Posts tagged with 'Medicare'
Weekly Pulse: No Public Option: Worse Than Nothing?
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
In search of the elusive, filibuster-proof 60th vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eviscerated the Senate’s health care reform bill on Tuesday. Potential GOP swing voter Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) confirmed that Reid promised to kill both the public option and the expanded Medicare buy-in, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.
Snowe didn’t pledge to support the bill, of course. She didn’t even promise to cooperate on the procedural votes required to pass the bill before Christmas, a deadline that the Obama administration has its heart set on. In other words, Reid gave away the progressive crown jewels of health reform on spec to a senator who cheerfully turned around and continued the Republican stalling strategy. From Snowe’s vantage point, that’s a great move. The longer the bill hangs in limbo, the more Reid will give away.
Former Democrat Joe Lieberman (I-CT) seems determined to kill the bill. Lieberman must be motivated more by a desire to spite liberals than any principled policy stance. He keeps threatening to filibuster policy proposals he once campaigned on, like the Medicare buy-in. Lee Fang of TAPPED notes that Lieberman told the New York Times that he now opposes the buy-in because it’s beloved of lefty single-payer types like Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY); and the policy wonk behind the public option, Prof. Jacob Hacker.
The Women’s Media Center has launched the #UnderTheBus campaign, which calls on supporters to contact their representatives and urge them not to let Lieberman and his close, anti-choice ally Ben Nelson (D-NE) sell out women’s health care for political gain. Nelson has hinted he won’t vote for the bill unless it contains strong abortion funding restrictions.
Stephanie Mencimer reports in Mother Jones that a bunch of teabaggers decided to stage a sit-in to oppose the health bill at Lieberman’s office. Mark Meckler and some Tea Party Patriots showed up at Lieberman’s office and asked to meet with the senator. When they were told he wasn’t available, they all sat down. When they tried that routine at Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office (D-CA), her staff ignored them. Lieberman’s staff called the cops. (Note to teabaggers: Sit-ins are for enemies, not allies.)
The senate bill is so watered down that it wouldn’t even stop insurance companies from capping benefits, as Roger Bybee reports at Working In These Times.
Former congressional candidate Darcy Burner says she’d rather see the bill die than have it pass in its current state.She argues that if health care reform doesn’t curb costs, it’s just a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. She writes in AlterNet:
The fundamental failing of the newest Senate proposal is that it requires individuals to purchase health insurance, but does nothing to rein in what insurance companies charge. There is nothing to stop spiraling health costs from eating up an ever-increasing percentage of our national productivity.
The House bill has two major cost-control mechanisms: the public option and the 85 percent medical-loss ratio requirement. The Senate bill is on track to have neither, and nothing new to replace them. The Senate bill is a recipe for national disaster. If it’s that bill or nothing, I prefer nothing.
Adding insult to injury, the Senate also voted down a bill yesterday that would have made it easier for consumers to purchase cheaper prescription drugs abroad. Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent suggests that the White House was relieved to see the Dorgan-Snowe bill defeated because it would have violated the deal it struck with pharmaceutical companies earlier this year. The drug companies promised up to $80 billion for health care reform if Democratic leaders withheld support for several initiatives that would cut into drug company profits.
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Weekly Pulse: Senate Prepares to Cast First Votes
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
The Senate is scheduled to begin voting on proposed amendments to the health care reform bill today. It takes 60 votes to pass an amendment and most of the proposed measures for the health care bill will never pass. It’s a great opportunity to grandstand over pet issues, however. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Problems for the Public Option
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
The House released a final version of the health reform bill. It has a public option all right, but not the robust version progressives were hoping for. The public plan would only cover 2% of Americans and premiums will cost more than anticipated.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) continued to threaten to join a Republican filibuster of a health care bill with a public option. A lot of people still think he’s bluffing. Realistically, the public option probably faces more serious threats from inside the Democratic caucus. It’s been whittled down at an alarming rate. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Signs of Hope in the Senate
Of all the hurdles facing healthcare reform in 2009, the U.S. Senate is arguably the most formidable. But the prospects for passing a healthcare bill this year have brightened noticeably over the past few days, thanks to a senate seat pickup in Minnesota, solidifying support for the budget reconciliation strategy, and tentative overtures towards bipartisanship from key Republicans.
A three-judge panel declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota senate race. We don’t have a firm date for seating Franken, but Harry Reid said to be looking forward to doing so in the near future. Franken is an outspoken advocate for healthcare reform and favors expanding the public insurance system to cover more people.
Sen. Kristin Gillibrand, D-N.Y., spoke out in favor of passing healthcare reform through the budget reconciliation process this week, as Public News Service reports. Gilibrand is the latest in a string of Democratic legislators to support the reconciliation process, which would allow the Senate to circumvent a filibuster and pass legislation with simple majority vote.
Some Republicans might even be willing to work with the Democrats on healthcare reform. Senator Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is hinting that she might be willing to cooperate with Democrats, Steve Benen writes in the Washington Monthly. And according to Public News Service, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is expected to work closely with Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. on healthcare reform legislation: “I think [Grassley] and Senator Max Baucus of Montana are really the champions of bi-partisanship in this whole debate. I think that in order for us to get an effective piece of legislation it’s going to have to be bi-partisan,” Lee Hammond, president-elect of the AARP national board, told Public News Service at a healthcare forum attended by Grassley.
A personal essay in The Nation underscores how badly healthcare reform is needed: Medical bills are threatening to tear Kate Michelman’s family apart. First, her uninsured adult daughter was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident. Then her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Eventually Michelman couldn’t afford to keep her husband in a nursing facility, so she brought him home, which means she’s unable to work. The irony is that she thought that her husband had good health insurance plus long-term care insurance, and relatively speaking, he did–it just wasn’t enough to keep his family from being bankrupted by a major illness.
For all the good news coming out of the Senate, the private insurance industry won’t go down with out a fight. James Ridgeway of Mother Jones reports that insurance companies that provide private Medicare coverage are holding elderly clients hostage in a battle with the government over subsidies. The government cut off the subsidy and the insurance companies sending out propaganda to their policy-holders threatening to raise premiums and urging them to lobby the government to reverse the subsidy, Ridgeway explains:
Finally, for a refreshing change of pace, The Nation tells the story of healthcare reform in photographs.
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