Senator Max Baucus has come up with his own health care reform plan:
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus unveiled an $856 billion health-care reform plan Wednesday that would require nearly all Americans to carry health insurance while barring insurance companies from discriminating against people based on their health status or denying coverage because of preexisting conditions.
The plan does not call for a government-run insurance option, as advocated by President Obama and most Democrats, but would set up a system of nonprofit consumer-owned cooperatives to compete with private insurers — a provision intended to appeal to Republicans who have railed against the “public option” in recent weeks.
Baucus (D-Mont.) released the plan aimed at overhauling America’s $2.5 trillion health care system ahead of a vote scheduled in the Finance Committee for next week.
“The cost of America’s broken health care system has stretched families, businesses and the economy too far for too long,” he said in a statement. “For too many, quality, affordable health care is simply out of reach. This is a unique moment in history where we can finally reach an objective so many of us have sought for so long.”
He said the “common-sense package” would work for patients, health-care providers and the economy and would not “add a dime to the deficit.” He also pledged that it would rein in soaring health-care costs.
Here’s a basic summary of what the Baucus plan contains:
* Cost $856 billion over 10 years
* Require nearly all Americans to carry health insurance
* Bar insurance companies from discriminating against people based on health status or denying coverage because of preexisting conditions
* Set up a system of nonprofit consumer-owned cooperatives to compete with private insurers (but would not call for government-run plan)
* Establish Web-based insurance exchanges to allow consumers to shop for and compare insurance plans* Expand Medicaid and place caps on patients’ annual health-care costs
* Be paid for with $349 billion in new taxes and fees and $507 billion in cuts to government health programs
* Limit exchange access to legal U.S. residents
* Offer incentives to doctors and hospitals to coordinate care and emphasize prevention
The Club for Growth has already come out with a statement about the Baucus plan:
“The healthcare proposal released today by the Senate Finance Committee is every bit as lethal as the government-run plan so loudly denounced across the nation last month. Clearly, President Obama and his congressional allies don’t realize the country has rejected what they’re proposing. Americans understand that any system – from co-ops to a public option – run by the government under rules imposed by the government with funding provided by the government is government-run healthcare by another name. And Americans realize that real reform doesn’t involve more government mandates and subsidies, as Senator Baucus has proposed, but solutions that empower patients, lower costs, and expand access to quality care.”
“It’s unfortunate that Senator Baucus missed an opportunity to help fix America’s health system and instead re-packaged the same rejected ‘reforms’ sought by the hard-left. His Republican colleagues, Senators Snowe, Grassley, and Enzi, should be praised for listening to their constituents and not signing on to this costly takeover of our healthcare sector.”
Yep.
There’s no public option here, but there’s enough elements of government control left, including the insurance mandate, to make this plan just as bad as the House plan, if not worse.
Don’t forget about the new taxes on Clinics/labs…and Brand named drugs..and Medical devices. So how does increase the cost of medical services and products through new taxes bring down the cost of healthcare??? I haven’t figured that out.
Just out of simple curiosity Doug, what kind of Health Care Reform would you like to see, or do you think the current system works?
This would be a start:
http://belowthebeltway.com/2009/09/08/you-want-an-alternative-health-care-reform-plan-here-it-is-mr-president/
I’m not convinced that simply allowing individuals to buy insurance across state lines will provide competition within the market. It will simply allow the health insurance companies to monopolize on a national level as opposed to simply at a state level.
It also doesn’t address the mater of Insurance companies dropping people simply because they get sick.
And no I don’t support either HR 3200 or this plan that Bacus is putting out due to the mandate that all Americans have to get insurance. With out creating some way of ensuring that there is competition within the market, which is what the public option was meant to do, then they are simply throwing American’s to greed of the insurance industry, just as many states do now with auto insurance.