Senate Health Care Bill: Moving in the Right Direction
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Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) officially released the Senate’s version of health care reform legislation, a major step toward the health care reform bill America has been waiting for. The first vote to begin debate on this historic bill could happen as soon as Saturday.
It’s an improved bill from the one passed by the Senate Finance Committee last month. It still falls short of an ideal bill but, like the one passed by the U.S. House earlier this month, it greatly increases coverage, helps make health insurance more affordable and includes a public health insurance option to compete with insurance companies.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says Reid has shown courage and leadership in bringing a good bill to the full Senate. Trumka says the bill is a step in the right direction, because it would cover 31 million people, control costs, include a public option and cut $127 billion from the deficit in the first decade. Trumka notes that unfortunately, while many of the bill’s financing mechanisms are fair, it is still partially funded through a tax on health benefits.
Let’s Have a Real Senate Debate on Health Care
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Next week, the U.S. Senate is expected to begin debate on long-promised health care reform legislation. We’ve waited decades and fought hard for this moment—but progress could be blocked if a minority of senators refuses to allow a fair debate and a fair vote.
That’s right: Despite huge wins for pro-working family, pro-health care reform candidates in the House and Senate and the election of a pro-health care reform president, a few senators can do the bidding of insurance companies and prevent a bill from getting to the floor or getting a vote.
Now is the time to contact your senators and tell them: Health care can’t wait. It’s time for action.
Here’s more news from the fight for real health care reform:
- The Alliance for Retired Americans offered thanks to members of the U.S. House who voted to pass a health care reform bill that will improve Medicare and help the young and seniors alike. Alliance members also are protesting insurance companies like Humana that have used scare tactics and falsehoods to try and stop reform.
Here’s What Health Care Reform Means for Working Families
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| The AFL-CIO is running an ad in support of health care reform in newspapers in the Washington, D.C., area. |
Within days, the U.S. House will vote on a historic health care reform bill that will cover everyone, cut costs and protect families from insurance company abuses.
The House bill, H.R. 3962—the Affordable Health Care for America Act—has provisions that will help families now and in the long term, all while decreasing the nation’s deficit.
Although some provisions of reform will require time to implement, here are key changes that will kick in immediately, providing direct and critical relief to millions of working families:
- An immediate insurance program for high-risk uninsured people to buy into.
- Ending “rescissions”—prohibiting insurers from nullifying coverage when patients file claims.
- Ending the lifetime caps on how much care insurers will cover.
- Allowing young people to stay on their parents’ policies until age 27.
- Allowing workers who have lost coverage because they lost their job to extend COBRA coverage.
- New incentive programs to increase the number of doctors.
- Funding for community health centers.
- Reducing the “donut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage—which right now doesn’t cover any drug costs between $2,700 and $4,050.
- A new fund to help employers pay for coverage for early retirees.
Alliance for Retired Americans Fights for Reform, and Other Health Care News
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Priscilla King, an Alliance for Retired Americans member from New Hampshire, got the chance to join House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) for yesterday’s unveiling of the House’s historic health care reform bill.
King noted that one of the many ways the bill would improve our health system is by closing the “donut hole” that affects seniors who gets prescription drugs through Medicare.
The current structure of Medicare’s drug coverage leaves a $1,700 gap if your costs are more than $2,830 a year. King and her husband have been victims of that flawed policy and have gone into debt to pay for the drugs they need.
U.S. Health Care System Wasting Billions, and Other Health Care News
A new report today from Thomson Reuters shows how badly the nation’s health care system is failing working families. The report estimates that more than $500 billion, and maybe as much as $800 billion, is being wasted every year. Health costs in the United States are so high because standard practices are so wasteful. If we can recover savings from that waste, it would far exceed the cost of health care legislation being considered in Congress—legislation that can provide more people with affordable, quality coverage.
Some “highlights” from this unsettling report:
- The average hospital is spending a quarter of its budget on billing and paperwork.
