House Democrats Unveil Plan for Health Care Overhaul

[babylonsister]

Something to keep in mind: the rethugs' plan consisted of "4" pages.

June 19, 2009, 3:19 pm
House Democrats Unveil Plan for Health Care Overhaul
By David M. Herszenhorn AND Robert Pear


House Democrats on Friday answered President Obama’s call for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system by putting forward a 852-page draft bill that would require all Americans to obtain health insurance, force employers to provide benefits or help pay for them, and create a new public insurance program to compete with private insurers — a move that Republicans will bitterly oppose.

The bill was unveiled by a trio of committee chairman, George Miller of Education and Labor, Henry Waxman of Energy and Commerce, and Charles B. Rangel of Ways and Means, who have worked jointly for months to develop a seamless proposal. But the chairmen said they still did not know how much the plan would cost, even as they pledged to pay for it by cutting Medicare spending and imposing new, unspecified taxes.

The three chairmen described their bill as a starting point in a weeks-long legislative endeavor that they said would dominate Congress for the summer and ultimately involve the full panorama of stakeholders in the health care industry, which accounts for about one-sixth of the nation’s economy. They described their efforts as the historic culmination of a half-century of failed attempts across the tenure of a dozen presidents.

Mr. Miller, a Democrat of California, said that completing a bill would require extraordinary cooperation among lawmakers. “In order to change American’s health care system,” he declared, “Congress itself must change.”

more...

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/house-democrats-unveil-plan-for-health-care-overhaul/?hp

[tjwash]

1. Sad thing is-Reid, Pelosi, Feinstein, and the rest of the dino's will do their best...

...to oppose the living shit out of this as well. They'll lockstep with Lieberman and the rest of the neocon-enabling scum to stab the American people in the back as usual.

[babylonsister]

2. Pelosi, yesterday:

and you have no idea what anyone is going to do til they do it.


http://washingtonindependent.com/47832/pelosi-reiterates-commitment-to-strong-public-plan

Pelosi Reiterates Commitment to Strong Public Plan
By Mike Lillis 6/18/09 2:37 PM


From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) weekly press conference, as reported by Roll Call (subscription):

Pelosi made clear Thursday that some version of the program — “It may not be called ‘public option,’ but it will be a level playing field,” she said — is the price of admission for health care reform in her chamber. “We will have a public option in the House that will be real,” she said. “What’s not real is no use doing.”


The statement is reference to several proposals floating around the Senate that would water down the government-backed plan, either by delaying its arrival with coverage and cost triggers, or by creating a co-op arrangement that would result in smaller patient pools, thereby lessening the buying power (and increasing premiums) of the alternative-coverage option.

[DJ13]

3. Forcing people to buy a product sold by private industry is Fascism