Health care bill
The Senate Finance Committee passed a long-awaited $829 billion health care bill Tuesday by a 14-9 vote. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was the lone committee member to cross party lines, breaking with other Republicans to vote for the measure. All the committee's Democrats supported the bill. link
Etiquetas: USA health 3
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victor --
Despite increasingly desperate attacks from the insurance lobby, the Senate Finance Committee took a historic step yesterday by voting reform legislation out of committee with bipartisan support. They're the final committee to do so -- and the negotiations over the final bill will now move to the full House and Senate.
Soon, every senator and representative must decide where they stand. Lobbyists will be racing to each office, trying every trick in the book to derail the President's plan. In fact, just this week, the insurance lobby released a self-serving report falsely claiming that reform would increase costs. Journalists called it "deceptive" and said "something doesn't smell right here." A prominent M.I.T. economist described the study as "deeply flawed."
It's a blatant scare tactic designed to frighten voters and bully Congress -- and it's just the beginning. We need to speak out right away to show Congress that their constituents are watching closely, and we're counting on them to say "no" to the lobbyists and "yes" to reform.
It's becoming clear that the insurance companies will do whatever it takes to stop progress: The New York Times is reporting that special interests are spending $1.4 million every day to kill reform -- and even commissioned their own slanted analysis of the Finance Committee's legislation in an effort to defeat it. But today, after widespread criticism, the company that produced the report issued a statement saying that it analyzed only part of the bill because that's exactly what the insurance industry paid them to do!
And we just got word that insurance companies are spending $1 million on a misleading ad to scare seniors out of supporting reform. The ad falsely declares that reform will cause cuts in Medicare, even though reform is crucial to ensuring the long-term survival of the program and preserving the care that millions of seniors depend on.
Now that all five congressional committees have passed reform legislation, we're sure to see attacks that are even more extreme. It's up to us to make sure that ordinary Americans continue to be heard louder than the Washington lobbyists.
The next few weeks are absolutely crucial to our success -- we'll be organizing events, running ads, and doing everything possible to make sure Congress passes real reform. But right now, the most important thing we can do is make our voices heard immediately. Please speak out now.
Thanks,
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for Ameri
What’s Next? Follow the Money
With the passage of the Senate Finance bill the health care effort now moves to a critical stage with the Senate Majority Leader and the House Speaker now clearly in charge.
The more important effort will be Reid’s. Pelosi’s final product will be more predictable (very liberal) but Reid’s will have to be more practical. Every inch Reid moves away from the more moderate Baucus bill will cause problems.
The big issue is going to be money—just whose taxes are going to get raised to the tune of $500 billion to pay for it.
The Senate Finance bill has the $211 billion “Cadillac” benefits tax. Dead on arrival. No way the party that put the unions ahead of the Chrysler bondholders is going to cross their traditional allies on this one. The $40 billion tax on medical device makers is also under pressure and likely to at least shrink.
And, don’t think the insurance underwriting reform issue is behind us. That one is just beginning and it will create its own pressure to increase the cost of any bill by improving insurance subsidies so an individual mandate is workable.
The Finance bill also ignores the Medicare physician payment problem. Don’t fix that and you risk alienating the docs. The House did fix it and it cost them $240 billion they still haven’t found the money for.
The Senate Finance bill minus the “Cadillac” tax, fewer medical device taxes, the imperative to improve the subsidies, and in need of a doc fix has about a $500 billion hole in it.
The House solves that problem with a $500 billion tax on “millionaires”—defined as families making more than $500,000 a year. But lots of Democratic Senators think that is really just a tax on small business and job creators.
The Dems would have no chance holding Olympia Snowe's vote with a tax on small business given that the Maine Senator has a well deserved reputation for being one of the Senate's strongest advocates for them.
If the House tax could have passed the Senate yesterday afternoon Baucus would have had it in his bill rather than the “Cadillac” tax placeholder he did have.
Bottom line: The Democrats have to figure out a way to get 60 Senators to vote for a tax scheme that will raise at least $500 billion.
The public option, employer mandates, a turbo-charged MedPAC? These are not the biggest issues. The White House will take any deal they can get and will quickly pressure liberals to back off wherever necessary.
The biggest issue they face by far is just whose taxes are going to get raised $500 billion. This is the make or break issue.
ROBERT LASZEWSKI
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