensive health care system in the world. A public option would let people opt out of this racket of corruption and bribery. It would ensure that health care dollars actually provide health care rather than political campaign contributions.
If the public understood this, they would support the public option. And why isn’t this information included in our public debate?
Posted by: William Joseph Miller | November 30, 2009, 7:16 pm 7:16 pm
Yesterday, the church I attend observed AIDS Sunday. The service revolved around John 9:1-7.
That chapter describes Jesus’ healing the blind man at Siloam. Jesus’ disciples asked Jesus if the man became blind because of his own sins or the sins of his parents. Jesus refuted this belief. Then, he spat in some clay, spread it over the blind man’s eyes, and told him to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. The blind man followed Jesus’ instructions, and was cured.
I can’t help thinking about John 9:1-7 whenever I hear about the so-called health care debate. Jesus healed the blind man without asking about pre-existing conditions and without asking about the blind man’s HMO. But beyond that miracle, I must ask the question -
Who was blind in this story? The man whom Jesus cured? Or the community in which the man lived, including the religious authorities, who permitted a cherry-picked verse of scripture blind them to the common humanity they shared with the man they branded and ostracized as unclean?
Except for Obama, I have heard little discussion about the need to health care reform. The media in particular gives a lot of press time to the Tea-Baggers, but almost never shows the plight of the 50 million people in this country without health care. As a result of this blindness, 44,000 thousands Americans die each year because of inadequate medical care. (Source: a recent study by the Harvard University Medical School.)
Babies fare very badly in our for-profit health care system. According to the 2009 CIA World Factbook, our infant mortality rate is twice as high as the infant mortality rates of Sweden or France, and nearly 3 times higher than the infant mortality rate of Singapore. Washington DC has the highest infant mortality rate in the country, according to Statesmaster.com; the infant mortality in DC is 3 times higher than the infant mortality for Sweden or France, and nearly 5 times higher than the infant mortality rate of Singapore. As lobbyists are bribing Senators with campaign contributions, a few blocks away, babies are dying. Why am I the only person in the country who notices this.
Like the religious authorities in Jesus’ time, who blamed the blind man for his affliction, we blame the uninsured. We claim they are too lazy to work, or we blame them for not earning enough money to buy health insurance. We blame them for being too fat, or for having a pre-existing condition like acne or asthma. We blame them for having inadequate insurance, or for getting dropped from their insurance provider because they come down with an expensive illness, like breast cancer. Like the religious authorities, we are allowing our fear, greed, ignorance, and bigotry blind us to the human needs of our neighbors
What makes me even angrier is the blindness of the so-called religious authorities, which matches the religious leaders whom Jesus violently denounced. Yes, they will mobilize to keep gays from getting married, or for preventing a 14 year old who has been brutally raped by her stepfather from terminating the resulting pregnancy. But they show absolutely no interest in a health care overhaul that will save thousands of babies lives and will prevent thousands of desperate women from resorting to abortions because they cannot pay medical bills.
When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we claim to be “one nation under God”, yet our for profit health care system rations health care according to a person’s ability to pay. This is a obscene violation of the most fundamental precept of the Gospel.
Jesus said “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do also unto me.” Our blind, callous disregard for the uninsured is a jihad against Christ.
Posted by: William Joseph Miller | November 30, 2009, 7:19 pm 7:19 pm
William Joseph Miller, Jesus did not use force to impose his teachings on his flock. Jesus fought the power of an autocratic centralized government that used force to steal the hard earned wealth of the people so they could use it to feather their own nests and than hand out what little was left over to an enslaved populace. Obama does not stand for what is best for the people, Obama stand for what ever is best for big government, big unions and big corporations. If you don’t believe me just look at who funded his campaign including SEIU, GE, Soros and Goldman Sachs none of whom have anything to do with Jesus.
Posted by: Terry | November 30, 2009, 7:34 pm 7:34 pm
The core of the problem with health care insurance is COST. From what I’ve read, this bill does little to address that basic issue. Which leads me to believe this is a bill the insurance industry, pharma, and lawyers had a lot to do with what it contains (and what it doesn’t). It’s probably more a bill of goods being sold as the real deal to the American people.
