October 19, 2009 5:59 PM

Is Quality, Affordable Health Care Possible for $900B?

By
Stephanie Condon
Topics
Health Care
(AP)
Requiring all Americans to acquire health insurance is central to health care reform, a key lawmaker said Monday. But it remains unclear how that can be done in a way that is both affordable for individuals and within the budget constraints put forth by lawmakers.

As Congress has worked on its various health care bills, a core component in all plans has been the requirement for all Americans to get insurance, or the "individual mandate." Some Republicans are opposed to the individual mandate, including Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who wields considerable influence in the debate as the Republican most likely to vote in favor of Democrats' health care plans. Snowe said last week she hopes to revisit the mandate on the Senate floor.

On a conference call with reporters Monday, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who led a health care bill through the Senate Finance Committee, defended the individual mandate as a moral responsibility.

"We have to ask ourselves a very basic question: should all Americans have health insurance or not?" Baucus said. "If all Americans are part of the system, we're going to be moving down the road of true health insurance reform."

The senator continued, "Some Americans are rich, some are poor... when it comes to health care reform, everybody's the same. Whether you're old or young, we're all in this together."

However, if Democrats are to keep their commitment to limit the cost of health care reform to around $900 billion without adding to the deficit, they need to find ways to expand coverage that doesn't add too much to the bottom line. And that could mean treating people very differently depending on factors like age or income.

CBSNews.com Special Report: Health Care
Health Care Progress Report: October 19

Baucus on Monday described the different ways Congress could make health insurance more affordable -- and thereby feasibly obtainable -- for all Americans. One way would be to simply increase the subsidies that low- and middle-income Americans will get to help pay for insurance. But as he noted, "we don't want to go much over $900 billion over 10 years."

Another way to make coverage more affordable, Baucus said, is to address "minimum creditable coverage," or the percentage of health care costs that insurance companies would be required to cover. The Senate's current bill would require insurers to cover at least 65 percent of health care costs. Baucus said that could be lowered, but he acknowledged the drawbacks of the idea.

"That's going to make insurance less expensive, however it's going to mean less coverage," he said.

The Senate is also considering a separate "young invincible" policy, which would offer only catastrophic coverage for people 25 years old or younger. Snowe has mentioned expanding that plan to more people, and Baucus brought up the idea on Monday as well.

Leaders in the Senate could also consider simply raising the penalty for people who do not purchase insurance, Baucus said.

"If that penalty is changed that'll have an effect on coverage, too," he said. "There are a lot of moving parts here."

Add a Comment See all 34 Comments
by imalexdude October 20, 2009 10:32 PM EDT
Any plan that REQUIRES individuals to purchase health care insurance has obviously been tainted by lobbyists. You should not be forced to pay for something just so you can breathe air. I don't see how throwing around 900 billion dollars is going to help anything either. This is just reckless. We need to agree on a change of policy, but that should not cost the tax payers an outrageous 900 billion dollars.
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by Aldymac October 20, 2009 3:09 PM EDT
Government run will simply fail, but take heart, it will all be Bushs fault.
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by starleo146 October 20, 2009 1:46 PM EDT
part 2
Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., Family members who did their bit to slow down reform in their roles on the negotiating team for the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill, remain unmoved by the 865 preventable deaths suffered each week by people without access to proper health care.

The God of The Family's teaching would never hold Grassley or Enzi -- or any other official -- to account for those deaths, because Grassley and Enzi are key men in God's plan.

Even Grassley's dishonest campaign to convince his constituents that President Barack Obama is looking to use health care reform to "pull the plug on Grandma" -- God is just fine with that, because Grassley is doing exactly what God wants him to do, preserving the social order.

Not His Brother's Keeper

It's that theology that led The Family, over the years, to aid and abet such dictators as Haiti's Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Indonesia's Haji Muhammad Suharto, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, and the brutal Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi, who among them killed more than a million people.

The Family seems to be fond of "revolutions" of a particular type: Those that overthrow socialists or any kind of leftists, even those, like Chile's Salvador Allende, who were democratically elected. As Jeff Sharlet explains in his masterful book, The Family, "God chooses his key men according to His concerns, not ours ..."

Other Family members, identified as such by Sharlet, loom large in the health care debate. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said right-wingers could "break" Obama by defeating health care reform. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., told NBC's David Gregory that members of Congress had "earned" the threats of violence they were receiving at town-hall meetings focused on the health care bill.
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by starleo146 October 20, 2009 1:51 PM EDT
part3
After Grassley and Enzi succeeded in dragging out Senate Finance Committee negotiations through the summer, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., threatened to slow the committee's mark-up session by offering 30 amendments to the bill, most of them deemed "nuisance amendments" by opponents.

And Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., characterized the entire health care bill -- not just the contested public option -- as creating a "socialized" system. One of The Family's few Democratic members, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, seems to have felt his loyalties torn by health care reform, refusing to stake a position on the Finance Committee bill until the 11th hour.

In the House, Family members Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., Joe Pitts, R-Penn., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., rank high among health care obstructionists. So, too, does Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan, who, with Pitts, is trying to derail the House bill by gumming up the works with a proposal that would virtually eliminate any private plans that offer coverage for abortion from health care exchanges.

While it's tempting to look to the amount of campaign donations received by these lawmakers from the health sector as the reason for their knee-jerk opposition to heath care reform, that doesn't tell the whole story.

While it's tempting to look to the amount of campaign donations received by these lawmakers from the health sector as the reason for their knee-jerk opposition to heath care reform, that doesn't tell the whole story.

While many of these Family members indeed enjoy the largess of donors from health care concerns, few have reaped as much as the $534,141 from the health sector collected by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., in his last election. Baucus may have overseen the crafting of a bad health care bill, but it's still a health care bill for which he will likely vote -- which is more than you can say for nearly all of The Family's key men on the Hill.

And campaign donations from the health sector fail to account for the opposition of Inhofe, for whom the health sector doesn't even rank among the top five industries from which he draws his funding.
by mikeoliphant October 20, 2009 1:03 PM EDT
I am a health insurance agent in Utah and run two websites that sell insurance www.benefitsmanager.net and www.dentalinsuranceutah.com. I mention this because in Utah it would be great to have a guaranteed public option to put people that the private insurers will decline for health conditions. Plus the way Weiner discribes the public option, it will be priced competitively. So what this means in my industry (I've been at it 18 years) is that all my unhealthy clients that get charged more or declined can be put onto the public option now. All my healthy clients can stay on the private option. Hmmmmm follow me yet???? How long can the public option stay affordable?? Who is going to pay for the losses of a big sick pool of people....taxpayers?????
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by endurorob_5 October 20, 2009 7:58 AM EDT
And what this all adds up to is another way for government to take peoples money and control their lives. "You will have health insurance. You will have this type of health insurance. You will pay this much for it."
Reply to this comment
by nearl451 October 20, 2009 12:07 AM EDT
Even costs less if the Govt is willing to set prices for procedures nationwide like Japan does. In fact this matters more than a public option or any other private "insurance" deal.

Also, we do have to limit access to procedures used primarily for profitability.
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by jankebenzone October 20, 2009 12:00 AM EDT
900 billion, hmmm , Lets see now, Canada, with a population of about 35 million, spends just under 200 billion a year for its health care system.
The U.S. has almost ten times the population, thats means that the govt. estimate is very low.
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by BeckieBest October 19, 2009 11:25 PM EDT
There has to be a public OPTION.
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by sjc_1 October 20, 2009 8:09 AM EDT
If nothing is done, a policy for a family of four that costs $13,000 now will cost $25,000 per year in only 10 years. That is THREE times the rate of inflation and wage increases. At that time, fewer people will be able to afford health insuracne and fewer employers will provide it.
by faceofus October 19, 2009 10:40 PM EDT
In a word: No.
Reply to this comment
by stn_sage October 19, 2009 10:07 PM EDT
To respond directly to the question posed by the article, in a word, YES!

IF the politicians set up the program so it works, and don't sabotage it!
IF the respective industries decide to cooperate and do their part!

And, IF the public gets behind it and understands that it's a GOOD thing to do, it's ALREADY been done in many countries, and it can and will work, in much the same way that Social Security has been a safety net for tens of millions of Americans for decades!

Under these conditions, it couldn't fail! Because cooperation like THIS,
makes great things happen! Put greed aside, and love and caring will triumph!
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by starleo146 October 20, 2009 1:43 PM EDT
I read this article, thought I would let you read and see what you think it.

In the heat of summer, a din of voices arose from the U.S. Senate in opposition to the health care reform legislation that was taking shape in both houses of Congress. Overlooked in media coverage of the health care brouhaha is the membership of many of the senators who most vociferously oppose the legislation in the right-wing religious cult known as The Family.

With the Senate Finance Committee's passage last Tuesday of its version of health care legislation, expect the debate to flare again as the bill moves to the Senate floor. The Family's point men -- "key men" in the cult's theological lexicon -- will likely try once again to defeat reform in the service of their Supply-Side Jesus.

You could chalk it up to nothing more than pure partisanship, this obstructionism on the part of these Republicans. Or you could say that the ideology-***-theology of The Family, which has spent decades consolidating power within the GOP, has at last come to dominate the party even among those who do not belong to the cult.

While leaders of religious right we've come to know assert their claim to "a place at the table," The Family sets its table for only a select few. They are the nation's powerful: senators, congressmen, business executives and the strong-armed leaders of Third World countries. Together, in secret, they worship a Jesus unrecognizable to most practicing Christians. (In their secret theology, the leadership model of Adolf Hitler is one of which Jesus would approve.)

The people of South Carolina, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nevada, Kansas and Wyoming find themselves represented by at least one U.S. senator who belongs to The Family. If he subscribes to the theology of the cult of which he is a member, the senator believes himself to be anointed to his lofty position by Jesus himself -- a Jesus who tells him that his constituents' health care dilemmas are of no consequence to God; they are just the natural order of things as deemed by him.

The Jesus worshiped by The Family is neither Jesus the peacemaker, the champion of the poor, nor even Christ the personal savior. He is Jesus the power broker, who works his will through well-situated men committed to free enterprise of a most unregulated sort.

Things are as they are in the world because that's the way God wants them. The poor are poor because God ordained it to be so -- a condition that they may have earned through disobedience to the creator. The powerful are powerful -- be they murderous dictators or corporate polluters -- because they are God's chosen. Any regulated economic system, according to this theology, is less than godly, because regulation forestalls the exercise of free will.
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