Senate Democrats have managed a compromise on a health care bill that is a fraud on the American public, which is increasingly leery about a government-run health care option.Instead of a government health service to provide coverage to individuals not covered by company plans, the Senate bill authorizes the federal Office of Personnel Management to contract with a nonprofit insurer to provide an alternative to private health care plans. (The post office is such a nonprofit – it walks, talks and doles out mediocre service just like the motor vehicle office and Veterans’ Affairs Department.)This public-private plan would have a disproportionate share of participants with expensive pre-existing conditions and chronic problems. Although it would have slightly lower administrative costs than the likes of Aetna or Humana, this adverse selection of clients would compel it to provide inferior service and curtailed benefits – unless the federal government empowered this nonprofit to force doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical device companies to accept significantly lower reimbursements than they do from most private insurers. Inferior patient care is the more likely outcome.Just as with the House bill, private companies will find it cheaper to drop coverage and pay a tax, thus pushing their employees into this public-private option.Ordinary Americans are correct to fear that they will lose their private insurance. Once a few competitors (or even just one large one) in an industry opt to drop their private insurance in favor of paying a tax and pushing employees into the public-private option, other firms must follow or face competitive cost disadvantages.By adding another 31 million people to the health insurance rolls, the Senate and House bills will add another $1,000 to $2,000 to the cost of a private family health care plan. Americans fortunate enough to hold onto to their private plans may not be taxed directly, but they will face a combination of higher co-pays, bigger payroll deductions for health care and lower wages to permit employers to absorb higher costs.Health care will be more expensive and good health care less accessible for many taxpaying middle-class workers.As for out-of-control health care costs, the Senate and House bills “bend the cost curve” all right – in the wrong direction. By increasing entitlements without truly taking on the special interests – tort lawyers, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies – these bills would raise the cost of health care.Americans already pay at least 50 percent more for health care than the French and Germans and perhaps double what the British pay. By pushing health care from 18 percent of gross domestic product to 20 percent, these “reforms” will make the typical middle-class family poorer and the U.S. economy less competitive. More jobs will be lost.That is not health care reform Americans should accept – and the polls indicate they don’t.Sadly, Senate and House Democrats believe they know better than most Americans what is good for them. These elitists don’t know much about effectively managing health care or the economy, and we are all losers for that.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour joined Senate Republicans on Thursday in blasting Democrats’ plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system                          “The longer it’s out there, the worse it stinks,” Barbour said of the Senate health care reform bill.Democratic leaders in the Senate had hoped to bring the bill up for a vote by Christmas. But that may not be possible as they struggle to win more support for the measure amid Republican delay tactics.Any legislation passed by the Senate would have to be reconciled with a health care reform bill the House passed last month.The Senate measure would spend $848 billion over 10 years and would insure 31 million people who don’t have coverage now.Both bills would expand Medicaid and create health insurance exchanges where coverage would be available for small businesses and workers not offered insurance through an employer. The bills would penalize individuals who don’t buy insurance and employers who don’t offer it. It also would bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.Barbour and other governors have complained about the cost to their states of expanding the Medicaid program. Barbour has said it could cost Mississippi taxpayers $1.3 billion over the next 10 years. Medicaid is one of the most costly programs in state budgets, he said Thursday.”States don’t have this money. In fact, we’re already cutting our budgets,” Barbour said.He said he may have to cut $715 million from next fiscal year’s budget. Unlike federal lawmakers, he said, governors must balance their budgets.Supporters of the health care reform bill say it would particularly benefit southern states, which tend to have a higher proportion of uninsured residents and a higher incidence of health ailments such as obesity.”We expect the number of uninsured people to grow by 30 percent in 29 states,” said Nancy-Anne DeParle, the White House adviser on health care reform. “Unfortunately, the southern states are the ones … where it will grow by the (highest) percentage.”Families USA, a national health care advocacy group that supports health care reform, released a report Wednesday saying 359,000 Mississippians would gain health insurance coverage under the Senate bill. Without it, the report said, 93,000 residents could lose coverage by 2019 and the number of uninsured state residents could increase from about 532,000 to about 625,000.”The consequences of inaction are very severe for people in Mississippi and across the country,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement. “If the Senate fails to act, Americans will continue to struggle and a growing number of them will face the devastating effects of going without coverage.”Republicans say the health care reform bill would cost too much, expand the government’s role in health care and increase premiums for seniors enrolled in Medicare.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The health care reform bill – all 1,990 pages of it – came to Elm Grove on Saturday, and the overwhelming sentiment from constituents of Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner who gathered at the village hall was clear: No thanks.More than 200 people packed the boardroom and overflowed into the hallway at Elm Grove Village Hall to weigh in on the proposal and other federal issues in an afternoon meeting held by Sensenbrenner. Sitting behind a two-sided printout of the bill that measured more than 4 inches high, Sensenbrenner fielded questions and comments from residents of his congressional district.”This is not about health care – this is about control of our lives,” Valerie Linton of Sussex told the crowd.One by one, residents of the largely Republican district blasted the reform bill crafted by Democrats.”If this is so great, why don’t the Congress people go into the plan?” asked J.F. Rennebohm of Elm Grove.Some in the crowd said they were worried about the debt being incurred by the federal government and the costs it would impose on future generations of Americans.Sensenbrenner, who held a similar town hall meeting attended by about 30 people in Brown Deer earlier in the day, said the bill would put the country on the path to health care rationing.”We should not put some bureaucrat between a patient and their physician,” Sensenbrenner told the audience.Supporters of the health care reform legislation were rare, with only two speaking in favor of it during the hour-and-a-half meeting. One man carried a sign that read, “Health Insurance Reform Now,” but he did not speak to the group.Told of the strong turnout and opposition to the health care reform measure at Saturday’s meeting, Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said “It must be Halloween” because Sensenbrenner and the industry were scaring people about what health insurance reform means.”The Democratic Congress is hard at work putting together a proposal that will finally make health insurance a reality for people that are uninsured and make better coverage a reality for those that are underinsured,” Tate said.Before the meeting, Sensenbrenner delivered a printout of the hefty bill to the Elm Grove Library for perusal by constituents.In an interview, Sensenbrenner called the health care reform bill “a government takeover of health insurance.” He said the public option included in it probably would lead employers to stop offering health insurance to workers.”I’m very, very fearful that it will encourage employers to drop their employee health insurance programs and pay an 8% tax that is levied on those employers that do not provide health insurance, because most employer-provided health insurance costs a lot more than 8% of payroll,” Sensenbrenner said. “And by dumping their employees into the government option, they can improve the bottom line.”

