Senate Bill is Bad and Can’t be Fixed, Says Powerful House Chairwoman
EmailABC News' Jonathan Karl reports: In a blistering column today, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) says the Senate “went off the rails” when it “agreed with the Obama administration” to scrap the public option. And Slaughter also has a list of other major concerns with the bill. This is a big deal because Rep. Slaughter is the chairwoman of the powerful House Rules Committee and a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The bill is so bad, she says, that House/Senate negotiations are “unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills … It's time that we draw the line on this weak bill and ask the Senate to go back to the drawing board.” This sounds like Howard Dean, but unlike Dean, Rep. Slaughter has a vote. Read the full column HERE.
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wow….short lived vctory eh.
Posted by: catman | December 23, 2009, 4:14 pm 4:14 pm
Just read the full column linked. Man that was scathing.
This promises to be an interesting conference committee with yet another elected offical firmly claiming their intransigence.
Posted by: bobtherepublican | December 23, 2009, 4:18 pm 4:18 pm
Finaly somone with some brains is looking at this monstrosity it doesnt lower insurance premiums but requires everyone to pay those premiums, allows abortion coverage [If a woman wants an abortion she should pay for it with her money],gives Nebraska free medicaid forever,cut Medicare Advantage to AARPs benefit because thy sell medigap not Advantage and thousands of other pork, like 100 million to some hospital in some unnamed state to buy that senators vote. Criminal most of this is bribes and if not illegal it should be Please Louise Kill this bill we can wait a couple of months, for reform or better yet just before the 2010 elections then we might get a good bipartison bill, that is not snuck through in the middle of the night behind closed doors in secret.
Posted by: earl | December 23, 2009, 7:43 pm 7:43 pm
She is so wrong about a number of things. She is posturing to get something more for NY because of Bloomberg and Paterson’s whining.
She is so wrong about not bringing insurance costs down. If they don’t pay out enough(percentage about 85%) for actual CARE they have to REBATE the difference.
Also more is going for actual health care which with benefit NY’s health centers and hospitals. Primary care doctors will get higher payment for Medicare. Doughnut hole closing. Kids up to 26 or 27 can stay on parent’s insurance (cheap or no extra cost.)
$14 billion more for Community Health Centers which are lower cost which people can start going to NOW (and they are. Their patient load has grown all over the country.)
All of those will improve care. She is stuck on the public option which is just about payment. Insurance corps can dump high cost small business off into the public plan which will get the sickest of the patients and will not be able to cover it.
There is money for training primary care doctors and nurses. She would throw all that and more over for something that is not much more than a slogan.
How could it be bi-partisan with the republicans when Mitch McConnel said at the start that no republican would vote for it and they refused to give any ideas except tax credits that were a gift to the wealthy d tax burden to the people who get coverage from their employer.
The biggest problems are the need to improve quality and efficiency and eliminate provider fraud. Do you realize how many billions go to phony prescriptions and medical equipment suppliers; stuff that no patient ever sees?
Bah, she shouldn’t parade her ignorance.
Posted by: Sam Dobermann | December 23, 2009, 10:17 pm 10:17 pm
Sam Dobermann – the estimates are, in Pennsylvania, the average family will pay $2,100 MORE in premiums. That means premiums go up, NOT down. The only way to bring premiums down is to have people be vested financially – pay for routine care out-of-pocket, for example. How expensive would your car insurance be if it covered oil changes and replacement wiper blades? Auto insurance would not be affordable either.
A good example of out-of-pocket payments decreasing cost is Lasik surgery – it is pretty much a cash-basis procedure and the prices have come down dramatically since its inception. That is cutting costs.
All I see this bill doing is driving up the cost of insurance. We are all going to have to pay for those people with pre-existing conditions. We are all going to have to pay when someone would rather pay the fine, than purchase insurance and they end up with a catastrophic illness – then go purchase insurance.
Posted by: ellsbells930 | December 24, 2009, 7:15 am 7:15 am
wow very few comments on this.
Democrats are afraid to talk about it perhaps?
That wont make the differences in these bills go away.
Obama claimed that the bills were 95% identical.
Clearly that’s not the case.
Lets remember that at one point in the process of passing the House bill, Obama admitted he wasn’t all that familiar with the specifics.
Abortion and the public option are two of the major areas that will defy reconciliation.
How bout some real common sense reforms?
–allow individuals to band together to buy group health plans without being an employment based group. They could negotiate favorable rates like large corporations and unions do.
–end the regulatory exemption for ‘self insured’ plans. If employers want to ‘play insurance company’ , they should be regulated like one.
–end cost shifting. Those with private insurance shouldnt pay extra for those who dont pay
–standardize all insurance forms and information systems. This will reduce the administrative/paperwork costs (estimated to be about 20 cents of every health care dollar)
Posted by: Joe White | December 25, 2009, 1:28 am 1:28 am
“Louise Slaughter”….now there’s a
real cuddly moniker….any relation
to WWF’s Sergeant?
Posted by: Sir Toby Belch | December 25, 2009, 2:31 am 2:31 am