I haven’t kept up with the health care reform proposals and discussions, so can someone bring me up to speed on what exactly Obama is proposing, in a nutshell?
I am afraid it would take a really big nutshell.
Here is the text of the bill (PDF).
[ul][li]It will cost at least $1.2 trillion. (Cite). [/li][li]Almost half the currently uninsured will not be covered [/li][li]It is expected to increase health care costs in the US rather than decrease them. Cite. [/li][li]Obama is talking about paying for it with a surtax on people making more than $280K per year, or couples making $500K per year. This will cover about one third of the projected increased cost. Cite. [/li][li]Obama promised that his health care bill would not add to the deficit, so somehow he has to raise taxes somewhere else and/or cut about a trillion or so from other spending. [/li][/ul]
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, how much of that House Bill is Congressional input, and how much of that Bill is Obama’s?
Look at Mr Obama’s website, you’ll get the ideas in a nutshell.
It’s hard to disagree with what he’s saying, but it’s easy to disagree when something effects you and no one else.
As Gracie Allen said in 1940 when she ran for president.
“A chicken in every pot sound like a great idea, that is unless you’re the chicken.”
I have no idea.
If you look at his website, Obama made a whole bunch of promises during the campaign, and is now pushing a plan to fulfill some of them. If it passes Congress and he signs it, it will be the law of the land. If Obama doesn’t want to be held accountable for it then, he shouldn’t be pushing it now.
Regards,
Shodan
The plan is still being banged out by various committees in Congress. But so far, the key elements are:
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Create a public insurance option that competes in the marketplace with private insurers.
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Set up health insurance exchanges (HIE) for those not insured by their jobs in every state that will be sort of a one-stop shop for a health care plan where individuals can compare different plans with neutral advice.
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Offer subsidies for low-income users of private and public insurance through the HIE system.
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Set requirements for participation in the HIEs, including the inability to deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition.
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Subsidize health information technology systems.
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Require employers to offer insurance of to contribute to the subsidies in the plan.
Oh, and in reference to Shodan’s outdated cite about 1.2 trillion price tag:
Sorry, please don’t think I’m pickin’ on you just 'cuz. Sometimes I take an OP too literally.
I am only asking because the thousand+ page Bill Congress came up with may not (or it might) be what Obama had in mind during the campaign.
The OP asked about Obama’s plan. I don’t know if there is a difference between what he wanted and what Congress dreamed up.
Obama’s plan was a single-payer system. That is clearly not happening now. Now we’re looking at some kind of exchange market for health care and subsidization for low income people. It may end up being 100% private with no public insurance.
Really? I don’t recall Obama ever proposing a single payer system. One of his buzz-words during the campaign was that you could keep your current health insurance policy if it suited you under his plan, which seems impossible if he planned for a single payer system.
Do you have a cite?
Here is a link to the three bills (they are still in progress) side-by-side.
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/healthreform_sbs_full.pdf
One of the key points is making the entire population a single “risk pool” so that insurance companies can not reject people with pre-existing condtions or retro-actively cancel insurance after accepting payments for years. This one point by itself may make the biggest difference.
A related question: what does *single-payer * mean?
It means that private health insurance is abolished, and all payment for health care comes from the government, funded by taxes or premiums, or both.
Single-payer health care is not currently being proposed by Congress or the White House.
The actual CBO document (here) seems to say otherwise -
Regards,
Shodan
Except that isn’t the actual CBO document in question. There was a July 14 analysis, and a subsequent July 24 analysis. The numbers I quoted refer to the latter analysis. Because these CBO analyses track changing bills, their results change until we get a final product. So it is important to look at the most recent ones.