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Date Posted: 07:12:45 03/19/10 Fri
Author: Shirley
Subject: Re: Obamacare
In reply to: Jeffman 's message, "Re: Obamacare" on 06:20:01 03/19/10 Fri

There are errors in your assumptions. Insurance companies are going to be required to pay a larger percentage of premiums collected on actual health care. Right now, and it varies by insurers, what they pay out for care is between 70 and 75%. They can actually increase their profits by eliminating paper filings of claims and going electronically as Medicare now does. We get a quarterly record of payout which has reduced the cost of mailings by two months worth.

Another thing important in Medicaid is that currently, there is an abundance of recipients on Medicaid right now who have turned to that because of job losses. As the job market improves, those folks will be dropping off.

The prescription drug plan has been bleeding Medicare since its passage, charging 16% more than Medicare pays for the same procedure. Three unfunded bills passed by the last administration--the PSP and two tax cuts--added $2.3 TRILLION to the deficit and that doesn't count two wars which were kept off the books by using supplementals.

If your prediction that fewer and fewer doctors and drug stores will treat Medicaid recipients, why are doctors and pharmas in favor of the bill? If you read the bill, you'll find doctors will actually be paid more than now so there are incentives. As more people have healthcare, doctors, insurers and pharmas will be seeing an increase in the numberthey see.

One of the best run downs I've seen today is an editorial in the NY Times:

Editorial
On the Verge of Reform The best chance in decades of fixing this country’s broken health care system has now come down to whether the House’s Democratic majority will approve the already strong Senate version of the bill — with a promise of some changes.

On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a package of amendments that would, on balance, make the Senate bill better. House Democrats should do what is best for all Americans and approve it.

They can then challenge the Republicans — who are refusing as a bloc to support reform — to explain in this fall’s campaign why they are so devoted to a status quo that denies affordable health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and means that millions more Americans could be just one layoff away from losing their coverage.

Even without amendments, the Senate bill is well worth passing. It would cover some 31 million of the uninsured by 2019, force the insurance companies to stop refusing coverage or charging high rates based on pre-existing conditions, reduce deficits over the next two decades, and make a start at controlling the costs of both insurance and medical care.

The amendments would first be voted on in the House and, if the package passes, in the Senate under reconciliation rules that require only a majority. They would make a strong bill stronger.

According to the official scoring by the Congressional Budget Office, it would cover slightly more of the uninsured. And it would cut deficits more sharply — by $138 billion over the first 10 years compared with $118 billion under the Senate bill, and by even greater amounts in the second decade. It would accomplish both of those with some additional, but still reasonable fees, taxes and Medicare savings.

Struggling to comply with the very stringent rules governing reconciliation bills, the Democrats made some reasonable trade-offs between enhancing benefits and finding additional savings and revenues.

Their package would increase the Senate bill’s subsidies to help low- and middle-income people pay for insurance in the initial years, scaling them back in more distant years. It would do a bit more to help close a gap in Medicare coverage for prescription drugs (the so-called doughnut hole), a welcome benefit for chronically ill beneficiaries who run up big drug costs. It would also remove some of the noxious special deals inserted in the Senate bill to win the support of fence-sitting senators.

It is disappointing that the reconciliation package would postpone for several years the strongest cost-cutting feature in the Senate bill: an excise tax on insurers who issue high-cost policies. But the retreat is not disabling. The main cost-cutting feature — an annual index that would subject more and more plans to the tax and encourage workers and employers to find cheaper coverage — has actually been strengthened.

To make up for the loss of revenue from the excise tax and help cover the enhanced benefits, the reconciliation package would extend the Medicare payroll tax for high-income Americans to include investment income, putting the burden on people who can clearly afford it. And it would squeeze even more savings out of the private Medicare Advantage plans that receive heavy and clearly unfair subsidies to participate in Medicare.

All told, these and other modest changes to the Senate bill look reasonable. Liberals in Congress need to recognize that this is about the most generous package of benefits that can possibly be passed in the midst of recession. And fiscal hawks need to recognize that this bill would reduce deficits more than any in recent years.

Like most historic legislation, the process leading up to these last votes has been agonizingly long, relentlessly frustrating, and far too easy for opponents to misrepresent and demagogue. But a willingness to compromise and good sense should prevail. The country needs comprehensive health care reform.

If the bill was so bad, why would the stock market favor it along with healthcare workers amd economists?

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