Washblog

WHEREAS the Senate health care bill eliminates the public option and retains a mandate to buy insurance from the very private companies which are responsible for our current health care financing mess, though (with few exceptions) it does not require plans to adopt insurance reforms or quality standards, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill establishes state health care exchanges only, making it very likely that this reform will fail at the hands of hostile governors, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill repeals the anti-trust exemption proposed in the House bill, leaving enforcement of insurance regulations to the states, which suffer from a lack of resources to go after offenders resulting in inconsistent enforcement and in allowing insurance companies to engage in anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior, and;  

WHEREAS the Senate bill replaces the House bill millionaires' tax with a 40% excise tax on group health coverage over certain amounts (the so-called "Cadillac" plans, which in reality offer coverage that is still inferior to the coverage that is the norm for everybody else in the industrialized world), and which will still apply to millions of families who do not have union-negotiated plans, and;

WHEREAS 61% of the population favors the millionaires' tax and only 29% favor the excise tax1, making this a huge political liability for Democrats, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill permanently grandfathers existing employer plans offering any level of coverage and has limited employer mandates compared to those proposed by the House, thereby making it easy for many large employers (particularly the ones paying poor wages such as WalMart) to shirk their responsibilities because these responsibilities vary depending on a worker's family income and on whether they are employed full-time or part-time; and

WHEREAS the Senate bill's Nelson Amendment, though better than the House Stupak amendment, is still opposed by feminists and reproductive rights organizations like NOW and NARAL, which are important Democratic Party-affiliated issue groups, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill prevents states from using exemptions to it in order to implement innovations such as single payer and establishment of state public options until 2017, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill sets a minimum standard of 60% actuarial value (meaning that policy holders must pay 40% of expenses out of pocket), which is the same sort of catastrophic insurance which is currently responsible for driving so many supposedly "insured" people into medical bankruptcy, and;

WHEREAS the Senate bill's Ensign Amendment2 effectively eliminates the prohibition of differential premiums for people with pre-existing conditions, and;

WHEREAS both the House Bill and the Senate bill retain unconscionable age rating, which violates the basic principle of risk sharing, which does not exist in any other industrialized county, and which will impose serious financial hardship on people aged 50-64, and;

WHEREAS though the Medicaid expansion and several of the changes to Medicare are useful, there is no necessity at all to tie these changes to mandatory purchase of underinsurance;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the 11th LD Democrats ask the reconciliation committee to retain the public option and open it to everyone, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to adopt the House language requiring that the federal government be directly involved in enforcing strong national regulations of insurers and creating the new exchange, because the federal government is the only entity big enough to ensure that a private insurance industry will follow the law, and

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to adopt the House bill millionaires' tax instead of any excise tax, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to adopt the House language requiring that employers not offering qualified coverage pay an 8% payroll tax on wages for all employees (including full-time, part-time and temporary), and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to adopt the original language of the House bill on abortion previous to the attachment of the Stupak amendment, because it is strictly against our Party platform to unfairly restrict reproductive rights, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to adopt some version of the Sanders/Kucinich amendments, allowing states to create a single payer systems, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to require that the minimum actuarial value of insurance plans be at least 80%, requiring the 20% co-pay that is typical of most decent employment-based plans, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to eliminate the Ensign Amendment and any other weakening of provisions intended to prevent discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions, and;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that we ask the reconciliation committee to eliminate age rating entirely, or failing that, to allow anyone over 50 into Medicare, and;

THEREFORE BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that if the reconciliation committee does not offer substantial improvements to the Senate bill, we urge our representatives not to vote for it, and instead to just come up with a more limited bill focused on expanding Medicaid and improving Medicare.

Submitted to the 11th Legislative District Democrats for endorsement at its meeting of January 19, 2010 by Martha Koester, 11th LD State Committeewoman and Beverly Precinct PCO.

References

1 http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/14/health.care.poll/

2 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/514042/the_ensign_healthcare_loophole

Taken at face value, Senator John Ensign's amendment which was included in the final Senate healthcare bill sounds pretty decent: by meeting "wellness" standards people can receive discounts on their employer-based healthcare premiums. Stop smoking--pay less. Hit a certain weight--pay less. Meet a cholesterol target--you get the idea.

Dems probably should have stopped and realized since the amendment was offered by Ensign it probably wasn't motivated by "wellness" at heart.

In fact, it allows premiums to be raised from current levels, and then "discounts" would reduce the premiums to current rates. People who don't meet the insurance companies' targets could pay up to 30 percent more for coverage, roughly $4000 based on the average cost of family coverage. The amount could increase to 50 percent which is over $6,600 for a family.

There is also the problem that this is biased against people with a genetic predisposition to high blood sugar, hypertension, high cholesterol, being overweight and a host of other often hereditary conditions. It's also biased against a lower-income person working two to three jobs to pay the bills, who has to stop and chow down some fast food between jobs rather than get to the gym where he or she can't afford a membership anyway. It's even biased against communities that don't have grocery stores where they can find fresh fruits and vegetables.