Posted by: LongT | November 30, 2009, 7:54 pm 7:54 pm
Deep into the 2,074-page bill, on page 2,020, is “SEC. 9009,” the “Imposition of Annual Fee on Medical Device Manufacturers and Importers.” It orders that “Each covered entity engaged in the business of manufacturing or importing medical devices shall pay to the Treasury Secretary not later than the annual payment date of each calendar year beginning after 2009 a fee in an amount determined under subsection (b).” The amount of tax would be based on “gross receipts from medical device sales.” Treasury bureaucrats would have the formidable power of “identification of medical devices” and the new tax would be retroactive, applying to “any medical device sales after December 31, 2008.” Bruce Bartlett, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury under former President George H.W. Bush, has called a VAT perhaps “the least bad way of financing needed tax reforms and the massive growth of federal health care spending that neither the George W. Bush White House nor Congress shows any interest in restraining.” But in pushing for his tax reform program in 1985, President Ronald Reagan warned that “a value-added tax actually gives a government a chance to blindfold the people and grow in stature and size.” For President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, a VAT may be just the blindfold needed for the Europeanization of the U.S. economy – massive government, high unemployment and a lower quality of life: a very new lifestyle for Americans. This whole Bill is all about an autocratic centralized government that using force to steal the hard earned wealth of the people so they could use it to feather their own nests and than hand out what little was left over to an enslaved populace. Get ready to stand in line waiting for that procedure or treatment you need to save your life while the elites in DC get to keep their Cadillac plans that we all have to work our A## off to pay for.
Posted by: Jerry | November 30, 2009, 8:58 pm 8:58 pm
The health care reform Bill the Democrats are proposing will not save lives, it will cost lives. 1), Medicare is being cut by 500 billion and when the Democrats say that amount of cuts won’t drastically reduce health care for the elderly they are lying. 2), the Health Preventative Task force is given great power in the bill to decide who get what treatments if any based on “cost effectiveness” This is the same Task Force that decided that mammograms for women under 50 were not to be provided. 3), the government is full of waste fraud and corruption so most of the money will not end up being used to take care of patients, the bulk of the money will be used to line the pockets of big government bureaucrats, big unions and big corporations. 4), every government program is operating in the red including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, the post office, Amtrack, so when the money runs out (and the middle class can no longer slave away working to pay for all of these unsustainable government run programs), guess what the government will do to solve the problem. You guessed it they will drastically cut back on the health care utopia they promised everyone and leave everyone out in the cold. In the meantime the elites in DC and all their good buddies will still be riding high on our hard earned money that they had nothing to do with earning which is just plain evil.
Posted by: peter | December 1, 2009, 12:03 am 12:03 am
Still no Climategate headlines. WOW..
This really bites.
Posted by: ChicagoBob | December 1, 2009, 8:30 am 8:30 am
ost of the current congressional mandated plans (gold, silver and bronze) and the changes in costs. What I did not see mentioned in the articles and reports is a study of how much the total dollars spent as a percent of payroll or sales will rise for firms. I see rates rising for firms with predominantly male workforces, rising for firms who do not current pay, all or part, of spousal and dependent care; and premiums rising for firms who have HSA or high deductible plans.
When i look at my companies health premiums, the differences between the sexes, ages, coverage amounts, etc., I see the total dollars paying out going up dramatically. I believe that my company is not the only one going to be facing much larger bills when it comes due. The report also does not compare the cost of me paying the non coverage penalty versus the costs. It would appear I would be better off financially to drop our group plans and pay the fines. However, our employees being hit with $5,800 in annual individual premium costs, would not be able to pay. Since most of our work force is comprised of young health adults,they woudl be cheaper to forgo coverage.
The CBO report analyzes only a small portion of the health care premium world and not the total out of pocket expenses for different types of business and how they will react to increasing costs.
Posted by: scott jeffries | December 1, 2009, 9:33 am 9:33 am
Open the borders for free trade of health care and see the costs go down.
Posted by: Jim Rod | December 1, 2009, 10:28 am 10:28 am
anglelight: But we do have a higher standard of living than most countries. I wonder why
Posted by: jjj | December 1, 2009, 11:35 am 11:35 am
William Joseph Miller–”If the public understood this, they would support the public option. And why isn’t this information included in our public debate?” —–
The public (at least about 60% of us) do understand the public option and thats why we DO NOT support the bill.
Simply put, the public option will kill private health insurance over time. As more people are forced into the public option and fewer and fewer private plans are avaialble and affordable, the ability of the government to tax private plans to pay for the public option becomes more difficult. Eventually, the majority of Amreicans are either forced into the option or pay for their own. The option becomes bloated and unsustainable (just like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and teh welfare system) the only way to continue this system is to cut back on care (ration) or reduce the level of intervention (services available).
This system is self consuming and anyone who actually “pays attention” and understands as you suggest they should is awareof this and does not support the bill.
Posted by: arkie vet | December 1, 2009, 12:57 pm 12:57 pm