Healthcare Reform Update
Dec 21, 2009
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The Senate bill would bring health coverage to about 30 million uninsured people in the U.S. within a decade and curtail insurance industry practices that make it difficult for people to get and keep private coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost 1 billion over the first 10 years.
The key development over the weekend was the agreement by Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, to back the bill in return for restrictions on abortion funding and a provision that would send million in federal Medicaid money to Nebraska to cover an expansion of the program.
To win support for the bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dropped a government-run insurance option and later a proposal to let people buy Medicare coverage starting at age 55. The House bill still includes a public option for coverage that people without insurance could buy through exchanges that would be created by the new law.
Under both bills people would be required to have health insurance, with a few exceptions. Those who don't get coverage through employers or existing government plans, such as Medicaid, would then buy insurance through newly established marketplaces, or exchanges.
Republicans vowed to fight on. "There is nothing inevitable about this," Sen. John Cornyn (R, TX), said after the vote. "The only thing I think inevitable about it is in the light of the unpopularity of what is being jammed down the throats of the American people, there will be a day of accounting," the New York Times reported.
If the Senate passes the bill as expected, it would then have to be reconciled with the House bill which was passed a month ago. There are substantial differences between the House and Senate bills including a public option under the House bill. A compromise between the two bills would have to be hammered out after Christmas. For a comparison of the House and Senate healthcare bills, click on the following link:
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