Popularity: unranked [?]

Nine months ago, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were all celebration as they hailed the renewal of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program. Last week, they called for CHIP’s demise.The $894 billion, 1,990-page health reform bill unveiled by House Democrats last Thursday would repeal CHIP at the end of 2013, shifting millions of kids instead into private plans contained on a proposed health insurance marketplace, dubbed the exchange.Party leaders have been mostly tight-lipped about their motivations. But a series of factors seem to have driven their decision, according to sources on and off Capitol Hill, including hopes to get family members under the same plan, to centralize control of the state-run CHIP program, and to shift more folks into private coverage to win the support of both the insurance lobby and moderate Democrats.Yet the proposed shuffle has roused concerns from some Democratic lawmakers and children’s health care advocates, who fear the move would cause some youngsters to lose coverage as they jump from highly subsidized CHIP plans into private coverage that could prove more expensive for those low-income families. Critics also worry that the private plans won’t offer the same extensive benefits that CHIP does.“The president has promised to build upon what works and to allow people to keep the coverage they have,” said a representative of one children’s welfare group, speaking only anonymously because of the delicate political nature of the topic. “That promise should apply to kids as well. However, there is growing concern and evidence that the health insurance exchanges will still impose higher out-of-pocket costs for families with fewer benefits for children than CHIP coverage.”The criticisms over CHIP have raised questions about the importance of the program, with some advocates fighting for its preservation while others maintain that the coverage itself is more important than the program that provides it. The House proposal also sets the stage for a CHIP clash between House Democrats and those in the Senate, where a provision preserving the program was passed by members of the Finance Committee last month.House lawmakers are planning to vote on their sweeping health reform proposal as early as this week.Under the House bill, federal funding for CHIP would cease on Oct. 1, 2013, with kids permitted to remain in the program through the end of the year if funds permit. At the start of 2014, however, the program would end, with kids shuffling into private plans on the exchange. An exception would be made in those states that have opted to use their CHIP funds to expand Medicaid rather than create stand-alone CHIP programs. In those cases, children would remain in the Medicaid program.The shift is indication that House Democratic leaders don’t envision a place for CHIP within the framework of the comprehensive health care reforms they hope to pass this year – reforms that include a broad expansion of Medicaid and subsidized coverage for folks earning below 400 percent of poverty, or $88,200 for a family of four.The proposal also marks a reversal from the Democrats’ health policy position of the past two years. Created in 1997, CHIP was originally authorized for 10 years, leading to a political showdown between the Democratic Congress and President George W. Bush in 2007, when it came up for renewal. An expansion bill easily passed Congress, but Bush vetoed the measure twice, prompting Democrats to accuse the White House of putting politics above the welfare of kids. Leading the critics was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who called the vetoes “sad” and “cruel.”The bipartisan program had suddenly become partisan, and the Democrats were its champion.After a series of short-term extensions, President Obama signed a 5-year, $33 billion CHIP extension into law in February, leaving the program to expire Oct. 1, 2013.Pelosi’s office did not respond to calls and e-mails for comment. But another one-time CHIP champion, former Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), said that moving kids from CHIP to exchange plans has at least two distinct advantages: First, CHIP requires renewal every few years, leaving the program’s longevity to the whims of Congress. And second, exchange coverage could wrap kids and their parents into the same insurance plan — a strategy the Michigan Democrat says will increase enrollment of youngsters.