Kennedy Health Legislation to Hit the floor Today

The health care debate is heating up as a bill Kennedy is pushing hits the house today. In contrast to the Baucus plan, the Kennedy plan calls for a public insurance plan and mandates employers must provide health insurance and forces everyone to to buy health insurance. Details are a little sketchy, for example what type of penalty would exists for people who do not but insurance, the so called invincible. On the other hand the public insurance program would pay doctors and hospitals 10% more then the medicare pay schedule. This could be changed of course and its no surprise the AMA has come out against it. The biggest hole of course who is who is going to pay for it and the failure to address Medicare's insolvency (Slide 6)

Draft legislation to be released later today will largely track a Kennedy proposal that circulated last week, Dodd told reporters today. He said it will make clear that proposals Republicans are balking at -- creation of a government-run program to cover some of the nation’s 46 million uninsured and an employer health-coverage mandate -- are only options as Democrats and Republicans seek compromises.

Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said the committee will work on the bill for two weeks in an effort to meet President Barack Obama’s call for completion of Senate and House health-care proposals by the end of July. Dodd said he discussed strategy with Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, for about three hours over the weekend at Kennedy’s home in Massachusetts.“I have every hope that he’ll be back here and be part of this debate,” Dodd said. Kennedy has a history of crafting bipartisan agreements on landmark legislation.Kennedy’s plan would require everyone to have health insurance, penalize those who don’t buy it, provide coverage subsidies for lower-income Americans and bar insurers from limiting coverage.

Employer Mandate

All employers would be required to supply health insurance for workers or contribute to the cost of other coverage. Kennedy also would create a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers, an Obama priority that is opposed by Republicans.It would direct the secretary of Health and Human Services to run the public plan. The program would pay doctors and hospitals 10 percent more than they would get under Medicare.

The Democrats plan for something called clearing houses. It works like this, any state would have a number of private insurance companies in the market, all of them would follow basic requirements as established by the Federal government, in addition there would be a public option for people to choose from. The insurers for their part are adamantly opposed to government competition for obvious reasons, but the insurance companies have signed on to allowing anyone to qualify for insurance on the logic that forcing people to buy coverage will increase their customer base and provide enough profit to cover people with health conditions. I suspect higher premiums is the most likely result of such a Faustian bargain between Health Insurers and Obama. But waiting lists and doctor shortages are what to be expected if this goes through as well as further fiscal woes for the United States. Considering the nonsense Obama routinely spouts about health care, this should be quite a debate this summer. I do hope Congress deigns to read the legislation this time.