BACKBONE: Howard Dean says: Vote the Senate health-care 'reform' DOWN

POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, September 14, 2025 23:09
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RUE

Friday, January 15, 2010 12:28 AM

If only they had just said NO.

F@(K.

"WASHINGTON -- After hours of negotiations at the White House, labor unions agreed Thursday afternoon to support healthcare reform legislation with a tax on expensive insurance plans, a provision they had opposed loudly for months. The deal is a big win for the administration, which managed to dodge a revolt by key allies on President Obama's top domestic policy priority.

So the reform bill inched along, one step closer to passage. "We believe we are going to actually implement a healthcare plan that is good for American families," said Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union. (White House officials confirmed the agreement not long after labor officials announced it.)

Quite a few more details need to be worked out to combine the bills passed by the House and Senate, but the excise tax was one of the bigger ones. Union leaders were able to soften the tax's impact a bit: it won't take effect until 2013; it will affect plans that cost more than $24,000 per family or $8,900 for individuals, up slightly from the levels in the Senate bill; those levels will be adjusted annually for inflation and adjusted additionally for plans that are expensive because they cover inherently expensive groups, and they won't include the cost of dental or vision plans after 2015; plans worked out through collective bargaining will be exempt from the tax altogether until 2018; and by then, unions in collective bargaining agreements would be able to buy insurance through a new exchange system the legislation would set up, instead of going through employers. (In the years in between, unions could try to renegotiate their contracts to get higher wages instead of so-called "Cadillac" healthcare plans.) The changes mean the tax won't raise as much money to offset the costs of the bill -- the tax would raise $90 billion over 10 years, instead of $150 billion as the Senate bill had it."



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RUE

Thursday, February 18, 2010 11:35 PM

Since this is the thread where I believe most of the useful debate on healthcare is located, though several threads have recently become healthcare threads, I will post here.

I have no problem with a government-run public option.

I have no problem with the richest people underwriting at least some of it with taxes. After all, if they get 95% of the benefit of this system, perhaps they should be paying 95% of the taxes to make it work.

But I understand the many calculations behind not doing it.

ONE is that by making PEOPLE pay into PRIVATE insurance plans the costs get hidden from view.

Politically, this is a good thing, b/c it doesn't increase the federal deficit (BIG no-no) OR taxes (even BIGGER no-no).

And it keeps the rich comfy - even gives them more than they already have, ensuring they will go along.

TWO is that by putting ALL medical care squarely onto private insurers, it keeps them from 'cherry-picking' the most profitable payers, while dumping the ones who really need expensive care onto the government - at public expense.

Most people have been assuming that government health care will be cheaper per person, which is what will drive the rates. But IF it is forced to pick up the worst cases without getting enough of the better ones, it may in fact be more expensive. And dumping expensive cases onto government while keeping the better ones could make private insurance even MORE profitable. And that would be one of those regrettable unintended consequences.



As to Obama's role on health care, I think he is playing an interesting game. He COULD be hammering the issue from the bully pulpit, stating what HAS to happen to make things right for the tens of thousands of people each year who are dying, literally, for medical care. Instead, he talks about bipartisanship, puts Baucus in charge in the Senate, compromises away anything of value in the reform ... ALL THE WHILE exhorting the democrats to get the job done.

How I read this: (Obama) "I need to be forced into this, literally, so that I can get credit for getting it done, while at the same time keeping my cred with business."

Signed,

The ever cynical and rueful
Rue


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SIGNYM

Friday, February 19, 2010 1:52 AM

There are TWO critical pieces to health care reform:

One is the public option: Allow people to buy into Medicare.

The other is to require that insurance companies take all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and require that the ratio between highest to lowest premiums not be any greater than a factor of two.

Then let the games begin!

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KWICKO

Friday, February 19, 2010 2:27 AM

A lot is being made of "portability" by those on the right, and I know what they're getting at. They SAY they want you to be able to carry your coverage across state lines if you move for a better job, or whatever (which seems a laudable goal); what they MEAN, though, is that this portability would mean that insurance would only have to be as good as that in the states with the WORST insurance plans, and that you (as another state) couldn't require MORE than that, because it would be unfair. That's why conservatives keep bringing up portability, and what they mean when they talk about it.

So address portability, by all means. But let's step around the issue of that idea that insurance in all states must match that of the LEAST states. Hell, we can write it so that it must match that of the BEST states, if we wanted to. Hawaiian-style insurance reform, anyone? :)


And "tort reform"... The amount of money that's eaten up by tort lawsuits is on the order of 2 to 3 percent of their profits. So when the conservatives start saying that the solution to healthcare reform is tort reform, just remember their reaction to Obama telling us all to save gas by checking our tires. If you thought his suggestion was ridiculous, you should think theirs is, too.

Would Iike to see SOME kind of tort reform? Sure; wouldn't everybody? But they keep talking numbers like $100,000 lifetime payout for extreme malpractice events like taking off the wrong leg (and then having to take the other one, too, because it had to come off to begin with). And they want this tort reform to apply to EVERYTHING, across the board, it seems. That means Ford's Pinto debacle would have had a maximum payout of $100,000 for killing people with a design they KNEW to be faulty and dangerous. Hell, no wonder greed-heads want that kind of reform. It would leave them all but immune to ever having to pay for their fuck-ups.

So much for paying lip service to "responsibility", eh?

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde