Bipartisan Forum On Health Care Leaves Many Asking, What’s Next?

Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by admin in Community Focus, Global News

By Shanita Bigelow

President Barack Obama discusses a point with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during the health insurance reform legislation meeting at Blair House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, 2010.

“[W]e need to find common ground…We know it’s possible to do this,” Obama stated in his weekly address, Saturday evening. “[N]o final bill will include everything that everyone wants. That’s what compromise is…I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care…But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge. The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses…Americans with preexisting conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.”
Thursday’s bipartisan meeting, a seven hour, televised debate, further solidified Republican and Democratic differences; chief among them, cost and implementation. And what little ground they found provided few solutions and left many, even those in attendance, with more than a few questions, most prevalent: What’s next?
“I think it was a good forum,” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I hope that it could be the basis for us to have some serious negotiations. But we still have the fundamental problem: Do we go on the partisan plan that…ran through the Senate and the House or do we start over from the beginning?”
But starting over to some is tantamount to doing nothing. The “Republican mantra” of starting over “means do nothing,” according to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) also on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”  That’s simply not the case, according to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WS), who said “we want to fix this…but this is not the solution,” at Thursday’s meeting.
Republicans fear a government takeover and suggest starting over and addressing the problem step by step. “Coverage doesn’t equal care,” said Sen. John Barrasso (RWY), as Republicans tout a bill that would expand coverage to only three of the more 30 million Americans currently uninsured.
“[We] can’t get from one point to the next incrementally unless we deal with it holistically,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT).
Aside from opposing solutions to the health care quandary, the parties also differ in their definition of the problem itself, said Ronald Brownstein, Political Director for Atlantic Media, on “Meet the Press.”
“[T]he Senate bill reallocates resources in the health care system effectively enough that the independent Medicare actuary has estimated that the measure would cover 33 million more people by 2019 while increasing total health care spending by less than a penny on the dollar. It’s not perfect, but…does provide a solid foundation for a more equitable and efficient health system,” Brownstein wrote in the National Journal Magazine. Democrats hope to build upon the common ground and muster enough votesto move the legislation through to the American people. Should Democrats find themselves stymied by their fellow congressmen and women, they may opt for congressional r e c o n c i l i a t i o n . Reconciliation would allow for passage with a majority of 51 votes as opposed to 60, a risky move for such sweeping legislation. Today, President Obama will address “what’s next.” He “will talk about the merits of the legislation, mainly about the costs of doing nothing versus the cost of doing something and what this will accomplish,” said Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, to the New York Times.

Unraveling the Public Option

Posted on 13. Oct, 2009 by admin in Global News

President Obama delivering his September 9, health care address to a joint session of Congress. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza, courtesy of whitehouse.gov.

While President Obama is focused on a health care reform bill that “ensures choice and competition,” the President has stopped short of saying whether overhauling the nation’s healthcare system would include a so called public plan. However, reports indicate that the administration is involved in talks with Democratic lawmakers to push for passage of a public option.

On tomorrow, the Senate Finance Committee will vote on its sweeping health care reform bill while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will work to merge two Senate bills together. One bill was created in July by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and includes two fundamental provisions that the finance committee legislation does not.

Presumably, the finance committee legislation will include a government run insurance plan that Reid and other liberal Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have backed. However, the question over whether he will push for a government-run insurance plan in the final legislation remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the Senate committee is waiting on a report on cost projections from the Congressional Budget Office before it votes on the legislation and last week voted to strike two amendments that would establish a so-called public option to compete with private insurance coverage, according to reports.

During the debate on health reform, the public option has been positively posited as a means of keeping private insurers honest, thus ensuring fair and affordable prices for all Americans. On the other hand, opponents claim a public option would not allow for fair competition, putting private insurers out of business and ensuring a government takeover. But with all the talk about a public option, National Opinion Research Center (NORC) Senior Fellow Jon Gabel said, “it’s unfortunate that the public option has gained so much attention since the percentage [of the population] that could enroll in the public plan is only 5%.”

The uproar for and against the public plan is undermining what really matters and that’s changing the market, Gabel pointed out. Questions raised by the public option include, “Who will administer the public plan. If it is like Medicare, then private insurance companies will…even the public option will have a blend of the public and private,” he said.

“It hits a raw, ideological nerve on the left and the right, [but]…it’s a secondary issue rather than a primary [one],” Gabel maintains. The public option would be “most useful, as an alternative, in those states where there are one or two insurers…dominat[ing] the market,” he continued. “The most important objective of this legislation is to control [healthcare] costs,” Gabel said, which according to the latest data, are constantly going up. For example, family health premiums rose 5% over the past year to an annual cost of $13,375, according to the Employer Health Benefit 2009 Annual Survey. The survey results, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) also revealed a more than 131% increase in premiums since 1999. Since 1998, most Americans have felt and continue to feel that the government is not spending enough money on health care, said Tom W. Smith, Director of the General Social Survey (GSS).

“People come out and say it [reform] will cost $1 trillion…,” Smith said. “[It’s] the sheer enormity of the number that’s…scaring some people away.” Congress needs to get the “interim plans” down to “the plan with six to eight points people can grasp,” he continued. “Now, there is just too much uncertainty.”