By Adele Stan, AlterNet
Posted on July 28, 2009, Printed on August 3, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/141604/
As Congress wrangles its way through the crafting of health care reform, one long-awaited proposal seems poised to drop with a thud. The Senate Finance Committee, led by conservative Democrat Max Baucus of Montana, is closing in on completing a draft bill, according to the Associated Press, that stands at odds with the bill recently passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, in that it does not require employers to offer insurance coverage to employees, nor does it have a public health insurance plan. Oh, and it may feature a tax on health-care benefits.
Here's Nate Silver, writing about the reported Finance proposal, at FiveThirtyEight:
Does this look familiar to anyone?
-- No employer mandate
-- No public option
-- But yes, an individual mandate
It should -- because this particular permutation on health care reform looks an awful lot like the incomplete draft of the HELP Committee's bill that the CBO scored last month, which also lacked an employer mandate and a public option but contained an individual mandate. That bill, the CBO estimated, would cost about $1.0 trillion -- but would only cover a net of about 16 million people. In contrast, the revised version of the HELP Committee's bill, which did include both a public option and an employer mandate, would cost about the same amount but cover a net of 37 million people.
Unlike the Democrats on the Senate HELP Committee, and the three House committee chairmen who jointly crafted a health care bill, Baucus has been seeking a bipartisan compromise, something that maybe a few Republicans will vote for -- along with conservative Democrats.
The AP suggests that the public insurance plans featured in both the House bill and the Senate HELP bill would be replaced in the Finance Committee bill by a non-profit co-op scheme proposed by conservative Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota. At least one progressive Democrat is not amused.
"I don't call that an acceptable alternative [to a public insurance plan]," said Progress Caucus co-chair, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. "I call that gaming the system."
Woolsey made her comments this morning on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.
The Finance Committee plan may also include "a tax of as much as 35 percent," according to the AP, "on very high-cost insurance policies." In addition, the Baucus plan is said to contain no mandate on employers that they cover part of the insurance costs to their workers, although it is expected to include a mandate on individuals that requires everybody to purchase insurance. Let's see, no public plan but a requirement to buy private health insurance. Sounds like somebody stands to make a little money here, no?
The Finance Committee bill is far from the last word. After the committee finalizes and, presumably, passes its bill within the committee, it will be reconciled in some way with the HELP committee bill, which does contain a public option. That will require another round of complex and likely fraught negotiations in a conference committee.
Meanwhile, on the House side, the drama continues with the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats. You'll recall that after the chairmen of three House committees agreed on a draft of a health care bill, two of those committees promptly passed the legislation, while the seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee scuttled a vote and made demands on what they say are cost-cutting measures.
After threatening to remove his committee from the bill-crafting process in order to overcome Blue Dog obstruction, committee chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., negotiated late into last night with his problem Dogs, but the Blue Dogs, according to Politico, are now insisting on a cost-saving assessment by the Congressinal Budget Office of the concessions that Waxman reportedly made -- a demand that could further delay the legislative process. Waxman continues to hold out threat of rendering his own committee irrelevant to the health care reform process if he can't reach agreement with the Blue Dogs.
In related news, President Obama will today conduct an online town-hall meeting on health-care reform, sponsored by AARP. To watch, click here. The town hall is scheduled for 1:30 PM, EDT.
Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's acting Washington bureau chief.
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