“The most important thing is to cover the children,” Dingell said in an email. “As effective as CHIP has been, families constantly must deal with long wait lists or block grants running out. Families in the Exchange or Medicaid will not have the same problems.”A recent report from Inside CMS, a trade publication, points to another reason that Democrats might have proposed an end to CHIP: Moving kids to the exchange “would significantly improve the risk pools for private insurers, a boon for insurers,” the paper reported, citing an unnamed Senate Democratic aide.Several independent analyses have questioned the wisdom of moving kids from CHIP to the exchange, warning that the transition will leave some kids without access to health care. One report, conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a financial consulting firm, found that most families living at 175 percent of poverty pay nothing to enroll their kids in CHIP, while those living at 225 percent of poverty pay about 2 percent of health care costs. By contrast, those same kids getting coverage through private insurers on the exchange would pay between 5 percent and 35 percent of treatment costs, respectively — a shift “greatly increasing their financial burden and leaving low-income children worse off as a result of health reform,” the researchers noted. The Watson Wyatt study was commissioned by First Focus, a children’s health advocacy group.More recently, the Congressional Budget Office examined a Senate proposal to repeal CHIP, reaching the same conclusion that the increased costs to low-income families would leave some kids without any coverage at all.“Under the mark as it was originally offered, which would have eliminated CHIP, CBO anticipated that some of those children would be eligible for subsidized coverage in the exchanges but would not be enrolled in an exchange plan (owing at least in part to the higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs that they would typically face in such a plan),” CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote last month.That analysis is moot, however, because Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) successfully preserved CHIP during the markup of the Senate bill in the Finance Committee.Rockefeller’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But if his words during the Finance debate are any indication, the West Virginia Democrat will likely fight during the House-Senate conference negotiations to keep CHIP alive.“I don’t believe that we can force vulnerable kids into private coverage,” Rockefeller said in the wee hours of Oct. 2. “That’s what we’d be doing. They’d lose that special kind of defined benefit that comes under Medicaid, which you can argue, I guess, in some cases, but you can’t argue on kids and particularly young kids. You cannot do that. They have requirements that you have to meet and can only be met through Medicaid, not in the exchange, where they’re at the mercy of people that will have them for lunch.”House Democrats are not blind to those concerns. An amendment to the House bill, sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Col.), would have blocked the transition from CHIP to private coverage unless White House health officials could certify that those youngsters would receive comparable care under the exchange plans. But after passing the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier in the year, DeGette’s provision was diluted to remove the certification requirement. Instead, the final bill requires the Health and Human Services Department
to provide Congress with a cost and benefit analysis of CHIP plans versus those on the exchange, including recommendations for a smooth transition. The report is due by the end of 2011 — 12 months before the exchange would launch.DeGette’s office argued that the final bill retains the initial safeguards because it extends CHIP for the final three months of 2013, providing time for the exchange plans to develop, as well as additional cushion for lawmakers to examine those plans in the context of the White House recommendations. If there are concerns that the exchange plans won’t offer comparable coverage, said DeGette spokesman Kristofer Eisenla, then lawmakers can always extend the CHIP program.Reauthorizing CHIP, however, would require yet another act of Congress — and a lot more money.Indeed, critics are questioning the value of the HHS analysis without some guarantee that kids won’t be forced into lesser health plans. “The teeth of that amendment were what made the report matter,” said the child welfare advocate.House Democrats are also dismissing the CBO’s analysis of the CHIP repeal, arguing that different enforcement and funding mechanisms in the House bill make Elmendorf’s statement irrelevant. “They’re like apples and oranges,” Eisenla said of the two chambers’ bills.Dawn Horner, senior project director at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, an advocacy group, applauded some of the CHIP proposals contained in the House bill. The provision to keep CHIP-funded Medicaid patients in the Medicaid program, for example, is a step above the Senate proposal, she said. Also, the House bill has better affordability protections for kids on the exchange, Horner added. The combination makes it difficult to determine whether CBO’s analysis of the Senate bill holds for the House proposal, she said.CBO did not respond to requests for comment on the CHIP provisions of the House bill.Still, Horner was quick to add that the House bill should go further to ensure that kids aren’t forced to move into exchange plans if those plans are deemed to be of lesser quality than CHIP. The original DeGette amendment provided that protection, she said, “but there’s nothing in there right now… The hope is to get something stronger [as the bill proceeds].”

