From the Wonk Room:
Baucus: We Can Accomplish Health Care Reform ‘Without’ Public Health Plan Option Basically he says they want to use the public plan option for leverage to get the insurance companies to do what the Democrats want them to do.
As I read this and watched the video, I realized that the plans are done, completed, and the wheels on the bus just keep moving along without us. We can scream and holler, but they are large and in charge.
Baucus's words:
Let’s see what we come up with. I think we can accomplish the objective (Dean) wants without (a public plan). We can, we’re going to have to work on it. But we may have to have it, (Dean) may be right. Just don’t know yet.
He just doesn't know yet. Which means in conservadem speak...ain't gonna happen.
Watch the 33 second video. They "just don't know yet".
Right now the public option is Medicare. Sounds to me they think they can do away with it and replace it with a private plan based on reassurances from the insurance industry whom they are leveraging using the threat of a public plan like Medicare.
Dean believes that the public plan would improve system efficiency and quality, but Baucus is more interested in using the program as a political tool to bring insurers to the table and keep single payer advocates at the table. The public, however, supports the public option. According to a poll by Lake Research, “73% of voters want everyone to have a choice of private health insurance or a public health insurance plan while only 15% want everyone to have private insurance.”
Sounds to me like a very strong possibility that Dr. Zeke Emanual's plan might be in play.
Zeke Emanuel is a health care advisor to Obama. Wants to phase out Medicare and Medicaid.The Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan will be administered by a National Health Board and regional boards modeled on the Federal Reserve System with fiscal, administrative, and political independence to make tough decisions based on the merits, not special interest lobbying. There will also be an Institute for Technology and Outcomes Assessment to assess the effectiveness of new drugs, devices, procedures, and other interventions. It will also assess and make publicly available data on the clinical outcomes of patients in different insurance companies. This will permit comparative shopping based on real quality results.
No one (I think he means to say "anyone") receiving Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government program will not be forced out, but there will be no new enrollees. People who turn 65 will simply stay in the Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan. The special tax benefits related to employer based coverage will be eliminated and most employers will stop offering health insurance.
People left in Medicare as the program called Medicare is phased out? They are screwed.
Time's Karen Tumulty has a lot more on Baucus's response.
Max Baucus and the "Public Plan"For the new issue of dead-tree TIME, I have written this short profile of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a most unlikely figure to have emerged as the point man for health care reform in the Senate. (The print version also has a chart detailing the highlights of Baucus' own health reform proposal, which you can read about in detail in the White Paper that he produced last November.)
What didn't make the print edition story was a part of the interview in which I asked Baucus about one of the most controversial elements of both his plan and President Obama's--the so-called "public plan," a option in which people would have a chance to enroll in a Medicare-like publicly financed health system. The insurance companies hate this idea, saying it is would be unfair for them to be forced to compete with the government. Many health care experts, however, argue that this provision is crucial, as a means of holding down health care costs. (The idea being that the government would use its muscle--much as it does in the Medicare and Veterans Administration programs--to negotiate lower reimbursement rates.) Conservatives oppose it as well, because they see it as a first step toward a Canadian-style single-payer system.
What Baucus had to say will not give much comfort to those who support the idea of a public plan as it is presently being proposed. He strongly suggested that its main value, at this point, is as a bargaining chip to get the health insurance companies to agree to other things that reformers want to see:
"Essentially, it's to keep it on the table to encourage the private health insurance industry to move in the direction it knows it should move toward—namely, health insurance reform, which means eliminating pre-existing conditions, guaranteed issue, modified community ratings. (TRANSLATION: Measures that would force the insurers to cover the sick as well as the healthy, at a cost that everyone could afford.) It's all those actions that insurance companies must take in order to provide affordable coverage. And the public option helps encourage the private companies to move in that direction, because they're worried. We might have to modify the public option to get enough votes. I hear some concerns among Republicans about the public option. The main purpose is to keep the health insurance feet to the fire."
So they are using a chance to get real change in insurance to squeeze the insurance companies so they will get in line to get ALL the business.
Someone want to tell me how much is wrong with that picture?
Someone want to tell me how having Democrats in charge is making a difference?
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
