As expected, the health care overhaul bill came out of the Senate Finance Committee along party lines, with one big exception: Senator Olympia Snowe.
This marks the first time in history that a health care reform bill has passed all of the necessary committees. It will now go on to the Senate floor. There, it will be sure to face hundreds of amendments and even more liters of hot gas from both parties. After both the House and Senate pass bills on health reform, they will move into a conference committee and develop one overarching bill.
The Baucus Bill that was just passed does not include a public health option. Instead, it proposes cooperatives that would allow the consumers to use their full muscle to negotiate with insurance companies for lower prices and premiums. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill (as it stands) will not add any money to the national debt; consequentially, over 13 million uninsured will stay uninsured. The health insurance companies will still be spending 17% of your money on overhead costs and, due to subsidies the government will give to low-income individuals to buy health insurance, a massive transfer of wealth will go from taxpayers to health insurance companies.
I am definitely not in favor of this bill. I think too much was given to the Republicans in order to pass this off as a "bipartisan" effort, which, at the present moment, seems to have given the Democrats nothing. Much like the Stimulus Bill, the Baucus Bill only received the support of one of the Republicans on the committee, and it is far off from what the Democratic base wants.
Don't fret. There are weeks of deliberations left, and the House is poised to pass a public health option in their bill. What would I do? I would use reconcilation! Reconciliation is a process to fast track budget-related measures in the Senate. Measures passed under this process only need a simple majority (51%). Some of the things in my dream bill would not be able to pass through the reconciliation process. This is why my bill would be split, the one half being passed through reconciliation and the other being voted on regularly.
Many will tell you that it is unfair to use reconciliation to pass health care. When you are presented with this, you look that person in the eyes and ask them if they believe it is fair that 8.3 percent of American children live without health insurance, or if they believe that 44 million Americans should be able to go without visits to doctors when they need it. Ask them about the human condition, about the general welfare of the People, and if they believe that "bipartisanship" is inherently against both of them.
The House and the Senate work for us. We pay their salaries. We send them on Congressional trips. Now we should call for something in return.
Real health care reform. Now.
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4 comments:
Systems such as the British NHS are far from perfect, but they provide a very good model which we should have followed LONG ago.
False.
Our current system is trash.
That being said, we can't run to the refuge of European health care systems.
The most compelling reason why a European system would fail in the US is that we essentailly subsidize the rest of the world. New procedures, medicines, and technologies are invented here. That means the huge fixed cost that goes into their invention is also internalized to the US. So other nations only need to pay the smaller variable cost. An example is that Canada can buy their drugs from US drug companies at a lower rate; the drug companies recoup the R&D costs from US customers and only chage Canadian customers the variable cost of making one more pill.
That being said, current health care costs far outstrip the increase due to fixed R&D costs. Why? Because our current system has no competition. Without competition, prices will inflate. The administration and Bob argue we should set up a public option to induce competition. However, a public option is not needed. Competition could be fostered in other ways rather than heaping more government interference on the health care system, and with less cost to the tax payer.
First, the tax exemption on employer health care should be repealed. The current exemption aids the wealthy unfairly. Repealing the exemption would also force consumers to see health care costs directly and therefore they will be less likely to overconsume (a problem that currently lends to price inflation). Furthemore, employee insurance groups are unfair to the the healthy. If a healthy employee is in the same group as an unhealthy smoking employee, the healthy employee ends up paying mostly for the unhealthy employee's health care costs.
You might be saying "but how is this less costly for the tax payer if he now pays tax on his employee health benefits!" Yes, tax on these benefits increases-but then employers stop offering benefits and consumers are free to join a pool of people of similar heatlh characteristics. Costs of healthcare in general decrease. If people stop consuming employer-based health care, they won't pay taxes on it, and therefore are taxed less.
Second, Doctors are currently paid based on the number and type of procedures they run. Clearly this leads to a tendency to overprescribe, which means patients pay for procedures they may not need. If doctor pay were more merit-based, i.e., based on whether or not patients were actually helped, the problem of overprescription would be lessened.
Third, people should be free to purchase high-deductible insurance, meaning they'd pay their own costs up to a point (I think it's around $1,500 but I'm not certain), and then insurance covers them after that. So consumers again would see the true cost of health care and start shopping around more. Of course, people would still have catastrophic insurance, so if you get shot or have a heart attack you're covered.
Fourth, most health care providers now enjoy huge profits because they've essentially cornered the market. In Western PA there are 3 health care providers, and the market is dominated by UPMC. UPMC is ostensibly a non-profit and yet they take in huge profits every year. Why the government refuses to enforce on-the-book anti-trust violations and what appear to be clear violations of non-profit status baffles me. Obviously if UPMC were taxed as a for-profit institution, there would be more room for smaller health insurers to breathe.
There are other barriers to competition like overly stringent licensing requirements for health practitioners which exlude many qualified practitioners. These need to be relaxed.
If all these health care reforms are taken simultaneously, costs of health care will return to a reasonable level as competition returns to the heatlh care market.
Sorry, were you saying I was wrong or the article? I've lived with NHS and though, like I said, it needs massive improvement, it's not total rubbish.
Both. NHS works in Britain, I find it unlikely that it could work in the US.
Also the quality of the NHS is, in my (albiet brief) experience, sorely lacking. Though you did say "needs massive improvement" so I'm sure you're aware of this.
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