Posted on 09/16/2009 8:53:13 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Baucus' proposal would require all Americans to get insurance, but it does not include a public option. Key Republicans reject the plan.
Amid fresh signs of tensions among Democrats over healthcare, a leading senator today released the last major proposal that Congress will consider as it attempts to refashion the American healthcare system, a $856-billion bill that includes a mix of sweeping new insurance regulations but no new government insurance plan.
The legislation from Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) fell short of his goal of charting a legislative course that could bring Republicans and Democrats together for the most ambitious overhaul of the health system since the 1960s.
Under the bill, nearly everyone would be required to get insurance or pay a penalty. But insurers, in turn, would not be able to deny coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions or to cancel policies after people got sick, as happens in the current system.
And the federal government would offer subsidies to help lower-income people buy coverage.
Three key GOP lawmakers who had been working with Baucus for months have rejected his bill, all but ensuring that any healthcare legislation that passes this year will win no more than one or two Republican votes.
There are also signs that Baucus' proposal faces trouble among liberal Democrats, who have demanded that Congress allow the government to offer health insurance plans to the public in competition with private insurers.
The completion of Baucus' bill marks the end of one phase of the healthcare debate in which senior congressional Democrats developed a series of three healthcare proposals -- one in the House and two in the Senate. Now, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill will work to unify their party behind a final bill that could pass the House and Senate and make it to
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Well then I will oppose it with my dying breath.
Tort reform? Comprehensive malpractice protections? If not, back to the blackboard.
(oops, did I say blackboard?)
If I’m living under a bridge or in an ACORN dumpster, how are they going to make me buy insurance?
I still don’t think it’s Constitutional for the Congress to require all citizens to have health care.
Spot on NO GOVERNMENT INSURANCE!.
A sure sign of an intractable problem with no solution is that nobody can offer a "compromise" of any kind without completely alienating many of their own supporters. What these morons are proposing in various forms is simply infeasible from any perspective.
DAM Stop the madness!! all that is needed here is these Edwards type lawsuits to stop.
I read his editorial on the WSJ.
It was lacking on any details. I hope that we, as long with our congress critters get a reasonable amount of time to review and respond to this.
I remain skeptical and scared.
Force everyone? Wasn’t there an amendment about slavery? did it get relpealed?
If only the opponents can learn to say this and say it every time this comes up:
This itself is a government plan.
It doesn’t matter what they pass or what’s left in or out or what they call it:
IT’S A GOVERNMENT PLAN!!
It forces a bunch of stuff on us, over our freedoms and the free market.
It orders all the players around.
Sets the rules and regs and penalties for noncompliance.
Can we get this into people’s thick skulls???
This sounds identical to the BS we got dropped on us in MA. Buy insurance or get fined, fined, fined.
Call it what it is: “protection money”
I’ve wondered about that too. And that’s part of why I don’t believe Obama saying that illegal aliens are not covered by these proposals. Since current federal law mandates that everyone can get emergency room care, regardless of immigration status, insurance status, or any other reason, it strains believability that somehow the good liberals will discriminate against illegal aliens with this plan.
So how do we compel homeless and others to buy insurance? Realistically, how will we levy fines on certain people who didn’t buy required insurance?
Many states require that car owners have car insurance. But even in those states, there are still some who don’t comply with those laws. It might be instructive to see how those states deal with uninsured drivers. It might be instructive to study lots of these details before we rush headlong with both feet into a liberal utopian healthcare “reform” plan.
And why isn’t tort reform part of any of these plans? Part of what drives healthcare costs is defensive medicine, the fear that somebody like John Edwards will come along with malpractice lawsuits. Then doctors have to prove to the likes of John Edwards that they crossed every t and dotted every i, to prove that they ran every possible medical test on somebody.
Obama is misleading when he says that doctors should e-mail test results to others, rather than repeating the same tests over and over. Part of the reason for repeating tests is defensive medicine, and part of it is to confirm that the first test was accurate.
And Obama thinks that doctors are eager to cut out tonsils and amputate the feet of diabetics.
There is so much misinformation out there that somebody could write a book. The false assumptions out there about why healthcare costs and processes have evolved the way that they have are staggering.
“Baucus’ proposal would require all Americans to get insurance”
Under what authority?
States demand we get car insurance, but that’s because they’re states, and can do what they want within their various constitutions. And they own the roads.
I understand that the Bill still has Government funded abortion. Anyone seen the Bill?
“So how do we compel homeless and others to buy insurance? Realistically, how will we levy fines on certain people who didn’t buy required insurance?”
In answer to the first question, we wouldn’t. They would go on the doles. Free lunches for all.
In answer to the second, through the Kommissars.
(************cough********* ILLEGALS ************cough*************cough*******)
I think yours would be free then...
Wow! A bill that manages to please no one, except Max himself.
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