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"Every year we see average premium increases outpacing wages and inflation. And every year, we urge Congress to examine ways that we might be able to stop this unsustainable trend. Never has it been clearer that the time to enact comprehensive health-insurance reform is now." --Todd Stottlemyer, president of NFIB
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HEALTH POLITICS: House to Unveil Merged Bill Today
Paul Testa -
October 29, 2009 - 7:06am
House Leadership will unveil its merged health reform bill at 10:30 a.m. today at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building. The Affordable Health Care for America Act should be posted on the House Rules Committee website at 10:00 a.m. We'll have more thoughts later, but early details on the legislation formed from the Tri-Committee bills are as follows:
- Coverage: The bill is expected to lower the ranks of the uninsured by 35 to 36 million. As expected, the bill contains sweeping changes to the health insurance market, such as guaranteed issue, community rating, and an end to the practice of exclusions based on pre-existing conditions. It requires all Americans to purchase insurance, provides subsidies to make insurance affordable and establishes insurance exchanges to create a new marketplace for consumers.
- Cost: The bill will come in under President Obama's target of $900 billion over ten years. The bill is deficit neutral running surpluses in the first half of the 10-year budget window, but deficits in the second. Democrats in the House say they expect the bill to be budget neutral in the second 10 years as well.
- Public Plan: The bill will contain a public plan with negotiated rates. The move is seen as compromise to help appease concerns of some of the moderate and conservative Democrats in the House.
- Medicaid: The bill expands Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of the federal poverty level for all adults -- an increase from previous drafts which had set eligibility at 133 percent of FPL.
- Financing: The bill is funded largely savings from changes in Medicaid and Medicare and a a 5.4 percent surtax on individual making more than $500,000 and couples making more than $1 million -- an increase from the original thresholds. The fix to the sustainable growth rate formula has been carved out and will be introduced separately. There is also an 2.5 percent tax on medical device makers and an increase in the cuts faced by drugmakers.
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Health Care Bill
Legislators are debating a program called National Healthcare. It rises from a belief that every man, woman and child walking our land should have health care insurance. Where do we find the source, in our Constitution, for such a law as this? We do not. It sounds like this is great for our people, showing empathy and sympathy. Our legislators care about “their” people, as parents would care for their children. Is it meant to prevent injustice or provide justice? Justice, to them, is equal access to medical practitioners and otherwise expensive medications. Our people will not have to worry about affording the care. Government becomes our caretaker and nanny, and steps on the Constitution.
America did not begin its political life under the rule of a king, queen or Democrat to care for the little people. The little people had to care for themselves and create their own security and prosperity. People created government, but not to do for them what the caring monarch would do. They wanted government to prevent injustice by a close, small, limited organized force. It gave Americans a better life than any kingdom on earth to this point? It gave us a medical care system better than anywhere else on this planet.
Free Americans actually found a better way without guidance from their government. The discovery and manufacture of new medicines improved lifespan for Americans without the caring hand of government. Americans did well without the caring hand of government. Everyone with an illness in the world can come to America and get well. America is the best in the world. So why does government have to “change” what has done so well? What will they do with it when they take over?
The government target is cost containment. It costs too much to have wellness. Government wants to step in and manage health care. When they step in with their army of bureaucrats, the cost will rise at an alarming rate, to pay all these people to adequately care for us, to do for us what we would ordinarily do for ourselves. Bureaucrats will have to decide what medical systems have immediate value and which have limited value. More than half the medical procedures are provided to the elderly, who are closer to the end of life when bodily function failures occur. It is apparent to the bean counters that will be running the new, more caring system that the elderly cost too much to take care of. To contain costs is to deny their access to care. That is a simple solution to the problem of cost containment.
That is their solution to the rising cost of healthcare, the elimination of those who need it most. However, the high cost of the enormous regulating bureaucracy may eat into those savings and require more ingenuity in cost-cutting. Who is next? The next big users of medical care are the unborn and the very young, none of whom has reached a point of being useful. So, the solution is simple, again. Do not treat them or let them go the way of the elderly? Then, how deep and intense should diagnostics really be, when a simple shot-in-the-dark decision can be made by a medical practitioner? If the practitioner is wrong, as might be the case with her youth and lack of experience, what is the worst that can happen? The patient dies!
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