Posted on 09/09/2009 9:47:35 AM PDT by La Lydia
The U.S. health care system is in crisis. This crisis is not limited to the 46 million who lack health insurance – it extends to those who have health coverage but are worried about increasing costs. Rising health care costs affect families and American businesses, as health insurance premiums continue to outpace wages and inflation. Between 1999 and 2008, premiums for employer-sponsored health benefits increased 117 percent for families and individuals and 119 percent for employers. And annual health spending growth is expected to outpace average annual growth in the overall economy by 2.1 percentage points in each of the next ten years. In 2009 alone, health spending will increase 5.5 percent while gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to decrease 0.2 percent....
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.senate.gov ...
Financing: Delivery system reform, reductions in health spending, and changes to the current tax treatment of health care alone may not pay for all of health care reform on their own. Many proposals expected to reduce health spending in the long run may not produce sufficient savings in the short run to finance reform. For this reason, other options may need to be considered. Other proposals to generate revenue for health care reform could include taxes that affect lifestyle choices and taxes that generally target loopholes. President Obama’s fiscal year 2010 budget contains a number of proposals to raise revenue, some of which may be able to help finance
comprehensive health care reform.
Is this a CURRENT plan? It is dated May 20,2009.
This isn’t the bill. It is a working document outlining strategies and options they are considering.
Max, why don’t you all agree to sign onto the plan. Don’t use parsing words like Steny Hoyer. He said he’d be willing to have the option to sign on too. I think it’s fair to assume that if single payer were to pass, the house, senate and all bureaucrats would never give up their plush insurance plan to sign on to a government ‘let them eat cake’ plan. This is a slippery bunch and the all need to be turned out next year.
I'll be posting the text in several posts here.
The U.S. health care system is in crisis. This crisis is not limited to the 46 million who lack health insurance – it extends to those who have health coverage but are worried about increasing costs. Rising health care costs affect families and American businesses, as health insurance premiums continue to outpace wages and inflation. Between 1999 and 2008, premiums for employer-sponsored health benefits increased 117 percent for families and individuals and 119 percent for employers. And annual health spending growth is expected to outpace average annual growth in the overall economy by 2.1 percentage points in each of the next ten years. In 2009 alone, health spending will increase 5.5 percent while gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to decrease 0.2 percent. Senate Finance Committee
Financing Comprehensive Health Care Reform:
Proposed Health System Savings and Revenue OptionsRising health care costs also have a significant impact on federal and state health care programs. Last week’s release of the 2009 Medicare Trustees Report indicates that the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2017, two years earlier than last year’s report. Spending for Medicare and Medicaid is projected to increase by 114 percent in ten years. Over the same period, the GDP is projected to grow by just 64 percent. Last year, health spending in the U.S. represented 16.6 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) – a much greater share than any other industrialized country. And according to the most recent National Health Expenditure estimates, health care expenditures will consume over 20 percent of the GDP by 2018, an amount representing $4.4 trillion in annual spending.
Recent studies have demonstrated that greater use of medical technology is an important factor contributing to rising health spending – contributing between 38 and 65 percent to health care cost increases. Other factors contributing to rising health costs include obesity and demographics.
Responsible health care reform must provide health care coverage for all Americans while at the same time reduce the rate of growth in health care spending. These goals must be achieved in a fiscally responsible manner with sustainable sources of funding. The purpose of this document is to outline policy options for financing comprehensive health care reform. Three specific areas of potential funding sources are explored: savings achieved from within the health care system from reductions in current levels of spending; reevaluating current health tax subsidies; and changes to non-health tax provisions.
As with the documents outlining policy options for delivery system reform and expanding health care coverage, this document is intended to spur discussion of proposed options that the committee is scheduled to act on in June. While these proposed options are jointly offered for discussion, not all the options in this document have the support of Chairman Baucus or Ranking Member Grassley.
Page 1
You are right. But this is the closest to text substance that they have released, and it isn’t difficult to see where they are going. It is my understanding that the actual text, in the appropriately cloudly legalese, won’t be released until shortly before it is introduced. Let the fun begin.
Ekk. You are right. Their link bounced me to this one, rather than the one advertised. And now I have downloaded the damn thing.
Now they have taken EVERYTHING down on his plan, with the exception of the May posting. Perhaps they are having technical problems.
I'm having problems cutting and pasting. Some of these pages are "scrambled" so that when you cut and paste, you get garbage.
This is about cutting Medicare benefits by reducing or eliminating some of the things that Medicare covers.
Proposed Options Policy options to adjust annual market basket updates for Medicare fee-for-service providers are described in the MedPAC 2009 Report to Congress. These include reducing or eliminating market basket updates in 2010 for any provider payment area recommended by MedPAC. These market basket changes could be adjusted from the MedPAC recommended levels or could be accomplished over multiple years. An additional option in this area may include establishing differential payment updates for low and high-margin areas for fiscal year 2010 as well as in additional years.
Apparently the text of his latest is not posted yet. There will be an update on this. It is useful, however, to see how they are thinking about these things.
This is about reducing what Medicare will pay for home health services. One option (first paragraph), cover fewer types of services. Another option, just pay less for the covered services. Or don't pay for services to "remote" locations. So if you live outside a covered "service area" you either have to move closer to the provider(s) or Medicare won't pay for your home health care services.
Proposed Options
There are various policy options that could be considered in this area. One option may include implementing MedPAC’s recommendations regarding market basket adjustments in 2010 and contemplating further adjustments given the current levels of payments in the program.Another option may be to direct the Secretary to “re-base” home health payments to better reflect the current number and mix of HH services and their level of intensity and to take into account the relative margins related to specific conditions and service areas. Finally, other options may include establishing a provider-specific annual cap on the number of allowable outlier episodes that HHAs can be reimbursed for in a year.
Trust but Verify wrote:
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The fundamental problem with all this "reform" that is being proposed is that none of it will actually reduce prices for medical services and goods. The only ways to reduce prices in the real world is to reduce demand or to increase supply. These "reform" proposals increase demand (by covering tens of millions of currently "uninsured" people), and now I see they may actually propose to reduce supply (by cutting funds for medical education).
More demand + less supply = much higher prices.
If you add "price controls" to "control costs", you get shortages and rationing.
These are fundamental properties of the world we live in. The laws of supply and demand can't be amended or repealed by legislative action.
Max, why don’t you all agree to sign onto the plan.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:34:./temp/~bdlIrU:@@@L&summ2=m&;
Do you have a bill number? Or resolution number? What were you trying to link to? There are ways to make permanent links into Thomas, but you have to build the link yourself.
If you tell me what you are trying to link, I can post the permanent link. Or you can refer to Direct Links to Thomas Documents and Handles Help (for the new style "Legislative Handle" links).
The only ideas that will result in affordable care are coming from conservatives who can’t get their plans heard. Maybe we should buy time on the networks to present our alternatives?
It’s HRes 615 and 642 - both basically saying that Congress should be under the same government healthcare that gets imposed on the rest of us. Sorry about the link.
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