Oct 14 2009
Senate Finance Committee version of health care reform falls far short of HELP bill and House version; We need improvements as the two Senate bills are merged
USAction calls on Senate Majority Leader Reid and his colleagues to make good on the promise of quality, affordable health care for all Americans, with a strong national public health insurance option.
“We are pleased that the process is moving forward and that Majority Leader Reid and his colleagues will have an opportunity to vastly improve this legislation,” USAction Program Director Alan Charney said. “The foundation of health care reform must be built upon a public health insurance option and measures to make health care more affordable.”
Charney said the legislation voted out of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday is unacceptable as a final reform bill for five reasons:
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It lets employers off the hook. The Senate should adopt the HELP Committee’s requirement that employers who have 25 or more employees should pay a reasonable share of their employees’ health coverage.
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It is unaffordable, particularly for those who do not get health insurance through their employer or are unemployed. It will require the typical family to pay thousands of dollars more each year just to maintain their coverage. The Senate should adopt the affordability credits and benefits package in the HELP bill.
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It lacks a public option. The Senate HELP bill gives consumers the choice of a public option so that they are not left at the mercy of private insurance company’s high prices and bad practices. Even worse, the Finance Committee bill requires consumers to buy insurance from private companies.
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It is not inclusive. The Senate Finance bill does not cover many immigrants and it does not fully fund reproductive health care.
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It raises revenue the wrong way. The Senate Finance bill taxes higher-cost health care benefits, which would hurt many middle-income families. Instead of this approach, the Senate should raise needed revenue to pay for quality, affordable health care by taxing the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
It is imperative that these changes be made in the merged bill. This will get us one step closer to quality, affordable health care for all.
Everybody on our side is so nice. It is high time we faced facts.
1. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
2. It is high time that every single case of death caused by denied healthcare coverage be called what it is: murder. Or if the person didn’t happen to die: attempted murder.
3. It is high time that everybody in both the insurance business community and also in Congress who opposes a real health care be charged with murder or attempted murder.
4. The courts won’t do it… because the worst of the conservative justices were given their jobs by Bush, and they hold the majority. But the language of those of us who protest the current state of healthcare ought to use words like “murder” whenever possible. It took a long time for many states to begin to ban smoking in public places, but it had to start with the concept that tobacco kills people, and to smoke in a public place is murder. Being politically correct in language just won’t say what needs to be said… to the major insurance companies or to Congress.
5. It is high time that we began to make real citizen’s arrests. Michael Moore can’t do that alone. And the only way to have these organized crime businesses brought down is if the public presses charges. It would be very hard on judges, even the most corrupt ones, to have to throw case after case out of court, and prove somehow that their campaign money didn’t come from those insurance companies. If every time an insurance company denied coverage their executives would be served with an arrest warrant and a court date, and that made it to the media, it would create much more publicity.