There's a major loophole in the Senate bill, and it's one that allows annual lifetime limits by private insurers on people currently struggling with expensive illnesses like chronic kidney disease and cancer. The Senate HELP bill didn't have this provision and neither did the Senate Finance bill before they were merged together by Senator Harry Reid. This goes against President Obama's promisethat the health care bill would not put annual lifetime limits on sick patients' insurance coverage:
They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.
Here's more below, including the reactions of the American Cancer Society to this provision:
As currently written, the Senate Democratic health care bill would permit insurance companies to place annual limits on the dollar value of medical care, as long as those limits are not "unreasonable." The bill does not define what level of limits would be allowable, delegating that task to administration officials. Adding to the puzzle, the new language was quietly tucked away in a clause in the bill still captioned "No lifetime or annual limits."
Officials of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network said they were taken by surprise when the earlier ban on annual coverage limits was undercut, adding that they have not been able to get a satisfactory explanation. "We don't know who put it in, or why it was put in," said Stephen Finan, a policy expert with the cancer society's advocacy affiliate.
Democratic officials of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would not comment publicly but said the bill contains numerous provisions that will benefit patients with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, not to mention improvements in preventive care.
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"If you can have annual limits, saying there's no lifetime limits becomes meaningless," he said. A patient battling aggressive disease in its later stages could conceivably exhaust insurance benefits in the course of a year.
The reason that this becomes Senator Reid's responsibility is that he alone was in charge of merging together the Senate HELP and the Senate Finance Committee bill, so whoever he worked with made sure that the provision was slipped in that would benefit private insurers. If this bill gets ping-ponged with no conference process, then this provision gets to stay in. We need to support our Progressives in the House in demanding a conference process because if there's no conference, and the Senate bill goes straight to the House for an up-down vote, then this provision stays in the bill and would likely impact millions of Americans being mandated to buy private insurance.
It's not just this provision we're battling against, but the Stupak amendment as well. Senator Ben Nelson saidthat the negotiators over the manager's amendment were looking at keeping the principle of the Stupak amendment in the bill.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said Wednesday that Senate Democrats have discussed keeping the "principle" of the House abortion language in their bill.
Nelson said that the Democrats have talked about the idea in closed-door meetings but did not delve into the specifics of the proposal.
"[There is] lot of discussion about how to keep the the principle of the House version with different language," he told reporters. "A lot of people are trying to explore if that is possible."
Nelson's amendment that mirrored Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) abortion language included in the House bill was tabled by the Senate on Tuesday. The Nebraska senator and key centrist vote before indicated that his amendment's inclusion of the bill was a crucial to his support for the bill.
It's why we formed the One Voice For Choice campaign to prevent this from happening, and we're still running phonebanking events. I'm holding one tomorrow from 1PM to 5PM right here in Austin, Texas. And you're invited to come if you live in Central Texas!
ATTENTION ALL AUSTIN KOSSACKS! Come and PHONEBANK against the Stupak amendment!
Just e-mail me at pleasehelpfreebarneythedog@gmail.com if you live in Austin and would like to help us phonebank against the Stupak amendment. I promise to provide yummy snacks, drinks, and guacamole!