Where does the Senate Finance Committee stand on its healthcare legislation the president said would be introduced today? Well, for starters, Republicans in the "Gang of Six" are making new demands of Baucus, and he appears to be going along. Meanwhile, committee Democrats are eager to mark up the bill as it comes out of Baucus' mini-committee, which Montana's senior senator doesn't seem too thrilled about:
Baucus acknowledged that the mark-up could prove a busy one but predicted that Democrats would support the package he plans to unveil Wednesday without major changes.
"I don't see any deal-breaker amendments," Baucus said. "Put it this way: It's unlikely that any amendments, which basically change the framework, will be accepted."
Apparently Senate Democrats, like anyone else who's seen reports of Baucus' legislation, are very concerned that they'll be pushing Americans through an individual mandate to buy private insurance policies that will be priced extremely high.
Other bad things Baucus' legislation does:
The health reform "framework" put forward by the Senate Finance Committee's chairman, Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, proposed a new standard that would permit older people to be charged significantly higher premiums than would be the case under any of the other health care reform bills.
Under Senator Baucus's plan, insurers would be permitted to charge older people five times more for their health insurance premiums than younger people. That proposal, first circulated in a Finance Committee policy options paper last spring, is a significant departure from the approaches put forth by three House committees and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Those bills would only allow insurers to charge older people twice as much as younger ones.
While most employer-provided insurance plans protect policyholders from insurer "age rating," but individual plans don't - the very kinds of plans that those affected by the individual mandate likely will be required to buy.
dday:
We've already seen an outline of it, so we know that it would still cripple people financially who have the temerity to get sick, it would criminalize people who do not buy inadequate private coverage from the insurance industry, it would incentivize employers to offer crappy coverage and discriminate in hiring against people who have no coverage from a family member, and it would not include a public insurance option to compete with private plans.
Even Ezra Klein is concerned about the affordability of medical costs for American families experiencing illness under the Baucus plan. No wonder former Cigna executive Wendell Potter calls the legislation "an absolute gift to the industry."
Which dday says explains why pharmaceutical corporations are happy to pitch in with $150 million of "pro-reform" advertising. (See Matt Taibbi's comments on matter.)
From where I'm sitting, this kind of reform isn't worth passing. Or am I missing something? |
