Max Baucus is at the center of the news today from Washington DC: he's unveiling his health-care proposal. It's a mish-mash of solutions that closely resembles Obama's campaign promises:
Expanded Medicaid and S-CHIP for the poor; a pooling mechanism that allows individuals and the uninsured to buy coverage at group rates; a new public insurance plan, modeled vaguely on Medicare, that would be available to people buying coverage through the new pool; subsidies to offset the cost of insurance coupled with efforts to restrain the cost of medicine in the long term; and regulations that force insurers to sell to everybody, regardless of pre-existing condition.
The big difference between Baucus' plan and Obama's is that it's mandatory -- that is, closer to Hillary Clinton's proposals for health care reform. And, while Clinton's imprint on this plan is faint because of her presidential campaigning, she is apparently gearing up to ensure that the reform goes through.
Naturally, with anything this big, there are concerns. For me, it isn't health insurance we necessarily need, but health care. There's talk of creating a "Health Insurance Exchange" -- is this a glossy version of McCain's proposal that would essentially handicap the states' ability to regulate the insurance industry? If there's a mandate for coverage for all Americans, does the plan "leave consumers at the mercy of the private insurers"?
Whatever. The plan's not released yet. And when it is, a lot people a helluva lot smarter than me will be scrutinizing this thing. Still, this is the first serve: the ball's in play. And we'll be talking a lot in the coming days and weeks and months about this proposal and others. |
