Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
Health and Wellness
House Will Take Up-or-Down Vote on Stupak Amendment, Threatening Women's Rights
Posted by RH Reality Check, RH Reality Check on November 7, 2009 at 5:00 PM.
This post is from Jodi Jacobson's blog at RH Reality Check.
House Democratic leaders will allow an up-or-down vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which seeks to block even private insurance plans from funding abortion care.
In other words, this amendment, if passed and included in a final health reform bill, would block you from getting insurance to cover legal procedures in the United States of America, with premiums paid with your personal funds. Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Women's Law Center and other groups are calling for immediate action against the amendment, and you can click here to find your representative and tell them to vote no on Stupak.
The amendment, named for Representatives Bart Stupak, D-Mich, and Joe Pitts, R-Penn. Stupak is a so-called "Democrat for Life;" Pitts has been a dogged supporter of failed abstinence-only policies, domestically and internationally, and was among those who succeeded in adding language forbidding the provision of contraceptive supplies for HIV-positive women in US global AIDS funding.
The agreement to vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment came after 1:00 am this morning when an effort to adopt compromise language crafted by Rep. Brad Ellsworth apparently was rejected by Stupak and his supporters. We reported on the Ellsworth Amendment here. Rejection of the Ellsworth Amendment makes clear the agenda of Stupak's amendment is to ban abortion care in private insurance plans, because Ellsworth provided numerous protections against the use of federal funds for abortions other than those for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother, for all of which the law now allows federal funding.
The Hill reports that:
Liberals on the committee threatened to vote against the final healthcare bill if it included Stupak's language, warning that it would be a return to the days of back-alley abortions.
"I forsee a return to the dark ages," Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., told The Hill. "I'm 73, I've seen these dark things, they use these coat hangers and die."
"I used to think that life was black or white, but the older I get the most gray it becomes," liberal Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told the panelists of the House Rules committee as they debated whether to allow the amendment. "I find this amendment very, very uncomfortable."
Having successfully made birth control "too controversial for health reform," Stupak, working with other "Dems for Life," the now unabashedly ultra-right Republican party and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops threatened to block passage of the health reform bill unless he got his way on the vote. His efforts are backed up by a massive organizing effort undertaken by the Catholic Bishops to mobilize ultra-conservative Catholics throughout the country. More than 85 percent of Catholics in the United States use birth control, and Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as women in the general population.
Women's rights advocates, including the speaker of the House and a majority of the Democratic caucus, support a provision in the health-care bill that would subsidize abortions for poor women who can't afford them, in keeping with current law.
"Rep. Stupak’s proposal to codify the Hyde amendment in health-care reform would force women who want comprehensive reproductive health-care coverage to purchase a separate, single-service rider," said Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In the statement, Richards explains:
Such an "abortion rider," whereby abortion care could only be covered by a single-service plan in the exchange, is discriminatory and illogical. Women do not plan to have unintended pregnancies or medically complicated pregnancies that require ending the pregnancy. In fact, about half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended, and abortion is not something that women plan to insure against. As a result, an "abortion rider" policy is unworkable. Women would not choose to purchase it, and would subsequently be unable to obtain the care they need. Proposing a separate ‘abortion rider’ represents exactly the type of government interference in the health care marketplace that conservatives purport to vehemently oppose.
For these and other reasons, "Planned Parenthood strongly opposes the Stupak-Pitts amendment which would result in women losing health benefits they have today," said Richards in a statement released early this morning. The statement continues:
This amendment would violate the spirit of health care reform, which is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for all, by [instead] creating a two-tiered system that would punish women, particularly those with low and modest incomes. Women won't stand for legislation that takes away their current benefits and leaves them worse off after health care reform than they are today.
While Rep. Stupak claims that his amendment simply applies the Hyde amendment to health reform, nothing could be farther from the truth
In fact, "the Stupak-Pitts amendment would result in a new restriction on women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market," continued Richards, "undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that covers abortion, even if they pay for most of the premium with their own money."
On Friday, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said passing Stupak's legislation could jeopardize passage of the bill, because abortion-rights supporters were likely to vote against a bill that includes it.
BACKGROUND on STUPAK-PITTS AMENDMENT:
The Stupak-Pitts amendment would:
The current compromise in the bill, the Capps Amendment, already strikes the right balance between pro-choice and anti-choice interests.
