HELP: A Potential Solution to Health Care Reform?
According to an item on yesterday's Huff Post, the Democrats have come up with a new HC reform bill that would cover 97% of Americans and cost $400 million less than the previously proposed plan.
From the article:
"Additionally, the revised proposal calls for a $750 annual fee on employers for each full-time worker not offered coverage through their job. The fee would be set at $375 for part-time workers. Companies with fewer than 25 employees would be exempt. The fee was forecast to generate $52 billion over 10 years, money the government would use to help provide subsidies to those who cannot afford insurance. The same provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals."
[...]
"In their letter, Kennedy and Dodd said the Congressional Budget Office 'has carefully reviewed our complete bill, and we are pleased to report that CBO has scored it at $611.4 billion over 10 years, with the new coverage provisions scored at $597 billion. ...The completed bill virtually eliminates the dropping of currently covered employees from employer-sponsored health plans.
'In addition, our bill, combined with the work being done by our colleagues in the Finance Committee, will dramatically reduce the number of uninsured _ fully 97 percent of Americans will have coverage, a major achievement.' "
Guess we'll see if the majority in both houses has the cojones to act on this change so many Americans desperately need.
6 comments:
Let's hope they do. Health Care is one of the major promises Obama made. If he's not able to deliver on this, I don't know, I'm gonna wonder if he's who we thought he is.
Ditto, Mikeb.
I have been having my doubts, too.
I have had some doubts about Obama as well, but how is he supposed to get health care reform without Congress' help? With 60 possible Dem votes, shouldn't they be ruling the world? What are they doing up there?
Something needs to be done. I am literally one who has fallen through the cracks. I have major medical which pays 80% of hospitalization, but no office visits, no ER, no X-rays, anad on and on. Those extras are killing me. I can't even go see my cardiologist - something is terribly wrong.
LLL...they should be kicking ass, that's what they should be doing....not pandering...screw bipartisanship at this point...I'm getting pissed off! Just fucking do it!
I was cracking up at this, because I have been writing letters up the gazoo about using the employer-based system to cough up some money....what employer wouldn't give up the responsibility of covering their employees? Even if they all paid a PERCENTAGE of what they now pay into a government system, they would come out smelling like a rose!!! Thanks for the post about it! glad someone is listening and thinking this through...
It is a scary situation indeed.
I think this problem has been put off, and put off, and put off to the point the *something* has to be done.
The US has never provided health care on this scale... it's going to have some bumps and hiccups before it gets running smoothly.
I just hope people with chronic and/or life threatening health problems will be the first in line-- especially those who have been left out in the cold by their employers who choose big profits over people.
I survived a life threatening illness myself a number of years ago.
I had crappy health care that I paid for out of my own pocket while working at a *huge* dental practice, where the dentists took medicaid and got new cars and vacation homes while they paid their employees little to nothing... and no benefits. I gradually got sicker and sicker over a period of months and I went to the doctor, despite my shitty insurance. A cursory glance, a prescription, and no eye contact for the whole of the five minutes the doctor spent with me was all my insurance and my life were worth.
Months later, still sick but with better insurance, the same MD decided to give me a chest x-ray and blood work.
Helped her see the 13 1/2 cm. tumor in my trachea.
I know their are good doctors out there. But until we stop making people's *lives* a business that some people profit from, we are no better than our ancestors thousands of years ago howling and throwing rocks at the moon.
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