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Looking through the manager’s amendment, one of the best pieces of pure good news is the extra money going to community health care centers and the National Health Service Corps fund. Community health care centers provide the vital service of getting individual cost effective primary care. If your goal is to increase access to “health care” and not just something called “health insurance,” I don’t think there is a better way to spend federal dollars than on the expansion of community health care centers.
Bernie Sanders has been a strong advocate of community health care centers and has been pushing for increased funding. This extra money brings the total of new money directed to community health care centers to $10 billion. (It is important to remember that this is still $4 billion less than what is provided for in the House bill.)
Cantwell’s Basic Health Program
Another small but potentially important change was made to Cantwell’s Basic Health program. States can set up a Basic Health program for their citizens between 133-200% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). The Basic Health program is like a better designed exchange which more closely resembles the health care systems of Switzerland, the Netherlands, or Belgium (although still not as good as they are). The biggest hindrance to the Basic Health program was that states choosing to create one would only get 85% of the money the federal government would have otherwise spent on tax credits for qualified individuals.
I previously expressed concern that losing that extra money would strongly discourage states from taking part in the Basic Health program. The managers amendment has improved this problem by allowing states to get 95% (instead of 85%) of the money that the federal government would otherwise have spent. This change to increased funding should encourage more states to create Basic Health programs, and in the long run could end up saving the federal government even more money. That said, I still think states should get 100% of the money, and not just 95%, if they choose to create a Basic Health program.
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It makes no sense not to give 100%. It is citizen dollars just coming back to their state after all.
Wouldn’t giving 100% guarantee success and overall usage of community health centers? Thus, reducing the drain on local hospitals?
Your posts have been so helpful, thanks!
There can be 5 billion great things in this bill, but as long as there is a mandate without a goverment run non profit alternative I will be against it and against everyone one who votes it into final passage.
Well, that’s some good news.
Jon I hope you come back and look at this thread and answer this question I have since I’ve had some time this afternoon to look at the manager’s amendment.
In SEC. 10106. AMENDMENTS TO SUBTITLE F it says:
Does this mean that the Government has standing, and you would now need an ERISA waiver to sue your insurance company?
Or, is it a loophole that provides for an Insurance Company defense, i.e. “Hey, we didn’t force you to buy. The Feds did. Get an ERISA waiver from them.”
If the answer is Yes in either case, that is a huge and terrible and frightening thing. You would have to have the Feds and the Insurance Companies agree to be sued.
So, bottom line, do goods outweigh bads, or the reverse?
yeah, i am glad there are community health care centers dotted across the country, and that they are getting more money. however, they tend to be located in areas where more than 50% of the population is already on medicare or medicaid, they serve urban and rural poor.as long as the dems continue to exclude ( or in this case punish ) people who work for a living, just to go on sucking and fucking thier corporate benfactors. the country will continue to take a dive. the same people who are losing jobs and being garnished and forclosed on by corporate collection lawyers, are the ones getting the shaft in this fucked up bill. enough!
Didn’t this person, Maria Cantwell, vote “Nay” on Senator Dorgan’s Canadian Drug Importation Amendment? And she represents WASHINGTON STATE??? Last I checked that is on the Canadian border. Wow, this HCR and its amendments truly IS showing us who is who amongst the true blue progressive fighters. And her seatmate, the “mom in tennis shoes” voted no as well.
That is appalling. I have no health insurance. I am a bad asthmatic that has to use steroids to control it when it flares up from time to time. I have health insurance rejection letters (for ANY price) in a file that’s about two inches thick. My dad. My fucking DAD…has to go to Mexico (he lives in Phoenix) every three months for my inhalers and prednisone. How can these two asshats in Washington state live with themselves, denying this necessary thing for sick people in their state? I hold both of these two in contempt. Make no mistake, EVERY senator who voted “Nay” on the Dorgan Amendment has, and WILL have blood on their hands because it is CERTAIN that folks will die because they can’t afford things like Lipitor, Insulin, and other stuff like Albuterol fucking asthma inhalers!
Cantwell and Murray can go to hell.
yeah hell. i hope they wind up in Dantes frozen lake part of hell, the part for traitors, eating each others brains like those two florentine douchebags in “the Inferno”
The Basic Health Plan in WA has not been a success. It started out well-intentioned in the 90s, and anyone could join, then, it was gutted and folks thrown out and now, because of budget cuts more and more folks are being thrown off and it has a huge waiting list.
Did they both vote against the re-importation bill? I had been looking for the votes on this…
As a follow-up – it was Democrats who mismanaged the program.
Here’s the Senate roll on Re-Importation:
http://senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00377
Both Cantwell and Murray were “Nays”
TBogg is upstairs!
Smoke gets up your butt
Christ, when John McCain voted the proper way on this, that truly tells you just how much lobbying Rahm did as ordered by Obama at the behest of the pharma companies to keep this Bush-era change in law. Before Bush, there were NO limits and all the Dems blamed Bush a few years ago for this awful change. NOW, when we had a chance to rescind what Bush did, our own fucking side stabs us. Obama and Rahm have their fingerprints all over this.
Apparently, Dorgan thought he had the votes and assured his home state voters of this (which, obviously, was VERY important to them), and then was blind-sided by the vote. Needless to say, word has it he’s really fucking pissed and wants to know who was behind it. Well, duh, Byron?!?! If Obama wanted your amendment to pass, especially seeing that GOP votes were there FOR it, it could have been an EASY victory for the “little guy” who is struggling to pay U.S. prices for drugs.
Just why is it that Obama is sooo willing…..EAGER even, to screw a base liberal, whilst fellating Joe Lieberman….repeatedly???
I honestly do not know if I can soften my stance on Obama after all this. This is just bad and truly cruel and over-the-top. I actually loathe Obama at this point. Despise him, in fact.
Let’s assume the answer is yes, which it probably is anyhow, knowing the right’s penchant for “tort reform.”
Some random thoughts:
We have a “product” we’re forced to buy; those needing subsidies are funneled into bottom shelf coverage with higher copays and deductibles; those refusing to play the game choose to pay the IRS and hope for the best; the insurance companies will find ways around the no recission and no pre-existing conditions directives; the bottom shelf coverage holders will be the most likely to first encounter financial problems if a major medical event occurs; emergency rooms will continue to be the source of primary care for millions; those whose perfectly normal right leg is amputated instead of the mangled left will have no legal recourse; the 14yo raped by her father will have to resort to a coat hanger abortion. This is reform?
A pig with lipstick on it is still a pig, I appreciate Bernie Sanders as a truly well-meaning individual for trying to improve this bill (the pig), but the only good outcome (or least bad, I should say) to this travesty is for this bill to die in the House.
Thanks for this post! I needed some kind of lift. I’ve been so disgusted and discouraged… that I was thinking about packing it all in, politically speaking, and using time for where the returns are greater.
I haven’t read the rest of the comments, but will now.
Edited: Yikes! I really should have read the other comments before posting a comment of my own. Nothing will ever be simple again.
I blame spread sheets, because they can be used so easily to lie. (Well, that’s like blaming guns… I really blame those who use spread sheets for such utilitarian purposes.)
As you wrote in that earlier column, Jon, the Cantwell exchanges should really be the exchange model, not just for a small part of the market. Not only are fewer people served, they will either be served less well or less efficiently.
The funding for clinics is great , but that is just a bandaid , it can and will be cut off at anytime , Im bewildered at what kind of deal ObamaRahm made with the drug companies to kill reimportaion , that one is making think of the clinton back stabbing labor days of not so old , that is one that could make me vote green the next pres election unless they do something to turn it all around ….
If they are going for the middle ground , how do they see that as getting their vote? They basically assured medical costs will not go down all that much , and more people will die or suffer as a result , as was pointed out on here , very disturbing