It stipulates that health plans cannot be mandated to cover abortion, but they can choose to.
The following is a list of editorials in major newspapers that have opposed Stupak-Pitts and similar proposals:
An editorial in USA Today (11/2/09): “[The Stupak amendment] goes too far. It would mark a broad new expansion in the effort to restrict access to abortion. Nearly 90% of private health insurance policies now offer abortion coverage, and almost half of women with private insurance have it. But women covered under the new system would have to find supplemental insurance or pay out of pocket for an unanticipated procedure that can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on complexity. For anyone unable to afford it, this would amount to a de facto ban.”
An editorial in the New York Times said (10/1/09):
“Conservative critics of pending reform bills want to prohibit the use of tax subsidies to buy any health insurance policy that covers abortion. Some want to require women to buy an extra insurance “rider” if they want abortion coverage, an unworkable approach given that almost no one expects to need an abortion, few women would buy the rider and, therefore, few insurance companies would even offer it.”
An editorial in the LA Times said (11/6/09):
“The real goal of abortion opponents isn't to maintain the status quo. It's to extend federal prohibitions into private pocketbooks. By restricting coverage offered through the exchange, they hope to make abortion coverage so unattractive that insurers eventually stop offering it in the market for individual and small-group policies.”
An editorial in The St. Petersburg Times said (11/5/09):
"Contrary to the claims of Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who has been leading the antiabortion effort, the Capps amendment would not expand federal funding for abortion. Instead it would establish some basic principles to reflect the current health insurance landscape in which nearly 90 percent of private plans offer abortion coverage."
If Tea-Baggers Are Such Populists, Why not Vent Fury Over Flu Shots Going to Wall Street While Kids Go Without?
Posted by Jill C., Brilliant at Breakfast on November 7, 2009 at 4:12 AM.
Instead of going to Washington and mindlessly parroting what right-wing talk show hosts tell them, much of which is flat-out wrong, perhaps the teabaggers who marched on Washington would be better served directing their outrage at this:
Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Health and Human Service (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to investigate why the Center for Disease Control (CDC) approved the distribution of the H1NI vaccine to Wall Street firms at a time when the vaccine is unavailable to most Americans.
Recent news reports indicate 13 companies, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Time Warner, have been cleared to receive the vaccine.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Got a tip for a post?:
Email us | Anonymous form
At Least 5 Need Government-Run Health-Care at Bachmann's Angry Protests Against Government-Run Health-Care
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM.
I find Dana Milbank annoying. Actually, I think he's the living, breathing incarnation of everything wrong with the Beltway media.
Today's column is just as cynical, superficial and snarky as the rest. The argument he makes is typically obtuse.
BUT, it's directed at those annoying Tea-Baggers, so it amuses me!
Technically, Thursday's GOP-sponsored rally at the Capitol was a "press conference" (a Capitol Police spokeswoman explained that the lawmakers didn't have a permit for a demonstration). The speakers took no questions at this news conference, instead calling, at least a dozen times, for the Pelosi bill's death.
"Remember some of the other battles: Lexington and Concord, Hamburger Hill, Pork Chop Hill?" said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). "We're not going to leave this hill until we kill this bill!"
[...]
But, as with a similar rally by Democrats a week before, unpredictable things tend to happen in the wide-open spaces of the Capitol's West Front. Minutes into the rally, a breeze toppled the American flag from the stage.
More ominously, a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.
This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. "Join us in defeating Pelosi care!" he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher. Boehner may have been distracted as well. He told the crowd he would read from the Constitution, then read the "we hold these truths" bit from the Declaration of Independence.
[...]
By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care. But Bachmann overlooked this irony as she said farewell to her recruits.
Read the whole thing. Might amuse you too.
How Does a Religious Cult Have the Clout to Delay Health Care Vote?
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 12:30 PM.
Just when it seemed the stars were aligning for an historic vote tomorrow on health-care reform legislation in the House of Representatives, anti-choice Democrats are balking, saying that the plan would permit the indirect flow of federal dollars to fund abortion.
Led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., a member of the Capitol Hill religious cult known as The Family, and spurred on by the Catholic bishops, anti-abortion Dems are contesting the fact that some small number of private insurance plans offered via the bill's insurance exchange scheme may offer coverage for abortion -- even therapeutic abortion. Where the federal dollars come in is via the subsidies for which lower-income people would be eligible for buying insurance through the exchange.
Politico's Patrick O'Connor reports on the church's influence at the negotiating table:
Negotiators are working closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to finalize language the church can accept. Vulnerable anti-abortion Democrats don’t want to support any bill that the bishops haven’t signed off on.
Last time I looked, abortion was a legal medical procedure in the United States. The changes the church wants would virtually forbid abortion coverage, even for women carrying fetuses without a chance of surviving outside the womb. The church seeks to codify its contempt for women into U.S. law, dooming a woman already facing a tragic pregnancy to compromise her life and health -- mental and physical -- apparently for the sin of having had sex.
As the legislation stands, no federal dollars would directly cover an abortion, and the public plan will offer no abortion coverage. But that's not enough for the men of the cloth.
The question remains, of course, as to whether this is an issue truly of moral conscience, or just a trick for stalling health-care reform. At Michele Bachmann's disinform-athon yesterday on the Capitol steps, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins alleged, untruthfully, that the bill announced last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi covers abortion, as did several members of Congress. The Family Research Council is a Republican-allied group.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Got a tip for a post?:
Email us | Anonymous form
Report: Hasan Snapped Under Weight of Bullying, Anxiety Over Deployment
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 8:36 AM.
It goes without saying that the usual suspects would view the tragic events at Fort Hood as an act of terror inspired by "jihadism." A soldier, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, reportedly shouted "God is great!" before opening fire on soldiers awaiting deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
If one is already inclined to see terrorists lurking beneath one's bed, naturally that's a neat end to the story, and supports whatever simplistic notions about Islam and terrorism one might hold.
Yesterday, as the first sketchy reports started filtering in, I thought that an organized act of political terror was about the least likely scenario to have gone down. (This didn't prevent me from thinking, 'oh, this is not going to go well' when the Major's name was released.)
And as it turns out, unless you're reading Right-wing blogs this morning, it does in fact appear to be a case of an individual snapping under a variety of stresses.
ABC:
Fort Hood shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, wanted out of the Army after being constantly harassed by others in the military and was called a "camel jockey," his family said.
As Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq, he was suffering from some of the same stresses that he was trained as an Army psychiatrist to treat.
Although the 39-year-old had just been promoted to major in May, his family says he had hired a lawyer to help him get out of the Armed Forces.
"Apparently became very disgruntled in the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced that to a lot of his colleagues," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)...
...After the 9/11 attacks, his cousin says he was the target of constant harassment from others in the military. His tormentors called him a "camel jockey," said his cousin, Nader Hasan. He wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.
While the bullying irritated Hasan, Nader Hasan believes his upcoming deployment is what set him off. The cousin said, "My mom is his mom… and we didn't know he was being deployed until we heard it on the news today."
The whole thing is obviously an incredible tragedy. But as Mark Ames -- who wrote the book about this kind of rage-killing -- points out on the front, this was anything but an isolated incident. All kinds of people "go postal."
That this one happened to be a Muslim and a soldier with strong feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only gives those who were already so inclined an opportunity to use a profound tragedy to impugn an entire faith.
CBO: Repubs' "Alternative" Health-Care Plan Would Leave 52 Million Uninsured in 2019
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 5, 2009 at 7:22 AM.
Last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the House Republican alternative health care bill. While the CBO determined the GOP bill’s 10 year price tag to be $61 billion — far less that the Democrats’ proposal — the score also found that the their bill would have little effect on nearly 46 million uninsured Americans:
By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019 period.
The CBO found that the Democrats’ bill, however, would cover 36 million more Americans and “reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.” Yet, just before the CBO scored the GOP bill, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed their alternative “will cover millions more Americans” than the Democrats’ bill.
Last night on Fox News Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) dodged a question about how many uninsured the GOP plan would cover and instead railed at the Democrats for “trying to get at this business of universal coverage”:
PENCE: We believe you get at the coverage issue by lowering the cost of health insurance. … So Republicans by focusing on the cost of health insurance believe that we are going to take our country in a direction where we also deal with the tens of millions of people and employers that struggle with providing insurance.
Boehner's Lame Excuse About Why the GOP Health Care Bill Sucks So Badly
Posted by mcjoan, Daily Kos on November 4, 2009 at 3:55 PM.
Yesterday, hours after the House Republicans healthcare "reform" plan was released and universally mocked, Rep. Boehner cried foul, insisting that this unauthorized leak was of a draft bill that wasn't finalized and hadn't been seen by members.
Just a quick reminder of the reaction in the media to Boehner's bill. Here's what the original WSJ article reported:
A House Republican health-care bill wouldn't seek to prevent health-insurance companies from denying sick people insurance, Minority Leader John Boehner said Monday.
And here's Roll Call:
Under the GOP plan, insurance companies would still be allowed to exclude anyone with a pre-existing medical condition from coverage, there would be no national insurance exchange and businesses would not face any mandate to provide insurance nor individuals to buy it. Boehner also left out tax credits to help the poor and middle class buy insurance — a central pillar of most GOP reform proposals and a key feature of a four-page outline Republican leaders released in June.
But that bill, says Boehner and Pence, wasn't the real bill, as reported by The Hill:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Iowa Wingnut Steve King Lauds Lobbyists as American Heros for Bussing in Health Reform Protesters
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on November 4, 2009 at 2:46 PM.
On Thursday, the lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — which were instrumental in orchestrating dozens of anti-Obama tea parties and town hall disruptions — are planning an anti-health reform rally at the steps of the Capitol. Republican leadership, like Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), have endorsed the rally. But two of the most rabidly right-wing members of Congress, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) are amongst the most aggressive promoters of the rally, with the help of talk radio and Fox News.
FreedomWorks has launched a website called “DontKillGrandma.com” listing recommended tactics for activists to engage in while protesting health reform. For the Thursday rally, FreedomWorks says activists should engage in a “simultaneous chant of ‘Kill the Bill.’” FreedomWorks is funded by corporate money and is led by Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader and until recently lobbyist from DLA Piper.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is busing people to the rally. AFP is led by astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips and is bankrolled by gas and oil baron David Koch, the world’s 9th richest person and the financier of dozens of conservative think-tanks, publications, and politicians. Like they did for the April tea parties, AFP has commissioned at least 10 buses from Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina to bring protesters — free of charge — to DC for the rally.
During a speech last night, King thanked the lobbyists for bringing in buses from “state after state after state.”
[Ed: Watch it in the window to your right.]
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Joe Lieberman In a Thong? New "Strip Joe" Game Allows You to See the Awful Truth
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 4, 2009 at 12:45 PM.
Have you had enough of Sen. Joe Lieberman, and his on-again, off again threat to stop health-care reform legislation from coming to a vote? The folks at Agit-Prop have teamed up with CREDO to give you a way to let off some steam, even as you send a message to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get tough with the Joester.
Called "Strip Joe," an animated online game allows you to wield a gavel with your cursor at various anatomical parts of the senator from the state of Aetna; wherever you land your gavel on the senator, he loses that piece of clothing. If you like what you see when you win, you can purchase your very own "GOP string" to add to your lingerie chest. (Made in USA!)
These are hijinks with a purpose, though. The game site allows viewers to sign on to a petition to Harry Reid that demands, "If Lieberman joins a GOP filibuster of the health care bill, strip him of his chairmanship." Lieberman chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Now, where did I leave my gavel?
Joe Lieberman: Swine Flu is Either with Us or the Terrorists!
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on November 3, 2009 at 5:42 AM.
I wish the exact quote were available, but for now we have this from Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard's blog:
... a source who was present at the scene reports:
In the stakeout after Face the Nation, Joe Lieberman excoriated the decision to give the vaccine to GITMO terrorists and not to pregnant women.
Really, Joe? Best you can do?
Yeah, we're giving swine flu vaccine to Guantanamo prisoners.
Can't think of a reason why, Joe? I won't even bother bringing up the Geneva Conventions, or our military's long tradition of humane treatment of prisoners -- I know you don't believe in any of that crap, Joe.
Still can't come up with a reason? Here, I'll give you a big fat hint:
Who's guarding Gitmo prisoners?
Right: our troops.
