Senate Democratic leaders departed the White House on Thursday evening after a meeting with President Barack Obama that was expected to delve into the effort to combine Senate health care reform bills. The group left without comment.
Included in the session were Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), and Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.) and Charles Schumer (N.Y.).
White House officials were not immediately available for comment.
SOURCE: The Hill
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Negotiators weigh public health option
WASHINGTON – White House officials and senior Senate Democrats at work on health care legislation are strongly considering a requirement for the federal government to sell insurance in direct competition with private industry, officials said Thursday, with individual states permitted to drop out of the system.
Liberals in Congress long have viewed such an approach, called a public option, as an essential ingredient of the effort to overhaul the nation's health care system, and President Barack Obama has said frequently he favors it. But he has also made clear it is not essential to the legislation he seeks, a gesture to Democratic moderates who generally have shied away from it.
SOURCE: Associated Press > Yahoo News
Liberals in Congress long have viewed such an approach, called a public option, as an essential ingredient of the effort to overhaul the nation's health care system, and President Barack Obama has said frequently he favors it. But he has also made clear it is not essential to the legislation he seeks, a gesture to Democratic moderates who generally have shied away from it.
SOURCE: Associated Press > Yahoo News
The Public Option Comeback
In particular, Mrs. Pelosi believes she's found a political trump. A so-called "robust" public option will cost the government less than other plans, since it will pay doctors and hospitals fees pegged to Medicare's price controls on thousands of services. The Congressional Budget Office has reportedly found that these below-market payments would result in "savings" of $110 billion, compared to requiring a public option to negotiate rates with providers like a private company would.
Yet as the government pays less, the private sector pays more. Like Medicare today, hospitals will shift some of their losses into higher private insurance premiums. Meanwhile, the public option's premiums will be artificially lower, even before the heavy subsidies that Democrats plan to offer. As private insurance costs increase, private payers will lose market share, intensifying the cost-shift and precipitating an exodus to government from commercial carriers.
Democrats dismiss cost-shifting as a tall tale of the health industry. After all, if providers can increase their revenue by charging private payers more, why haven't they already exhausted this opportunity? Perhaps because, contrary to Washington's fantasy of robber baron doctors, very few hospitals behave like classical profit-maximizing firms. Most are nonprofit institutions with social missions.
[...] But the reality is that no one wants a public option except the political left. Doctors and hospitals hate the idea as much as insurers do—and they're far from natural allies. The media are able to counterfeit public support, such as this week's Washington Post/ABC News poll showing 57% in favor, only by asking rigged questions about "choice" and "competition." Who's opposed to that?
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
Yet as the government pays less, the private sector pays more. Like Medicare today, hospitals will shift some of their losses into higher private insurance premiums. Meanwhile, the public option's premiums will be artificially lower, even before the heavy subsidies that Democrats plan to offer. As private insurance costs increase, private payers will lose market share, intensifying the cost-shift and precipitating an exodus to government from commercial carriers.
Democrats dismiss cost-shifting as a tall tale of the health industry. After all, if providers can increase their revenue by charging private payers more, why haven't they already exhausted this opportunity? Perhaps because, contrary to Washington's fantasy of robber baron doctors, very few hospitals behave like classical profit-maximizing firms. Most are nonprofit institutions with social missions.
[...] But the reality is that no one wants a public option except the political left. Doctors and hospitals hate the idea as much as insurers do—and they're far from natural allies. The media are able to counterfeit public support, such as this week's Washington Post/ABC News poll showing 57% in favor, only by asking rigged questions about "choice" and "competition." Who's opposed to that?
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
Liberals Open Fire on Harry Reid
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is feeling the heat from his liberal colleagues to include a government-run health insurance plan, or "public option," in the Senate health care bill.
Now, as Reid and other negotiators move closer to unveiling their health care plan, liberal advocacy groups are ratcheting up the pressure, saying they will run Reid out of Washington if he does not bring a public option to the Senate floor. With a tough re-election bid ahead of Reid next year, the liberal "Netroots" could potentially make good on their threat. Coming from a purple state, that puts Reid between a rock and a hard place -- and has some local progressive activists at least somewhat worried.
SOURCE: CBS News
Now, as Reid and other negotiators move closer to unveiling their health care plan, liberal advocacy groups are ratcheting up the pressure, saying they will run Reid out of Washington if he does not bring a public option to the Senate floor. With a tough re-election bid ahead of Reid next year, the liberal "Netroots" could potentially make good on their threat. Coming from a purple state, that puts Reid between a rock and a hard place -- and has some local progressive activists at least somewhat worried.
SOURCE: CBS News
Public Option Shows Signs of Life
Not long ago, as attention centered on the Senate Finance Committee's moderate health- care reform bill, pundits dismissed the idea of a publicly run insurance program to compete with private insurers as all but dead. Now, as Senate leaders are close to merging that bill with a more liberal alternative passed earlier in the summer, the public option -- a sort of Medicare for the masses -- appears to be making a comeback.
In one sense, it's small surprise: While the Finance Committee explicitly rejected the public option, some version of the idea featured prominently in other major reform bills pending in the House and Senate. The Senate is expected to come up with its merged bill in the next week or so, and the House will deliver its own unified legislation soon after. Then the real jousting will begin.
SOURCE: MSNBC
In one sense, it's small surprise: While the Finance Committee explicitly rejected the public option, some version of the idea featured prominently in other major reform bills pending in the House and Senate. The Senate is expected to come up with its merged bill in the next week or so, and the House will deliver its own unified legislation soon after. Then the real jousting will begin.
SOURCE: MSNBC
Key Senators May Rebuff Obama on Health Care
WASHINGTON - The Democrats' control of a hefty majority in the Senate -- plus the House -- would suggest that President Barack Obama is within reach of overhauling the nation's health care system this fall.
But the numbers mask a more complicated reality: Obama and Democratic leaders have modest leverage over several pivotal Senate Democrats who are more concerned about their next election or feel they have little to lose by opposing their party's hierarchy.
One is still smarting from being forced to abandon next year's election. Another had to leave the Democratic Party to stay in office. And some are from states that Obama lost badly last year.
These factors will limit the president's ability to play his strongest card -- an appeal for party loyalty and Democratic achievement -- in trying to muster the 60 votes his allies will need this fall to overcome a Republican filibuster in the 100-member Senate.
SOURCE: Fox News
But the numbers mask a more complicated reality: Obama and Democratic leaders have modest leverage over several pivotal Senate Democrats who are more concerned about their next election or feel they have little to lose by opposing their party's hierarchy.
One is still smarting from being forced to abandon next year's election. Another had to leave the Democratic Party to stay in office. And some are from states that Obama lost badly last year.
These factors will limit the president's ability to play his strongest card -- an appeal for party loyalty and Democratic achievement -- in trying to muster the 60 votes his allies will need this fall to overcome a Republican filibuster in the 100-member Senate.
SOURCE: Fox News
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