WASHINGTON - Health care legislation heading for the Senate floor will give millions of Americans the option of purchasing government-run insurance coverage, Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Monday, although he stopped short of claiming the 60 votes needed to pass a plan steeped in controversy.
Reid, D-Nev., said individual states would have the choice of opting out of the program.
His announcement was cheered by liberal lawmakers, greeted less effusively by the White House and noted with a noncommittal response by Democratic moderates whose votes will be pivotal.
Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican to vote with Democrats on health care so far this year, issued a statement saying she was "deeply disappointed" in the approach the Democratic leader had chosen.
Reid said, "While the public option is not a silver bullet, I believe it's an important way to ensure competition and to level the playing field for patients with the insurance industry." He said a long-delayed Senate debate on President Barack Obama's call for an overhaul of the health care system would begin as soon as the Congressional Budget Office completes a mandatory assessment of the bill's cost and impact on coverage.
Changes on the public option - and numerous other provisions in the measure - are possible during a debate expected to last for weeks.
Both the House and Senate are struggling to complete work by year's end on legislation extending coverage to millions who lack it, to ban insurance industry practices such as denying coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions and to slow the rise in medical costs nationally.
As in the Senate, attempts to complete drafting a measure in the House have been delayed by internal Democratic divisions on the details of a government-run option. Differences in bills passed by the House and Senate would have to be reconciled before any legislation reached Obama's desk.
In an appearance at a Florida senior center during the day, Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested a new name for the same approach to ease the opposition. She suggested "the consumer option." Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appearing at Pelosi's side, used the term "competitive option."
Critics say that by any name, the approach amounts to a government takeover of the insurance industry.
Senate Democratic officials say the bill Reid envisions would require most individuals to purchase insurance, with exemptions for those unable to find affordable coverage. Large businesses would not be required to provide insurance to their workers, but would face penalties of as much as $750 per employee if any qualified for federal subsidies to afford coverage on their own.
The bill also will include a tax on high-cost insurance policies, despite opposition from organized labor, officials said. In a gesture to critics of the plan, Reid decided to apply the new tax to family plans with total premiums of $23,000 a year. The Senate Finance Committee approved a tax beginning at $21,000 in total premiums.
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chefxh says...
Oh, no! The insurance industry might have to actually compete for its money!
This is not nationalization, socialized medicine, or a single-payer plan. It is what the (theoretically) best and brightest 100 people in the nation have come up with as our best array of choices. Is there really anybody who disagrees that healthcare needs serious reform? Realistically, our two main political parties are basically indistinguishable; let's quit fighting over position and get a plan for reform before no one but the Senate can afford healthcare.
One of my favorite chef quotes (I work in a kitchen) is "Who cares how you feel? There's work to be done!"
October 27, 2009 at 10:14 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
yougottabekiddingme says...
It's all Hogwash! All you Obama lovers will be crying in your beer (if you can still afford it) ten years from now because not only will you be paying really high taxes but you will have long waits for Healthcare.
If this public option POS gets in, I can only hope that the Native Americans take advantage of their autonomy to create world class health care campus's where those of us can go who want better than what the government healthcare will allow us to have. You know, sort of like the people in Canada and England come here now for life saving treatment that they can't get in their own countries.
October 27, 2009 at 10:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
yougottabekiddingme says...
Chefxh: did you really call our Senators the best and the brightest in the nation? I hope that you were being sarcastic.
Also, please note that NO conservatives are getting on the public option bandwagon (no matter what they change the name to). The democrats will own this POS.
October 27, 2009 at 10:21 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
sjsk8rboi says...
OfCourseWeCan, it's the Dems who can't get enough of the teabagging in Washington. If the Repubs are the party of No, then the Dems are the party of More. More taxes, More government control, More class warfare, More redistribution of wealth, etc.
October 27, 2009 at 12:49 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tallest says...
Hoo boy... the Demokrats just can't stop dancing around the third rail. Great to watch this band of socialist idiots come apart at the seams. No you won't! And if you somehow do, it will be your epitaph.
October 27, 2009 at 5:17 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
JoeFreedom says...
Chefxh, don't cry about public healthcare when your paycheck looks like an accounting error. If you think healthcare is costly now, just wait 'til it's free. Even if Obamacare gets scaled back, tremendous discretionary power is given to bureaucrats. So Obama will implement whatever regulations he sees fit and get to socialized medicine that way. This is tyranny pure and simple - utter disdain for democracy. There's only one way to stop it: Make it absolutely clear to our representatives THEY WILL BE VOTED OUT OF OFFICE IF THEY SUPPORT IT.
There IS a better way than the prosperity-wrecking big-government policies of Barack Obama and his merry band of neo-socialists. America's free market has been the engine of America's great progress. The role of lawmakers is NOT to disparage wealth, but to expand its reach; not to stifle the market, but to strengthen its ability to unleash the creativity and innovation that still makes this nation the envy of the world.
Only the vitality of the private sector - a truly free one, unencumbered by the crippling stranglehold of burdensome government regulation - can lift America out of the unsustainable mess that liberals created. The better way is this: complete deregulation of medicine and health insurance. State mandates raise the cost of insurance by forcing people to have coverage many would never buy on their own. The federal government reinforces this crazy system by forbidding competition across state lines. That must end, along with restrictions on Health Savings Accounts.
A free medical market would bring lower prices and better services. The price of insurance would come down with the price of care. Free enterprise is the only way to lift us all out of this mess. To think otherwise is to follow the tragic mistakes of the Soviet Union, East Germany and other socialist nations in the trash heap of history.
October 27, 2009 at 5:45 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
donaldo says...
sure is a lot of insurance supporters out there. all but one post decided we don't need a change in our run down insurance run health system. sure it is going to be different, but it is needed to stop the runaway insurance run care we have now. they tell you after paying for a policy from them what you can have done and what they can afford to pay for you. if it is too expensive then they tell you that you are not covered for that. period, no discussing it, they wont pay and you cant fight it. god has spoken. i for one am tired of insurance controlling what they will pay or not. it is too expensive now. something needs to be done now!!!!!.and i don't care how much your boo hooing , we cant take health care , you will be sorry cry babying you do.we will pass it and if it doesn't work , we can always say we did something , not just accepted their word that this is the way it is going to be and you cant do a thing about it!
October 28, 2009 at 1:47 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
MajorHart says...
I don't trust Obama at all - everything he has done is for the rich and their corportions. As a lifelong democrat but extremely unhappy at the direction my party has taken lately - and because we can't stop the gop wars which now are the Obama wars - I oppose anything Obama does.
That said, however - we do need real healthcare reform and we need only one kind - a full single payer plan that covers all US citizens. As a former insurance agent - I saw my customers shafted and denied coverage time and again - as the insurance companies got richer and richer. This needs to stop - veterans benefits, medicare are wonderful programs and we need to expand them. Those who feel extremely hostile to social programs (for americans) are very wrong. OR they are part of the greedy insurance industry which is probably financing a lot of these protests.
Obama's and the democrats plan needs to go until we can get a full single payer plan - nothing he does or will do is good for America!
MajorHart
October 28, 2009 at 7:08 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )