Health Care Reform – k and k Health Care

Archive for the ‘Health Care’ Category

The health care reform bills being debated in Congress threaten to shut out millions of immigrants. But Congress’ exclusionary policies toward immigrants will not simply leave immigrants worse off. They will inevitably jeopardize the nation’s economy and the health of all of us.

President Obama has prioritized health care reform to ensure that millions of Americans have a fair, affordable and efficient health care system. For immigrants, this vision is far from a reality. First, the current health care reform bill treats legal immigrants unfairly. Individuals who have waited years to come to the United States will be required to wait years in order to obtain affordable health care.

Immigrants are generally younger and healthier than the U.S. population at large. However, no one is immune to falling ill or having an accident. The current health care bill would require recently arrived, legal immigrants to wait five years to obtain the only option for affordable health care coverage, Medicaid. While low-income citizens will have access to Medicaid, the most vulnerable among us will continue to wait for affordable health care despite the fact that they pay taxes for the very programs from which they are excluded. There is no sound reason for Congress to discriminate against these individuals and prevent them from receiving basic medical care.

Congress and the White House also took an unprecedented step to prohibit individuals from buying — with their own hard-earned money — an American good that could help their families. The Senate version of the health care bill forbids undocumented immigrants from purchasing private insurance at full cost in the newly created insurance marketplaces. As a result, undocumented immigrants as well as their family members, who are often U.S. citizens or legal immigrants, will likely remain uninsured and will be forced to seek care in the emergency room.

Massachusetts Election of Senate Republican Recasts Debate: Following the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Massachusetts Senate seat Tuesday night, Democratic leaders have been scrambling to revive what could now be a dying bill. The loss of the Democrat’s 60th vote in the Senate opens up the legislation to a Republican filibuster – something the Democrats have managed to avoid thus far in the debate.

House and Senate Democrats met this week to discuss how to move forward with the reform legislation in light of this election and promised Wednesday that they would push ahead. There are a number of options that Democrats are considering, but at this point they have not charted their course.

On Wednesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) attempted to rally House Democrats around a strategy to push the Senate bill through the House and onto President Barack Obama’s desk so as to avoid the need to again secure 60 Senate votes. However, the Speaker indicated on Thursday morning that she did not believe she has the needed 218 House votes necessary to move forward. This option would have allowed lawmakersto then propose additional modifications to the approved legislation through a process called “reconciliation,” which only requires 51 votes in the Senate.

Currently, the path to health care reform is unclear. Democrats seek a way to secure the necessary votes to pass the legislation, and some now question the value of pushing such a large bill. President Obama had hoped to see a final bill prior to his State of the Union address, which has been scheduled for January 27; however, it appears this goal is likely out of reach.

The White House last week continued to rail against rising health insurance premiums to help build popular support for his health care reform package. But the effort to focus the blame for rising costs on insurers was questioned, in particular, by state insurance experts and economists quoted in a New York Times story last week. Insurance commissioners said that trying to hold down premiums before costs were under control would be very risky. This approach could mean solvency issues in some cases, they told the Times. To help educate Americans about the true drivers of rising health care costs, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade association, last week launched a new national ad campaign. The ad demonstrates that health insurance company costs represent a small slice of the overall health care cost pie.

Federal

With a cadre of staff operatives searching for the right health insurance reform provisions among those previously discarded from the House, Senate and the President’s proposals, Democratic leadership has been relentlessly pursuing every possible pathway to pass a final bill. The expected process would have: 1) the House pass the Senate-adopted reform bill (which most House members hate), 2) the House passing a bill to “fix” all the things it hates using a reconciliation legislative vehicle, followed by 3) the Senate passing the very same reconciliation bill — requiring only 51 votes in the Senate. The House Budget and Rules Committees are expected to start the review, hearing and mark-up process of the reconciliation bill this week. The Senate commitment to using reconciliation was made official in a scathing letter from Leader Harry Reid to the Minority Leader. Along the way the two Chambers will need to see the latest CBO “scores” on the bill before voting, and 216 House Democrats will have to resolve policy disagreements over abortion, federal health insurance rate review and authority, and other substantive issues. Additionally, the House will have to trust that the Senate can pass the reconciliation measure without changing one comma. Partisanship has blossomed into open hostility over health reform. Whether Congress can overcome these policy, process and political mine fields remains as murky as ever, but Democrats have chosen to try and will push for resolution by the Easter recess.

Several of the bills are generating controversy. A bill that would set up California’s health insurance exchange, the virtual marketplace of health insurance options required in 2014 under the federal law, passed the Assembly on Friday. The bill, authored by Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, is scheduled to go back to the Senate and be voted on with a companion bill.

Insurers are against both bills, as are several Republican lawmakers, without amendments that would limit taxation on insurers and require more legislative oversight. They argue that the bills set up a new bureaucracy with broad powers to tax them and create disadvantages for smaller health plans in the exchange.

“Our concern is that (the bill) sets up very broad authority and powers,” said Charles Bacchi, executive vice president of the California Association of Health Plans. “We believe if they make wrong decisions, it could result in fewer choices for consumers.”

Health insurers are also fiercely opposed to several bills that propose various forms of rate regulation, an issue that gained traction earlier in the year after Anthem Blue Cross proposed a 39 percent rate increase on 800,000 individual California policyholders.
Power over rate increases

The rate-hike proposals include a bill by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, that would require insurers to justify rate increases, and one by Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, that would give state regulators the power to approve or deny rate hikes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a separate plan that would require health care insurers to hire actuaries to review their proposed premium increases.

Bacchi, referring to the Jones bill, said rate regulation diverts attention from the need to curb medical costs. “Health care costs are going up enough,” he said, “without having to create overly burdensome and expensive new government bureaucracies to handle this.”

The California Medical Association and the California Hospital Association join the insurers in their opposition, arguing that if the insurers are squeezed, they’re likely to turn around and squeeze doctors and hospitals through lower reimbursement rates.

In an interview today with Nebraska radio station KOGA, Nebraska`s Senator Ben Nelson said he worked to make sure the new health care law wasn`t a government takeover of health care, addressed some of its benefits for Nebraskans and concerns that have been raised about the law. Below are excerpts from the interview. Easy To Insure ME has the answers

Asked about those who are calling for a repeal and replacement, Senator Nelson pointed out that many of the provisions already in effect are making the health insurance market fairer for Nebraskans:

“For those who want to repeal it, it`s going to be interesting to see if they want to repeal this: banning insurers from preventing coverage due to pre-existing conditions. That`s in place. Allowing the purchase of insurance across state lines. . .¦Allowing¨ kids ¦to be on parent`s insurance¨ up until the age of 26. There are a lot of parents struggling right now. They paid for and borrowed a lot of money for a college education. They get out, they can`t find a job. They`d be kicked off the parent`s health insurance plan. And if they had a pre-existing condition, they wouldn`t qualify for individual insurance and if they didn`t have a job they wouldn`t qualify for group insurance. So they could be uninsured. That was taken care of. There were just a number of things that are already in place. . .Right now insurers cannot impose annual and lifetime caps on benefits. They can`t drop a person`s coverage just because they get sick. Those things are already in the -

The senator highlighted the fact that 220,000 Nebraskans – roughly the population of Lincoln – don`t have health insurance. By reducing that number, the new law aims to control costs that are currently passed on from those who don`t have health insurance to those who do:

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