Last night, Senator Baucus met with Reid, Dodd, and Emanuel to discuss the merging of the Senate bills. The public option was a part of the discussion, and as were the trigger, the state opt-in and the state-opt out. However, one of Baucus's ideas for improving affordability of health insurance for American families actually will make that health insurance coverage WORSE for American families!
Baucus said that one way to improve affordability would be to reduce the “minimum creditable coverage provision”—basically, what percentage of health care costs that insurance companies would be required to cover.
It's a bad idea, and same as the proposal that Senator Snowe brought forward. Is this the price we have to pay for her vote?
Here's more about what Senator Max Baucus considers a solution to the affordability problem:
One coverage category (classified as “bronze” under the Baucus bill) was set at 65% in the Senate HELP bill, which Baucus said could be reduced to 60% in conference to match the levels in the Finance Committee. Baucus hadn’t indicated that the Democrats’ conference-committee had come to a final agreement on the issue, but the attention he paid to detailing this option seemed to make his preference clear. While the Finance chairman did note in passing that “higher subsidies” were one way to address the coverage issue, he didn’t bother to elaborate, adding only that “we don’t want to go much over $900 billion over ten years.”
Did you know that Senator Baucus voted against an amendment brought up by Senator Enzi that would've reduced the actuarial value of the lowest quality plans (bronze level) from 65% to 60% in the Senate Finance Committee mark-up? It's funny how now he's flip-flopped on that because Senator Snowe brought it up as a way to "make health insurance more affordable" for Americans. If Democrats continue to pursue bipartisanship by incorporating Senator Snowe's terrible ideas, then the price of her vote is going to have a very high price tag with it.
The latest poll shows that Americans would rather have a bill with a strong public option without GOP support. They don't want a health reform bill that doesn't have a public option in it, especially if it's a "bipartisan" bill. Here's the poll below:
Faced with a basic strategic choice that soon may confront the administration and Democratic congressional leaders, a slim majority of Americans, 51 percent, would prefer a reform plan that included some form of government insurance for people who cannot get affordable private coverage even if it had no GOP support in Congress. Thirty-seven percent would rather have a bipartisan plan without such a choice. Republicans and Democrats are on opposite sides of this question, with independents preferring legislation with a public option and without Republican support by 52 to 35 percent.
To put it more simply, Americans care more about the public option than they do about getting Senator Snowe's vote. They know they live in the United States of America, not in the United States of Maine.
Also, we are looking for volunteers to help with phone calls into Nevada to put pressure on Senator Harry Reid. If you're interested in being a part of the effort, then please e-mail our coordinator about this at ccdietrich dot fdl at gmail dot com.
And I'm posting this video again today for some more fun :-)
PLEASE KEEP up the phone calls to your Members of Congress in support of a strong, TRIGGER-FREE public option! We're going to be hearing a lot of drum-beating about the Snowe trigger in the days ahead, so please don't let up on those phone calls to our progressives with these talking points below!
CALL OUR PROGRESSIVES IN THE HOUSE!
Hi [Representative's Name]. I want to thank you for supporting the public option, but I don't want you to support a trigger or the state opt-in proposal for the public option! A trigger on the public option would be a surrender to the private insurance companies. Please don't let the insurance lobbyists win by allowing a trigger on the public option, or by allowing states to opt-in to the public option. I want a national public option that's available in all states immediately without an opt-out, an opt-in, or a trigger. I also don't support co-operatives as an alternative to the public option since the CBO have said they will do nothing to lower costs of private insurance premiums. If the bill doesn't have a public option to control premium costs, please vote against that bill!
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