Health Care Team

Posts Tagged ‘Bill’

A centerpiece of the Senate’s healthcare reform legislation is the creation of health insurance mandates. These provisions require employers with over a certain number of employees to either provide a health insurance plan to their staff or pay a fine. Under the current system, a majority of Americans receive health insurance through the firm they work for; reform in both the House of Representatives and the Senate includes federal subsidies to allow others to buy a health insurance plan themselves. Democratic legislators had to balance their goal of insuring as much of the country as possible with minimizing costs. In order to do so, they had to ensure that companies wouldn’t take advantage of the subsidized health insurance exchange markets and drop their existing coverage.

However, those crafting the bills have acknowledged that many small businesses are unable to afford a group health insurance plan for their workforce. Many of these businesses do not currently provide insurance. Therefore, businesses with under 50 employees are exempt from the $750 excise tax. This tax would otherwise be levied on a per-employee basis, if any full-time worker who used a federal subsidy to buy a health insurance plan. Right before the Senate version passed, a new exception was added into the mix.  Read more... (694 words, estimated 2:47 mins reading time)

The Republicans have not put together any plans to get people health insurance in the country. If they do repeal the bill then many middle class families will suffer because their consumer protections will be gone. Republicans are only against these protections because they hate the Affordable Care Act.

The big problem is that the new coverage changes became implemented on Thursday and the benefits are extremely popular with voters. A Republican push to repeal the bill spells big trouble for candidates in 2012. Voters feel taken advantage of by health insurance companies and if Republicans are successful then even more people will become uninsured.

The Republicans did not have one member vote for the passage of the health care reform bill. They want to block the bill’s funding and might be successful if they pick up enough seats during the 2010 elections in November. President Obama would likely veto the health care reform bill’s repeal so any measure to repeal would have to wait until 2012 at least to be implemented.

Republicans need to think hard about shifting the health care issue onto themselves. If they can repeal the bill then voters will blame them for the consequences that follow. Health care spending increased by more than one trillion dollars in the last year; action needs to be taken to stop this. Repealing health care reform would increase health care spending. This would add to the federal deficit and raise taxes which are two things that many Republicans say that they are against.  Read more... (546 words, 1 image, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

BILL MOYERS: You know from the news that early next week the Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote on its version of health care reform. And therein lies another story of money and politics. Polls show the overwhelming majority of Americans favor a non-profit alternative — like Medicare — that would give the private health insurance industry some competition. But if so many Americans and the President himself want that public option, how come we’re not getting one? Because, the medicine has been poisoned from day one, in part because of that same revolving door that Congresswoman Kaptur and Simon Johnson were just talking about. Movers and shakers rotate between government and the lucrative private sector at a speed so dizzying they forget who they’re working for.

HBO’s Bill Maher Discusses Palin, Gates Arrest, Health Care Reform On CNN’s Situation Room – 07/27/09

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said Democrats are working to create a “dependency class” in America in an effort to expand their political base and stay in power.

“That’s part of the motive,” King said when discussing federal health-care reform efforts with reporters after a Tuesday taping of Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press.”

King, who represents Iowa’s 5th District, said he will do what he can to try stop a health-care bill from heading to President Barack Obama’s desk, and he urged others who opposed the bill to join him.

He said Democrats are moving toward nation health care, whether a public insurance option is included in the final bill or not.

“That’s the goal; that’s the endeavor,” King said. “They’ll regulate everything, and when they do that, we will lose the liberty we have today to buy health insurance policies.”

He predicted that if Congress passes health-care reform, Democrats will pay a price at the ballot box in 2010.

“I’ve never seen this kind of energy in America, this kind of uprising, especially from the heart of the heartland of America,” King said.

King said he is worried about the “mindset” drifting into America that doesn’t seem to understand the free-enterprise system.

“We’re descendants in this part of the country from people who came across America in covered wagons,” King said. “I mean, they came here to live free or die on the prairie. They didn’t ask for a government handout.”      Read more... (430 words, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)