Dems Reach Health Care Compromise?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Health CareThat’s the word tonight, but the details are thin right now.
Senate Democrats have reached a “broad agreement” on a health reform bill, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday night — a plan that would replace the public option in the current Senate bill with a new national insurance plan offered by private insurers, and a chance for older Americans to “buy in” to Medicare.Democrats on Tuesday night took a major step forward on a plan by agreeing to ask congressional scorekeepers to give them cost estimates on a possible compromise that would break the impasse over health reform in the Senate.
In doing so, Senate negotiators moved decisively away from including a government-run health insurance plan that would start on Day One in any final compromise, a major disappointment for the Democratic base but one that is likely to prove necessary to win over fiscally moderate senators.
Instead, Democrats are considering including a “trigger” that would allow a public plan to kick in – but only in the event that private insurers didn’t step up and offer policies for the new national health insurance plan, which seemed unlikely.
Still, it’s unlikely that this will get any Republican support….
“My deep concern is about the breadth and scale of this legislation, taking it in a more expansionistic approach for government’s role rather than the reverse,” Snowe told reporters. “You can design incentives in this legislation to maximize the power of the marketplace in making sure the industry performs.”
But Dems could get Lieberman…
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), another undecided moderate who opposes any version of the public plan, hasn’t been participating in the meetings. But his staff is present, and he speaks with Schumer every day, Lieberman told reporters Tuesday.He said he is encouraged by a proposal to remove the public option and replace it with a national nonprofit insurance program administered by a federal agency. Regarding Medicare and Medicaid, Lieberman said he needed to examine the additional costs.
More as it develops…
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December 9th, 2009 at 12:27 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Justin Gardner, Donklephant. Donklephant said: DONKLEPHANT: Dems Reach Health Care Compromise? http://ow.ly/167G4e [...]
December 9th, 2009 at 12:46 am
This feels to me like the change that will eventually drag it over the finish line.
December 9th, 2009 at 11:44 am
A trigger mechanism may pull in Olympia Snowe from the GOP side as well.
December 10th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Early word is that they will offer a pool similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan … a “group” of private plans that federal employees get to choose from. If so, its a spectacularly bad idea: the FEHBP has higher costs than private insurance, and is anticipated to increase 7.9% this year and 8.8% next year … while private insurance will increase 5.5% and 6.2%. Source for this and other disturbing numbers is Cato.org. I’m trying to verify them now.
December 10th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Whether you verify their numbers or not their argument is self-contradictory. If Medicare costs rise faster than private plans nobody will use it and the buy-in’s contribution to health costs will be trivial.
It’s also slightly dishonest — the FEHBP doesn’t offer a Medicare buy-in, and the Medicare buy-in is intended to keep costs down by forcing insurance companies to be honest.
BTW, this is the perfect example of why the GOP should have cut a deal with Obama in June ’09. In Congress the only strong constituency for cost control is in the GOP.
But the GOP wouldn’t deal, so Obama has to rely on progressives (who see cost-controls largely as a necessary evil), and irrational moderates. As Progressives saw the public option as their main goal, the moderates opposed it, and a potential $1p00 billion savings died.
The right can whine when the other cost controls die if it wants. But everybody who knows this stuff knows that if they really wanted those cost controls all they had to do was tell the tea-partiers to go jump in August.