- Tens of billions of dollars a year are wasted because of outdated, paper-based records systems that discourage information sharing.
- Conditions like uncontrolled diabetes that should be avoided through smart preventative care cost tens of billions a year.
- Medical mistakes and unnecessary care cost hundreds of billions a year.
Insurance Industry Report: So Twisted Even Its Author Disowns It
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Turns out the “report” on health care reform, released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), is being denounced by the very company that prepared it.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) admits that at the request of AHIP, it cooked up the scariest scenario possible about the cost of health care reform and ignored factors that show health care reform could actually save money.
According to the Politico’s Live Pulse column, PwC released a statement
basically saying, “Hey, we weren’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill, but rather a small slice of it.” The statement only seems to reinforce critics’ view that the report is skewed precisely because it doesn’t take into account the totality of reform.
The last, and key, line from the statement: “If other provisions in health care reform are successful in lowering costs over the long term, those improvements would offset some of the impacts we have estimated.”
In other words, PwC is saying if reform’s cost containment measures work, their estimate could be wrong.
Tell Your Health Care Insurer It’s Time for Real Reform
Health insurance companies have turned to scare tactics and outright lies to fight health care reform. Seems they’re not satisfied with jacking up the cost of premiums, canceling policies when people get sick and denying treatment.
In fact, you can tell the health insurance companies you’re sick of their lies and that it’s time for real health care reform.
- Click here if a Blue Cross Blue Shield company provides your health insurance.
- Click here if UnitedHealthcare provides your health insurance.
- Click here if Aetna provides your health insurance.
- Click here if Humana provides your health insurance.
- Click here if CIGNA provides your health insurance.
- Click here if a different company provides your health insurance.
- Click here if you don’t have health insurance.
Today, Florida members of the Alliance for Retired Americans rallied in front of the West Palm Beach offices of Humana and called the scare tactics and lies ”unconscionable.”
Health Insurance Groups Will Stop at Nothing to Kill Reform
Stunning in their brazenness, insurance industry groups like Humana have sent out mailings to Medicare beneficiaries trying to scare seniors into erroneously believing that health care reform will harm their Medicare benefits.
This from the Alliance for Retired Americans:
On Monday, Medicare demanded that certain private insurance companies cease sending out potentially misleading mailings to beneficiaries regarding health care and insurance reform.
Health Care Reform Action: Rallies, a ‘Die-In’ and a Visit from the VP
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In Hartford, Conn., union and health care activists marched on the headquarters of health insurance giant Aetna. In Minnetonka, Minn., the target was the posh headquarters of UnitedHealthcare. And in Fargo, N.D., demonstrators took a list of health care reform demands to the offices of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota.
In Philadelphia, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker led a rally and march of several hundred to CIGNA’s headquarters.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden today met with Alliance for Retired Americans seniors to describe how the administration’s health care plan would benefit them.
Those rallies and marches and dozens of others in cities around the country were part of a National Day of Action for health care reform and against the private health insurance companies’ multimillion-dollar campaign to block comprehensive reform that includes a quality and affordable public health insurance option.
Retirement Security Is Matter of Dignity
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For more than 70 years, the three-legged stool of Social Security, pensions and personal savings have guaranteed retirement security for millions of retirees. It ensured that the promise of America—-if you work hard and play by the rules you will live in a comfortable and secure retirement—is fulfilled.
But now that stool is broken and many retirees are suffering from the fall. Once guaranteed pensions are being tossed aside for insecure 401(k) plans or junked altogether.
Today, the AFL-CIO Convention adopted a resolution reaffirming the federation’s commitment to strengthen and improve existing public and private defined-benefit pension plans and 401(k)s.
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Bill George summed up the issue this way:
We need to develop a bold new initiative for those without pensions, based upon the principle of mutual responsibility—with government, employers and individuals all contributing. This, together with Social Security, must provide a universal, secure and adequate income for retirees in the 21st century.