Popularity: unranked [?]

Erickson Column: Immigration reform bill coming up

Jerry EricksonPublished: June 10, 2009

As we’ve all learned, there are certain things in life that you can count on: taxes, flowers in the spring and that good fences make good neighbors. And that immigration reform is an issue that we should deal with soon. The simple fact is that the issue is too big, too emotional and will affect most us in one way or another. The other important point thing to note is that it is also an extremely divisive issue. We need to confront the issue, resolve what the next steps will be and then implement a game plan. If you have any doubts about the emotions involved, take a look at the online comments that are posted to almost any immigration related article. There have been plenty of fork-in-the-road issues that our country has dealt with in the past: busing and civil rights to name just two. The key is that we dealt with them. The issues that involve immigration need to be dealt with now.

Irrespective of the position you take on immigration reform, it seems that traction is building to deal with the issue this year. This past week, Senate majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) voiced his preference on the issue. Senator Reid was at a news conference with Hispanic leaders, who were providing support for Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor, when he said that a comprehensive immigration bill “is going to happen this session, but I want it this year, if at all possible.” Reid also mentioned that it was one of his top three priorities for 2009, along with health care and energy.

The last time the issue of immigration reform was considered was in 2007. That measure failed in the Senate. The result is that the issues that were raised in 2007 are still waiting for us to consider and resolve. The issues involved in immigration reform that need to be addressed are numerous and complex. Once Congress takes up some of the narrow immigration issues that must be dealt with this year (i.e. E-Verify), it’s hopeful that the other larger immigration reform issues will be dealt with as well. 

As the Washington Post recently reported, House Democrats have indicated a willingness to address the immigration issues first. This is a good sign as it could and should get the national debate focused on addressing the core issues and debating and determining the best long-term solutions.

The Obama administration has recently confirmed that an immigration summit with many key lawmakers will be held on June 17. The meeting had originally been scheduled for June 8 but was delayed due to the president’s travel schedule. The purpose of the summit is to identify issues where there is agreement and where greater effort is needed to achieve broader consensus.

Washington being Washington, it’s certainly possible that meaningful discussions concerning immigration reform could get bumped again this year to the back burner. Immigration, after all, is an issue that some lawmakers would probably not want to be heard on. Just initiating a discussion involving immigration reform will be difficult. However, it is an issue that requires our leaders to be bold, to speak their minds and then agree on long-term solutions.

Our country’s previous leaders have dealt with any number of troubling and difficult issues. It’s time for our current leaders to do the same. The issues involved in immigration reform have simply gotten too big to ignore any longer. With an economy in trouble and many Americans out of work, it would be relatively easy to ignore the issue again. However, dealing with the contentious issues that are at the heart of immigration reform, coming up with a real plan and then implementing it is in our best interests. That’s one more thing we can all count on.

The above information is provided for informational purposes only.  The information should not be construed as legal advice and does not constitute an engagement of the Szabo, Zelnick & Erickson, P.C. law firm or establish an attorney-client relationship with any of its attorneys.  An attorney-client relationship with our firm is only created by signing a written agreement with our firm.

 

Popularity: unranked [?]