If anything deserves A Second Look, then it is the draft legislation circulated by Senator Kennedy. This legislation provides choices for patients and creates a more competitive market environment resulting in stabilized costs and ultimately pricing. Pay particular attention to the “Medicare plus 10″ proposal. It answers the argument from the right about the health care industry going the way of the 8-track. Kennedy’s bill allows the public option to piggy-back off of Medicare’s pricing negotiations.
The Progress Report wrote:
The American Health Choices Act
From: The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 9:22 AM
To: Tom
Subject: The American Health Choices Act
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is circulating draft legislation designed to overhaul the nation’s health care system. This so-called “draft of a draft” is the first piece of concrete health reform legislation to emerge from Democrats in Congress. As the Washington Post notes, “[A]t least five congressional chairmen are working on health-care reform bills,” and Kennedy’s draft represents the Democrats’ first attempt at “a partial road map for how the nation might address health coverage gaps and problems such as rising costs and inferior quality.” The legislation, called the “American Health Choices Act,” would provide affordable coverage to all Americans, require businesses to provide and individuals to obtain coverage, and establish a new public health care plan to compete alongside private insurers.
America needs a public health care plan, period.
Did anyone catch the new episode of Royal Pains this past week on the USA Channel? The concierge doctor was tricked, by his foxy girlfriend who happens to be the administrator of a local hospital in the Hamptons, into treating a real estate agent who had lost her regular job and her insurance. She had a nasty burn on her arm. The real estate agent also had diabetes so the burn on her arm was more serious than it would have been otherwise. Long story short, the physician of the wealthy treated her burn for free.
He didn’t care about insurance, Medicaid, or money, or any of that other nonsense. He cared about her arm.
That is the crux of the matter. Everyone should have the opportunity to be treated by the best physicians and surgeons without any consideration other than the fact that they are sick or injured. Medical treatment is not a political or commercial issue. It is a moral issue.
But the right-wing, being in the minority, has the luxury to complain about everything good for the people that the Democrats offer up. They are in a position to sit back and throw spit-balls at the Democrats, as Rachel Maddow put it. They offer no real plan themselves, they don’t have to, but they do try to raise the pity level for the rich corporations.
A MUSCULAR PUBLIC OPTION: The new public health plan would provide all Americans under 65 the choice of public coverage, restore competition into the consolidated health insurance market, lower health care premiums across the board, lead the way in innovation, and improve health quality. As CAPAF Senior Fellow Peter Harbage and Director of Health Policy Karen Davenport argue in a recent report about the public plan, “In the face of tremendous consolidation in the health insurance market, employers and individuals have a shrinking set of health insurance options. Private insurers have used this market power to boost their profits.” Harbage and Davenport add, “By including a public health insurance plan as another insurance option and creating a health insurance exchange that delivers transparency and accountability to the market, we can assure both viable competitors and real competition.” A new public plan has the potential “to drive improvements in the health care system” and set the standard for developing new payment models and investing in preventive care and care coordination. Critics of the public option, including the insurance industry and most Republicans, argue that a public plan could not compete fairly with private insurers because its lower reimbursement rates would “crowd out” private coverage and spell death for the private insurance industry. But as health care economist Uwe Reinhardt explains, “If the new public plan had to negotiate its own prices, then it would not have a competitive advantage any more ‘unfair’ than is the ability of large insurers — such as Aetna and Wellpoint — to negotiate lower prices with hospitals and physicians than these providers charge smaller insurers. For some reason, no one has ever called this form of price discrimination ‘unfair.’” Under Kennedy’s bill, the new public option would reimburse providers 10 percent above current Medicare rates. It would not have to negotiate its own rates, but could piggyback off of Medicare’s considerable reach. Using “Medicare plus 10″ rates, rather than the prevailing market rates, would lower costs and allow the plan to charge lower premium rates.
The right-wing opposition is exclaiming loudly that a public plan would deny a patient their choices of doctors and insurance plans. The American Health Choices Act answers the right-wing’s empty objections with sound thinking and solid policy.
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A Second Look | Scapegoating Kennedy
Media Matters for America wrote:
Senator Edward Kennedy, Liberal Lion
It is unbelievable that these Republican Senators who sit on the HELP, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, would come out and say that if Senator Kennedy had been around there would have been a compromise bill. Hell, they were there!
Senator Kennedy and his staff worked tirelessly with committee members to put together a compromise bill beginning as early as March, 2009. The Affordable Health Choices Act was passed out of committee in July and it contained 160 Republican amendments. Republican leaders have since said that these amendments were only “technical” and did not effect the outcome of the bill. When republicans speak of amendments as “technical”, they really mean that these amendments deal with corporate welfare, probably billions of dollars, and shouldn’t concern the voters.
From Sen. Edward Kennedy Working With HELP Committee Members To Introduce, Mark Up Health Care System Overhaul Legislation Before August Recess
Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 18 Mar 2009 – 3:00 PDT
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), claiming that the absence of Kennedy somehow hindered bipartisanship, made this statement on CNN on or about August 27th.
Hatch was one of Chairman Kennedy’s “core group” during the mark-up of the AHCA and had every opportunity to have “worked it out” at that time. The truth is, the HELP Committee, more so the bipartisan “core group”, produced a compromise bill in July with a huge number (160) of giveaways to the Republicans. (After skimming the bill, it is clear that these 160 amendments are woven into the language of the bill and impossible to single out for the sake of example.) Orrin Hatch and the rest of the Republicans, to a man, voted against the bill because of the public option called The Community Health Insurance Option. Senator Hatch and others such as John McCain are making the baseless claim that Senator’s Kennedy’s absence is to blame for what is actually obstruction of the public plan, thereby using Senator Kennedy, his illness, and subsequent death, as a scapegoat.
Throughout the mark-up process that saw true bipartisanship, the HELP Committee Democrats worked hand-in-hand with their Republican counterparts to produce the best compromise possible. In Senator Kennedy’s own words,
May he rest in peace.
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