I know you think the prisoners are subhuman scum, vile worms who can't be compared to decent human beings on any level whatsoever. But guess what, Joe?
Viruses don't give a crap.
A virus can easily spread from your scum to our brave youth. Vaccinating these prisoners is a way of protecting our men and women in uniform.
Hey, Joe, why do you hate the troops?
GOP Loon Goes Off the Rails: Health Reform Greater Threat than Terrorism
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 2, 2009 at 11:12 AM.
Few Republican congressional members have served as a greater fount for hyperbolic and uninformed ranting about health care reform as has Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). As ThinkProgress previously documented, Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:
Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.
McCain Adviser Who Attacked Dems' Health Reform Now Facing Insurance Nightmare
Posted by Igor Volsky, Think Progress on November 2, 2009 at 8:35 AM.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, “remains unemployed — and his COBRA health coverage is running out,” the Washington Post reports. “Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky ‘preexisting conditions’ that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage”:
Holtz-Eakin said he’s been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain’s campaign through the government’s COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. “I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do,” he said.
During the campaign, Holtiz-Eakin fervently defended McCain’s proposal to shift more Americans out of their employer-sponsored coverage and into the individual health insurance market. “The key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves,” Holtz-Eakin said in August. “Instead of only getting it in the employer market, you would get it regardless of your source of insurance. And you get the same amount whether you’re rich or poor, $5,000 for every working family.”
50 Things Restaurant Servers Should Never Do
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on October 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM.
The New York Times has a blog post up now (part 1 of "100 Things") that outlines the best etiquette for restaurant employees. And no, this is not a 'remember to wash your hands' or 'don't spit in the food' kind of list -- it's a bit above that. Having worked only briefly in food service at one of my first jobs, I have to say that being a great server is really hard and I definitely notice and appreciate immensely when it is done well.
I agree with just about everything on the list except for number 6: "Do not lead the witness with, 'Bottled water or just tap?' Both are fine. Remain neutral." Actually, unless you are some place where the tap water is not drinkable, then I'd say, ditch the bottled water, like so many high-end (and other) restaurants are starting to do. It's better for the environment and often is actually better quality water, too.
Here's one of my favorites from the list: "If someone likes a wine, steam the label off the bottle and give it to the guest with the bill. It has the year, the vintner, the importer, etc." I've never seen that done before, but I'd be super impressed!
Here's a couple more good ones:
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
NC Blue Cross Blue Shield Customers Asked By Company to Oppose Public Option -- After Hiking Premiums 11%
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on October 29, 2009 at 8:00 AM.
In a brazen act of hubris, Blue Cross & Blue Shield has sent letters to all of its customers, asking them to send a pre-printed, postage-paid postcard to Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, that urges her to oppose any health-care reform that contains a public option. (The state's other senator, Richard Burr, is a Republican, so Blue Cross already has his "no" vote in their pocket.) And all this after notifying subscribers of a hefty premium hike.
As reported by the Raleigh News & Observer, the letter reads:
"No matter what you call it, if the federal government intervenes in the private health insurance market, it's a slippery slope to a single-payer system. Who wants that?"
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
Pelosi to Go With Not-So-Robust Public Option
Posted by John Nichols, The Nation on October 28, 2009 at 10:35 PM.
The public option was always a compromise for serious supporters of health-care reform, who -- like Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate in 2003 -- knew that a single-payer "Medicare for All" system was what America needed to provide health care to everyone while controlling costs.
But, in the reform legislation that will be debuted Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the compromise will be even more compromised.
According to The New York Times:
Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government, aides said Wednesday.Ms. Pelosi said the public plan, which she prefers to call a "consumer option," would compete with private insurers. But the speaker was apparently unable to muster the votes needed for the "robust" liberal version of a public plan, which she has repeatedly said would save more money for consumers and the government.
Translation: The "public option" Pelosi and her team will not make payments based on Medicare rates. It will, instead, be forced to negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, as private insurers do. That weakens the flexibility and muscle of the public option.
Pelosi's plan also drops a number of provisions that had been advanced at the committee level to promote consideration of "Medicare for All" models and to allow states to experiment with single-payer plans.
Read the rest of the post on the flip side »
EMAIL
PRINT
COMMENT NOW
PERMALINK
