I've been thinking about the recent developments over the night and into this morning where the House unveiled their merged bill without the robust public option that Speaker Pelosi had been fighting for and that our Progressives in the House had been fighting for as well. Am I disappointed that the robust version of the public option isn't in the House bill? Yes, I am, only because it sends us to the conference process with a weaker hand where the debate likely would be moved to the right without consistent grassroots pressure from us. It's why so many of us were hoping that Speaker Pelosi would ignore the Blue Dogs and put in the robust version of the public option, just like Senator Reid had ignored the conservadems in the Senate that wanted a triggered public option, and instead went in with a trigger-free national public option. Here's more from the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals, rather than using prices set by the government, aides said Wednesday.
Even after putting in the less robust version of the public option, Speaker Pelosi still doesn't have the votes for the final passage of the bill because of the Blue Dog Democrats and moderate Democrats, but she and her whip team think they can bring in the votes anyway:
House Democrats do not have firm commitments from enough lawmakers to guarantee passage of their bill at the moment. But their aggressive schedule suggests they are confident they can round up the votes they need.
And there won't be any amendments offered on the floor, so Rep. Weiner's single-payer amendment and the Medicare plus 5% amendment by Grijalva will never get offered because the House leadership didn't want the Blue Dog Democrats to offer their anti-abortion amendments. I can understand the reasoning behind that, but Rep. Weiner and other single-payer advocates in the House had been promised that they would have the chance to bring forth a single-payer amendment. Also, the Rep. Kucinich amendment which was voted on in committee and made its way into the bill, won't even be a part of the final House bill, so the states would not have the ability to ask for a waiver to create a single-payer plan for their states.
People will have to pay a higher share of their premiums, which means lower subsidies, because the Blue Dogs didn't want the House to go with the robust public option, which would've saved more money and had more subsidies to make health care affordable for Americans. And you can see the price of giving in to the Blue Dog Democrats from the changes made to the bill,as provided by this link.
Affordability Credits. In order to reduce the cost of the new coverage to meet the $900 billion goal, affordability premium credits have been scaled back to reflect an amendment adopted by the Committee on Energy & Commerce. Individuals and families between 150 percent and 400 percent of FPL will pay a larger share of health premiums over time compared to HR 3200 as introduced. Also, the exception for individuals and families with employer coverage who can receive affordability credits in the Exchange is increased to 12 percent of income. Specific out-of-pocket maximums are added to protect individuals’ level of cost sharing at each income tier (specified below).
However, there's plenty of great stuff in the House bill such as these below provided to me by the Education and Labor Committee and nicely summarized by the NYT:
It would provide coverage to 35 million or 36 million people. The 10-year cost of expanding coverage would be less than the $900 billion ceiling suggested by President Obama. The cost would be offset by new taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so the bill would not increase the federal budget deficit in the next 10 years or in the decade after that.
The new bill, like an earlier version, retains a surtax on high-income people, but increases the thresholds. The tax would hit married couples with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million a year and individuals over $500,000 — just three-tenths of 1 percent of all households, Democrats said....
The new House bill would expand Medicaid to cover childless adults, parents and others with incomes less than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $33,075 for a family of four. This goes beyond the earlier House bill and a companion measure in the Senate, which would extend Medicaid to people with incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,327 for a family of four).
This change saves money. It is less expensive for the federal government to cover low-income people under Medicaid than to provide them with subsidies to buy private insurance.
And here's the implementation timeline of the benefits as provided in the House bill. It goes a lot farther than the immediate benefits considered by the Senate before 2013. This is the link where you can check out the benefits to see which year they'll be implemented. The Democrats in the House has done a better job of addressing the issue of making sure some reforms take effect immediately before the election in 2010 and in 2012.
Also, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Tri-Committee Caucus will be meeting with the President today. It'll be interesting to see their reactions after the meeting with him in the White House. The leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus say that their bottom line is a triggered public option, and that they will threaten to block the bill if a trigger makes its way into the bill in the conference process.
The road from here to the President's desk is very long, and we're just at the half-way point right now in getting the best bill possible onto his desk. However, it doesn't mean that we should ignore terrible amendments like the Eshoo amendment that's a major giveaway to pharmaceutical firms. It would ban brand name biologics from ever being available as generics. It means sick people who can't afford brand-name biologics would never be able to get them as generics.
They'd be stuck with an unaffordable biologic medicine to treat their illnesses. It's wrong, and we shouldn't stand for it as a part of the final bill.
We're holding rallies in four different cities, one of them at Rep. Eshoo's office along with the American Medical Student Association, to bring attention to this terrible amendment:
- Palo Alto: http://www.facebook.com/...
- North Carolina: http://www.facebook.com/...
- Baltimore: http://www.facebook.com/...
- Washington DC http://www.facebook.com/...
We'll keep on fighting for what is right, and please help support our work (since we do literally work for you guys) by donating to our fund at Firedoglake! Your donations go to our living stipends, expenses, and travel costs, including awesome tools like these. You also can follow me on Twitter @slinkerwink.
Also, please join our POP! push for the public option on Facebook.
UPDATE:The public option will likely be open to everyone by 2015:
The House bill would expand access to the new health insurance exchange fairly rapidly. In year one, 2013, only individuals without employer provided insurance and the “smallest” employers (25 or fewer employees) would have access to the exchange. In year two, 2014, “smaller” employers (50 or fewer employees) could access the exchange. By year three, 2015, all “small” employers (100 or fewer employees) would gain access to the exchange, and the exchange Commissioner could permit larger employers (greater than 100 employees) to be eligible for the exchange.
In theory, by 2015 all employers, and therefore all Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid, could start using the new health insurance exchange for health care. This would give nearly everyone the ability to choose the public option if they wanted. Of course, that would rely on the Commissioner deciding to throw open the exchange to every business, as well as all large employers choosing to provide coverage through the exchange.