Pages

Subscribe to this blog's feed
Add me to your TypePad People list

Health Care Reform. 101

2/25/2010 UPDATE: Watch the Bi-Partisan Health Care Summit live right here

This page serves as a home base for health care reform. On it you'll find:

  • A breakdown of exactly what the health reform is with various links to all the bills
  • A breakdown of the major issues of concern on both sides
  • There is also a section on the President's plan
  • Links to the most recent opinion polls
  • A list of some of the most egregious bits of misinformation

Each section links to a detailed analysis.

________________________________________________________________

The Health Care Reform Bill(s):

There is no one Health Care bill. In fact, depending on how you're keeping count, there could be as many as six different bills with varying provisions among both houses of Congress.

THE HOUSE BILL:                             

Picture 14

In the House, three committees are working together on one bill- H.R.3200. As of July 31st, it has passed all three Committees- the Committee on Education and Labor, the House Energy and Commerce Committee , and the Committee on Ways and Means. These provisional bills will be merged to form one bill the finally be voted on by the House of Representatives. 

Here is an in-depth breakdown of House bill H.R.3200.

THE SENATE BILLS:                            

Picture 15

The Senate essentially have two working proposals. The first is Senator Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions' (HELP) Affordable Health Choices Act. The second is being put together by a bi-partisan group of six senators in the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Senator Max Baucus. The main difference between the two proposals is that the HELP bill establishes a government-run health care option and the Senate Finance Committee's instead established a non-profit co-op. 

Here is an in-depth breakdown of the Senate's proposals.

THE PROCESS:                                      

Now that H.R.3200 has passed all three Committees in the House, the three versions will be combined into one bill which will go before the House for a vote. The two Senate Committees still need to vote on their prospective bills and then the Senate will decide exactly which provisions it will choose to support. Only then will the House Senate Conference Committee will work towards creating a universal bill that the President can sign.

Here's a nice breakdown from the New York Times to help illustrate the process:

Flowchart 

Other Republican and Bi-Partisan Bills:                                      

_____________________________________________________________________________

The Issues

REASONS FOR REFORM:

  • Health Care Costs have skyrocketed and continue to increase at rates far beyond sustainability
    • Health care costs have increased at almost a five-fold rate faster then wages in American
    • The Department of Labor found that in 2008 health benefits accounted for more tht thirty percent of en employer's compensation
    • The Kaiser Family Foundation found that family health care costs have gone up 78% in 7 years
    • According to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, The income sector with the fastest growing health care costs are individuals making $25-$75,000 a year
  • 48 million Americans are have no health insurace for varying reasons
  • Medical costs are the number one cause of Bankruptcy (almost 62% according to a Harvard University study)- 78% of those filers already had insurance


PROBLEMS WITH THE CURRENT REFORM:

  • The Costs
    • Though Obama and some Democrats are saying they're won't pass a bill that isn't fully paid for, currently none the bills in Congress have their costs accounted for. The House bill will add the least to the deficit- about $239 billion over 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate HELP bill is estimated to increase the deficit by $597 billion
    • Obama has proposed a number of cuts in the Medicare program that would account for additional costs, but these cuts are not popular among lobbyists and lawmakers and have not been included in the bills
    • The CBO esitmates that none of the bills in Congress will control the rising costs of federal health programs
    • For more: factcheck.org
  • Competition with a goverment-run option could disrupt the private insurance model
    • Though legislation is still pending, the House stipulates that only businesses with fewer then 10 employees would be able to use the insurance exchange during the first year; fewer then 20 employees during the second year; after the third year all employers could be allowed to use the insurance exchange to favor a public option which may or may not be cheaper then private insurance options
    • Estimates vary on just how many people will opt for a public plan. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the public plan will be 10% cheaper then private plans and thus that only about 12 million people will opt for the public plan. However, the Lewin Group estimates that the public plan will be 20% cheaper then private plans and then almost 100 million people could leave their private plans for the public option
    • There's no way to tell exactly how drastic the effect of a public option will be on the private insurance industry; it's reasonable to assume that the private insurance model will be disrupted (*which is partially the goal of health reform)
    • For more: politifact.com, politifact.com (article 2), Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal


_____________________________________________________________________________

The President's Ideas but Congress' Legislation

Barack Obama has made Health Care Reform a major goal of his presidency. He seeks to reform Medicare, Medicaid, establish a public option, and bring down the ever increasing costs of health care (CBO). However he has refrained from drafting any legislation, instead letting Congress hash out the details as they see fit.

He has historically supported single-payer health care, but has lobbied against it in the current reform.

Here's a breakdown of the President's Plan

_____________________________________________________________________________

THE HEALTH CARE MISINFORMATION:

The has been a drastic amount of misinformation being propagated among opponents and supporters of health care reform. Many of these claims have been repeated numerous times throughout the last century. Most of these bits of propaganda are aimed to proselytize fear rather then illicit an educated debate. 

Fortunately, bi-partisan organizations such as factcheck.org and politifact.com are wading through countless pages of legislation and public statements to sift through the misinformation and give us the facts.

False claims:

  • Health Care Reform mandates euthanasia- FALSE (factcheck.org)
  • Government Run health care will ration care and deny care to the sick, elderly, or disabled- FALSE (politifact.com)
  • The Public Option will fund abortions- FALSE (factcheck.org, politifact.com)
  • Health Care Reform is secretly a backdoor legislation for single-payer- FALSE (factcheck.org)

For a more detailed list of misinformation: Health Care Misinformation

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The People's Voice

Health care poll CNN Poll

Statistics are abound and they can be misleading. As of this weekend, support for Health Reform is overwhelmingly in favor- 72-75%- while support for the current reform is split 50-50%.

Here's a detailed analysis of the most recent opinion polls from CBS, NY-TIMES, CNN, and GALLUP

_______________________________________________________________________________________

More Information:

  • Here's a nice breakdown from the Huffington Post:

Healthcare Napkins All
View more documents from Dan Roam.