Posted on 09/16/2009 7:07:54 PM PDT by Schnucki
A draft health care bill was issued on Wednesday by a key Senate committee after months of negotiation, helping to clear the way for President Barack Obama's plans to overhaul the American health insurance system.
Senator Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, made public a bill that attracted no Republican supporters and alienated the liberal wing of his own Democratic party.
"The cost of America's broken health care system has stretched families, businesses and the economy too far for too long. For too many, quality, affordable health care is simply out of reach," he said in an introduction to the measure.
The bill would require all Americans and legal residents to obtain health insurance, offer subsidies on a sliding scale to help people buy it, levy fees on health care companies and insurers, and expand Medicaid, the health care system for the poor.
The price tag of $856 billion over ten years is slightly cheaper than four other bills pending in the Senate and House of Representatives, which all would cost at least the politically awkward figure of $1 trillion.
It is therefore regarded as the plan most likely to form the bulk of the final legislation. With only a handful of Republicans likely to support any bill, debate is likely to be keenest between conservative and liberal Democrats.
Several legislative stages await. The Senate Finance Committee will vote on the plan next week and each chamber of Congress will take up initial versions of their health care measures in the coming weeks.
The Baucus proposal does not include a controversial government-run "public" insurance option but calls for the creation of non-profit co-operatives to create competition in the insurance market and reduce costs.
Under the plan, private insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to people
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Seems the townhalls cleaned out the senate committee room, except for the press.
There are 1300 private ins. companies in the US currently offering great competition. The establishment of a few collective model co-ops as a replacement will only reduce to a few common denominators with reduced service at ever increasing cost to what private insured patients demand and receive for the most part now. As they do not do well, only a ‘public option’ will remain as the remains of the day.
Health insurance reform, replacing ‘healthcare’ reform (which never was) is all a boondoggle. Capital currently in private ins companies as they are forced out of business will have to be re-directed for, what in the end will be, federal purposes...maybe that is what lies behind it all.
Where the hell do these politicians get off trying to force me to buy insurance?
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