Good evening. This is going to be a short diary on the outcome of the secret Senate Finance Committee on healthcare reform today.
The Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown reports that the committee members agreed to the following:
- There will be an individual mandate which the Senate Finance committee now calls a "shared responsibility."
- There will be an exchange where consumers can shop for different private health insurance plans. This concept is similiar to Massachusetts' connector plan.
http://www.politico.com/...
The most interesting part of the Politico article IMHO was the part where the committee members spoke of the divisions that still permeated the 8 hour discussion on healthcare reform today. There is still no agreement whether there should be an employer mandate where the employer has to provide insurance or pay a fine. Plus, no surprise but the public option still divides the committee. During the discussion today, the committee members brought up a new type of public option:
Grassley said they discussed several scenarios, including one not listed in the committee’s white paper released Monday: a public fallback option modeled on the Medicare Part D program. If there is not enough private competition in local market, the government can create a public alternative. The concept was raised during a meeting Wednesday between President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, according to a source familiar with the discussion.
This concept isn't exactly new. I remember hearing something similiar from Evan Bayh during his appearance on Fox News Sunday several weeks ago:
WALLACE: I want to bring Senator Bayh in.
And I want to ask you — because there really does seem to be momentum, bipartisan momentum, and even from the industry, from health care providers, from insurance companies, to do something this year about health care reform.
But the one big concern a lot of the private sector has is the president, in his program, has as a — supposedly as a provider of last resort a government program, and the concern is they'll be able to do it so much more cheaply, or at least in terms of the cost, that everybody will end up in the government program.
BAYH: Well, it's a debate we need to have, Chris. And I'm agnostic on that as we sit here this morning. I think in the Medicare Part D — to use plain English, the drug program for senior citizens...
WALLACE: The prescription drug benefit.
BAYH: ... there was a provision that some people were concerned about that allowed the government to step in and offer that coverage in areas of the country where private — you know, the private sector did not step forward and offer the coverage.
So it has not had the kind of adverse impacts that some had been concerned about. We need to have a debate about that.
My own preference would be — and you may have found common ground here this morning on Easter, which is appropriate — deal with the inefficiencies, figure out a way to make the private marketplace accomplish our public good, only have the government role as a backstop, as a last resort, if the private sector has just failed to meet the challenge.
emphasis added
http://www.foxnews.com/...
It's kind of strange that the public option fallback is just now being widely discussed.
I have a feeling that in this scenario only rural communities would have the ability to buy into the public option. Historically, rural communities are underserved and may have a healthcare monopoly. I remember in the Senate Finance committee hearing on expanding coverage, Olympia Snowe of Maine expressed her concern that few health insurance companies want to operate in rural communities so that her constituents had less choices. So, I could definitely see Olympia Snowe sign onto this type of public option....
Let's see how this shapes out...