Senator Max Baucus: It will be years before some of the major healthcare reforms take effect

[Better Believe It]

Baucus pushes long-term viewpoint on health reform
By MIKE DENNISON - IR State Bureau - 07/11/09

Sen. Max Baucus said Friday his Finance Committee will produce a comprehensive health-reform bill before Congress’ summer recess next month, but that it’s still a long, bumpy road before a final measure gets passed.

He also acknowledged that even if health-reform legislation passes Congress and becomes law this year, it will be years before some of the major reforms take effect.

“It’s true that a lot of this will bear fruit later and not immediately,” he told the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in an interview. “But we have to start sometimes. …

“In the past, we’ve just been reacting (to health care problems). This is long-term. If we’re going to be transformative and game-changing, we’re going to have to put some things in place now.”

Baucus, D-Mont., has been leading the Senate discussions on health-reform legislation since last year.

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2009/07/11/top/60st_090711_baucushealth.txt

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And is it true that under the House healthcare plan the public option won't take effect until 2013? I haven't had time to study the 800 page bill. If someone on DU has read the entire bill and can answer the above question that would be greatly appreciated.


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My Thoughts On The Public Option In House Draft
by slinkerwink
Daily Kos
June 21, 2009

Here's what Wonk Room had to say about the House bill below:

"Unlike the HELP bill and the draft (leaked) language of the Senate Finance Committee, the Tri-Committee proposal seems to contain a fairly robust public insurance option. While details are still being worked out, the proposal establishes a public plan in 2013 that will compete with private insurers, within the Exchange, on a level playing field. The public option will be required to abide by all marketing, operations, and rating rules and would initially be allowed to use Medicare plus rates. After some time, the plan would have to independently negotiate fees with providers."

And there it seems that it might be wrong about the public option in the Tri-Committee proposal being available everywhere on day one. How can it be available on day one if it's supposed to be available in 2013 and the National Exchange that's proposed to cut down on costs is established in 2013 as well? This is one of the sticking points for us to push back on starting tomorrow. We'll have to ask the House Education and Labor Committee if the private insurers will have to be regulated immediately after the passage of the legislation or if the regulation starts in 2013. The delay for this puzzles me.

Always remember, the devil is in the details.

Another sticking point for us to push back on is that the public option will have to stop using Medicare plus rates at a certain point in time. Here's more from Karen Tumulty at Time Magazine on what that means:

"In the early stage, the public plan would reimburse health care providers at rates that are "similar to those used in Medicare"--that is, significantly lower than most private insurers pay them. This is something that the insurance industry, doctors and hospitals will all hate."

According to the summary, this tie to Medicare rates would be "severed over time as more flexible payment systems are developed." In other words, this public plan would eventually evolve into something that looks--and competes--more like a private insurance company, albeit one that happens to be run by the government."

This is the biggest sticking point for us to push back on along with the one about the public option having to be self-sustaining only on premiums, and we'll need to ask the Congressional Progressive Caucus to push back on this as well. Basically, we'll have a strong public option at first, but over time, it'll be weakened. I don't think this is right.

Please read the complete article and what you can do to demand a strong public option at:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/21/745208/-My-Thoughts-On-The-Public-Option-In-House-Draft

[IntravenousDemilo]

1. Here's a project for the newly minted Senator Franken.

I think he should move a bill that eliminates the preferential public health plan that he and his Senate colleagues enjoy and brings them all down to the coverage level of the average American citizen. It would be a good way for him to get immediately "known", and it would also flush out the self-interested Senators from both sides of the aisle. One could then compare their vote for their own personal health care with their vote for national health care, and alert the public if there is a double standard.

Kucinich could do the same in the House.

[jgraz]

3. Not a job for the most junior member of the Senate

If Franken wants this to happen, he should ask a senior Senator like Kennedy or Kerry to introduce it, then immediately co-sponsor.

[karynnj]

8. Bad choices, Kerry is the wealthiest member of the Senate and Kennedy is

quite wealthy - this would be a very elitist thing for them to do. They would have the best medical services even with NO insurance.

Most Senators and Congressmen are already making far less than they would in private industry and they need to have homes in their state and in DC. I assume that you feel that there are too many independently wealthy Congressmen and Senators. If you did this the ones you could impact are those who are already making a sacrifice to serve.

It would be better for them to do all they could to lobby their peers to vote for a good bill - which is I think what they have been doing. Attacking their financial security is likely not the best way to achieve that.

[Skittles]

2. how convenient

[enlightenment]

4. Over time.

As if the long road is the only road.

We've been talking about the need for health care reform since WWII and actively discussing it in political circles for years. This is nothing more than more excuses. If they wanted it to be accomplished, it would be accomplished. Th studies have been done, there are plans aplenty. They don't want to change anything, so they obfuscate.

The authority to establish the NHS was passed FOUR MONTHS after Labour took control of Parliament in 1948. Yes, there were differences. Yes, they had been discussing the need since the nineteen-teens. The difference is that they actually did it - in spite of the protestations from the naysayers.

Labour and the NHS

The Labour Party had put forward proposals for a national hospital service before the first world war, and between the wars there was increasing interest in resolving problems. Several reports -- commissioned by the government, produced by independent groups or the work of professional or hospital organisations -- had laid out alternatives. In the 1930s whenever a new public service was envisaged, such as civil defence, it was considered as a potential function for local authorities. In the 1940s it became apparent that a health service run by them could be introduced only in the teeth of opposition from the medical profession. A PEP broadsheet, published in July 1942, anticipated Beveridge and called for a national health service. The Beveridge Report on future social insurance aimed for universal coverage, and named ‘five giants’ on the road to reconstruction: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. The depression in the 1920s and 1930s, the lack of systematic provision for health care at that time, the experience of communal action in war and the efficiency of the EMS all pointed to the need for a health service. The draft interim report of the BMA’s Medical Planning Commission in 1942, which called for the creation of a comprehensive service covering most people, made it easy for Beveridge to assume that one would be created for the whole nation.

The war had increased the sense of social solidarity, and many saw the advantages of a command structure. Most doctors had military experience and knew that service personnel had, from a health point of view, been looked after better than in peacetime. Many of those involved, or who would be important to the future NHS, had at least a social conscience if not an overt inclination to the left, for example George Godber, Richard Titmuss and Richard Doll. Janet Vaughan found it hard to understand how anyone could be a doctor before the war and not become a socialist. Julian Tudor Hart, a Welsh GP, believed that people who had experienced the effect of the market on the distribution of services meeting basic human needs, and the revelation that in wartime the market could be overridden for great purposes, were resolved never to return to the old system. As early as 1943 the Ministry of Health was considering the transition of the wartime EMS into a comprehensive health service, free and available to all. On these foundations a blueprint for a service was accepted by the Conservative Cabinet in the interval between the wartime coalition government and the election of Attlee’s Labour government in 1945.

Labour came to power with one of the largest majorities in British history. It was committed to a programme of public ownership and lost no time in carrying it out. The Bills nationalising the Bank of England, coal, and cable and wireless received Royal Assent in 1946. In the following year it was the turn of transport, railways, canals, road-haulage and electricity. The gas industry was nationalised in 1948, and iron and steel in 1949. The NHS was a different type of nationalisation, aiming for a radically new type of service. The NHS Act was introduced four months after the election and passed during the first session of the new Parliament. In the words of the Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, the Act would create an atmosphere of greater security and serenity up and down the country for families faced by anxiety and the distress of illness. The inability of voluntary hospitals to raise charitable moneys made it necessary. Rising costs hastened the inevitability of a state medical service. With the advance of science and specialisation, a patient had not one but many doctors. The cost of illness was beyond the purse of the average person. A single patient with tuberculosis, for whom an operation (thoracoplasty) was required, might pay more than £1000 from the time of admission to discharge some months later. It would be a travesty of justice, said Lionel Whitby, Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, were treatment to be available only to the few rich people whom successive Chancellors of the Exchequer had allowed to survive.

http://www.nhshistory.net/intro1.htm
(emphasis mine)

[TankLV]

5. sure it will maxie - only if YOU have anything to do with it!!!

GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY, then...!!!

[Better Believe It]

6. Republicans will regain control of Congress and the White House in 2012 if ....

a universal healthcare system with a strong public option is not in place and functioning before the 2012 election.

[GoldenOldie]

7. If Max Baucus and his ilk had represented us during WWII......

and the "great depression," we would be all be saluting the swaztika and Hitler's heir apparent and selling apples on the streets of the US. Having lived long enough to remember these two historic events, I live in awe of what FDR, our elected representatives and the American people accomplished, fighting and working together to face our enemies and our problems. And.....it didn't take years of infighting nor far to many scheming robber barons lining thier own pockets. We all had skin in that game.

If one more of these political hacks is praised and rewarded, for his/her "life devoted in service to his/her country," I will commit harikari. They serve only themselves and those that help line their pockets, such as their former staff/aides who have been established and well paid, within the corporate walls as lobbyists for the corporate puppet masters. We will never have health care for all, nor consumer protections nor representation, as long as this greed is allowed to exist.

[IndianaGreen]

10. You all be speaking German

and I would have never been born.

K&R to your post.

[IndianaGreen]

9. Do any of you want real cradle-to-grave universal health care?

Here is the answer:

Socialism: Change You Can Count On!

[and-justice-for-all]

12. I am a Socialist so, YEAH! nt

[WinkyDink]

13. That would be a YES. FGS, how many decades must we remain behind Europe?

[HamdenRice]

18. You probably won't believe this but I'm a socialist also

just one who can add, subtract, multiply, divide and read corporate earnings reports and balance sheets.

I spent 3 years consulting for a socialist country that wanted to stay socialist but improve its environmental, water pollution and land use systems. What I learned from that experience is that properly done, with close attention to efficiency and realities, socialism really, really works well -- better than any other system.

Here on DU, though, I'm routinely slandered as a "shill for Goldman Sachs" by college students and nutty Trotskyites who have never worked a day in their lives for socialist or capitalist enterprises.

[bvar22]

11. This is a deal breaker.

"the proposal establishes a public plan in 2013 that will compete with private insurers, within the Exchange, on a level playing field. The public option will be required to abide by all marketing, operations, and rating rules and would initially be allowed to use Medicare plus rates."

This is ALL about protecting the For Profits, and screwing Americans.

The Public Plan should NOT be forced onto a "level playing field" with the For Profits.
The Public Plan should be allowed to use every single advantage of Public Ownership and Government Administration.....
I mean, THAT is The Point of having a Public Plan.

On Edit: K&R

[WinkyDink]

14. Exactly. We do not have "competing on a level-playing field" Armed Forces, nor CIA's, nor FEMA.

Pick your Cabinet Dept.

[Thrill]

15. It probably will take a couple yrs to get the Public Option going

[Proud Liberal Dem]

16. Geez!!! I hope not!!!!

We all need help NOW!!!! Hope this isn't some subtle hint at a "trigger"!!! Question: How long did it take for them to get the "Medicare Drug Plan" going? Pretty quickly if I remember correctly.

[SoCalDem]

17. Translation: "We're hoping that most of the boomers will be dead by then" n/t

:grr: