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Senate Votes to Proceed with Health Care Debate |
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The Senate tonight voted 60-39 to open up debate on health care reform legislation, with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) winning the 60 votes needed to pass the measure.
Calling the vote “a critical and historic milestone in the march toward genuine health care reform,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Democrats “signaled that they are united and serious about solving the health care problems that torment working families daily.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act currently:
- Requires employers, with at least 50 full time employees, that offer no health coverage to pay a penalty of $750 per employee, if one or more full-time workers qualify for a government subsidy in the health insurance exchange. The AFL-CIO union movement continues to press for a full employer mandate covering all workers in all firms, but this at least creates a serious penalty for free rider employers.
- Would cover 94 percent of Americans while reducing the deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years.
- Includes a public insurance plan option that will help bring down costs by keeping insurance companies honest and forcing them to compete. The inclusion of the public option in both the House and Senate bills shows that members of Congress believe the public option is an essential part of any final health care legislation.
- Would also hold insurance companies accountable by ending the practice of denials and raising premiums because of preexisting conditions or gender.
- Includes a provision that will cut the rate of growth in Medicare spending in half, according to the Congressional Budget Office, through a powerful new Medicare Commission. Besides being a strong mechanism for controlling Medicare costs, the Commission will set a path that private purchasers can, and likely will, follow to control private health care spending.
But as Trumka noted, the bill needs work, especially its provision taxing the benefits of middle-class families:
The Senate bill’s strong cost cutting measures go further than any previous legislation. But the bill must be improved in important areas. The employer responsibility provision should be expanded to cover all employers. And any plan to tax working families’ benefits should be eliminated—taxes on the middle class are the wrong way to pay for health care.
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For a critical reality check from a socialist perspective.
US Senate votes to open debate on cost-cutting health care plan
By Kate Randall
23 November 2009
The US Senate voted Saturday to begin formal debate on a health care bill that reconciles versions of legislation from two Senate committees. Measures contained in the bill, presented by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada), would slash hundreds of billions of dollars from federal health care programs, while boosting the profits of the health care industry. It would leave millions of Americans without insurance.
The legislation, estimated at a cost of $848 billion by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), adheres to the Obama administration’s central demand that it not add to the budget deficit. The CBO projects that the legislation would lower the deficit by $130 billion by 2019.
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The Senate plan would also utilize “comparative effectiveness research” to further cut Medicare. An independent Medicare commission, an unelected body appointed by the president, would aim to reduce $22 billion in “excess cost growth” over the next decade.
The implications of this type of research came into focus last week as two panels—one government financed and the other a physicians group—recommended major changes to guidelines for breast and cervical cancer screenings for women. (See “US government mammogram recommendations: Denial of breast cancer screenings will have deadly consequences” and “Why are women being told to forgo cervical cancer screenings?”)
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Individuals and families would, however, be required to obtain insurance or pay a penalty, unless they qualify for a waiver. These fines would rise to $750 by 2019, with higher penalties for failure to insure children. By requiring people to obtain insurance, the legislation would provide private insurers with a lucrative new source of cash-paying customers. Although certain restrictions are placed on the insurance companies barring them from denying coverage for preexisting conditions, there are no limits on what they can charge for coverage.
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While promoted as a penalty on elite plan premiums, this tax in fact would impact some 35 to 40 percent of individual and family coverage, including the plans of a large number of union workers, who have won these comparatively more generous benefits through contract disputes, often at the expense of wages and other benefits.
During his election campaign, Obama criticized his opponent John McCain for supporting such a penalty as an indirect tax on workers’ health care benefits. The measure now takes center stage in the Senate bill, which the administration enthusiastically promotes.
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The overall trajectory of the Senate health care bill is to slash health care costs for the government and corporations, while working to implement a class-based system of rationed care, in which ordinary Americans would receive reduced services—all tailored to boost the profits of the giant insurance companies and pharmaceuticals.
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In other words, what has been billed as health care “reform” has nothing to do with expanding or improving treatments and services for working people. What drives this legislation is the reduction of costs for government and the corporations, combined with rationing and elimination of care.
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[For the full article use the link below:]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/sena-n23.shtml
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Published on Monday, November 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Before You Carve that Turkey: All In for Bernie Sanders
by Donna Smith
Those millions of us who support a Medicare for All, single-payer, reform for the healthcare crisis in this nation have some work to do over the next few days. Senators are on their way to their home states for the one-week Thanksgiving recess - and they need a little up close and personal constituent attention before dinnertime on Thursday.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a stalwart supporter of doing the right thing for his state, our healthcare system and this nation - and he has said repeatedly that moving toward a just and economically sound system is possible through Medicare for All, single-payer. In the purest sense of giving patients control over their own healthcare, single-payer gives us all control over our choice of providers - and it gives our healthcare professionals the freedom they need to advise us on the basis of health rather than payment source.
So, even though the current Senate bill is not what we want - Senator Sanders will offer an amendment that would be a substitute for that bill and is mirrored on S. 703, The American Health Security Act.
We need to make it clear before our Senators are immersed in their own holiday events and then in traveling back to Washington, DC, that we want them to support Senator Sanders’ amendment.
Call today, call tomorrow and keep calling until the home offices of the Senators close for the holidays - and many will stay open until Wednesday at noon. Tell the staff you want to talk turkey about the Senate effort.
Time is drawing short for our Senators to hear from us. Debate will begin on November 30 on the current Senate bill. Senator Sanders needs support. He has already told us that he does not expect a win on his amendment. But we are all laying groundwork for this nation to move in the right direction before long - we know that the current bills do not “bend the cost curve” enough and we know they certainly do not bend the death or bankruptcy curve nearly enough to make the bills what this nation needs.
Additionally, we want the legislation to contain language that will allow states that opt in to a single-payer system to be able to do so with the appropriate waivers from federal legal provisions which might otherwise present obstacles to doing so.
So, the ask of our Senators - each and every one, liberal, centrist or conservative - is two-fold and urgent:
1. Vote with and for Sanders’ S. 703 substitute amendment; and
2. Support state single-payer enabling language in the final bill.
Calls to DC won’t be effective this week. We can all return to that effort next week. Thanksgiving week calls must go to your Senators’ offices in your state. Look them up here, using your zip code: http://www.votesmart.org/
Tell friends, neighbors and relatives. This year, talk a little turkey about healthcare. Ask folks how thankful they would be to have healthcare as a basic human right for their neighbors and for themselves. And then help them look up their Senators’ contact information and tell them how easy it really is to call and log your concerns and your expectations for an affirmative vote for the Sanders’ amendment.
Oh, and don’t forget to thank one another for caring enough to join in the struggle. It matters. Everybody in, nobody out. Thank you all for believing that together we can change this, because we can.
Donna Smith is a community organizer for the California Nurses Association and National Co-Chair for the Progressive Democrats of America Healthcare Not Warfare campaign.
The Senate Bill is “good” just as breathing is to its alternative. That’s true of every bill currently under discussion.
To suggest it is a “good bill” – in the true sense of that word - is about as disingenuous, or perhaps even dishonest as one can get.
The bill[s] will further enrich private health insurers and other vultures that make up the medical-profits industry. They will offer “tiered” benefits. Those “benefits” will depend on what a family can afford. If you can afford the “platinum” benefits you’ll be able to get the hip replacement you need. Those with “gold” coverage will only be covered for a wheelchair. The “silver” coverage crowd will get walkers, and those with “bronze” coverage will get an instruction sheet on how to carve a cane out of a wooden stick.
The $750 “penalty” mentioned in the article is a joke. What do you think the likes of Wal Mart will do? Wal Mart will either “offer” a bare bones “bronze” benefit package, or will choose to pay the penalty. In either scenario we tax payers will wind up subsidizing Wal Mart employee health care. None of us should object to helping the downtrodden, but we must loudly object to subsidizing anti-union companies like Wal Mart.
And please recall, dear reader, that when McCain mentioned taxing benefits the Democrats were all over him! How is it that it is now okay? Because the taxing idea came out of a committee controlled by Democrats? That’s but one example of the double cross.
The phoniness of all the bills is causing grassroots Democrats great disillusionment. The AFL-CIO’s continued support for the sell-out is causing disillusionment in the ranks of labor too. The recent AFL-CIO convention unanimously passed a resolution calling for the enactment of single payer. Disturbingly, that resolution has been relegated to the same status that Congress relegates our entreaties. It is being used as toilet paper.
This is not the change we voted for last November, and neither is it the change we voted for at the AFL-CIO convention, It is status quo business as usual, and it is unacceptable!
The Republican Party has become the Party of Death. In 1965, 13 GOP Senators voted to enact Medicare (17 opposed, 2 were absent). In the House, the vote was 70 Republicans for, 68 against, 2 absent. But today, 176 of 177 GOP House members opposed health reforms as did 39 of the 40 GOP Senators (Sen. Voinovich was absent).
This recent vote serves to perpetuate nearly 45,000 yearly deaths attributed by a recent Harvard University study to the lack of health insurance and care. Their voting stamps the Republican Party as the Party of Death. This fits in with their chronic opposition to a living wage.
The Republicans complain that universal health coverage would cost too much. But when it comes to killing and wars, including needless wars, why there’s always ample money. No money for life, plenty of money for death, that’s the hallmark of the Party of Death.
Fellini8-
Another point, why is it a blue collar worker will gladly pay his fair share of taxes with a salary of $35,000 dollars while a CEO making $35,000,000.00 will cry like a stuck hog? Most key employee provisions provide the platinum coverage without ANY deductible. Despite corporate claims, worker’s health care plans only provide basic minimal care with ever increasing deductibles. With minimal pay raises and cost of living increases over the last decade with ever rising costs, it’s only fair any health care bill will not raise any new taxes on the backs of the over burdened middle class.
Fellini8: Repubs party of death? Let’s not count the Demos out either. Labor busts their tails trying to get a majority in both the House and Senate, the White House only to find out they are more interested in the corporate interests rather than their constituients. The person occupying the White House promised UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, now he calls it health insurance reform. And who benefits? Not us.