Legal Commentary

The President's Plan To Fix The Senate Health Bill

By Big Tent Democrat

Via Ezra Klein (PDF):

Key changes include:

• Eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid;
• Closing the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap;
• Strengthening the Senate bill’s provisions that make insurance affordable for individuals and families;
• Strengthening the provisions to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid;
• Increasing the threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and starting it in 2018 for all plans;
• Improving insurance protections for consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to provide Federal assistance and oversight to States in conducting reviews of unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.

(Emphasis supplied.) [More...] The last proposal can not be passed through reconciliation without a waiver of the Byrd Rule. I suppose it will be put to a vote to see if Republicans dare defend Anthem-like rate increases. Obviously, the headlines are the excise tax fix - which is pretty good imo, and no public option.

The public option is not Obama's baby, though I doubt he'll stand in its way if the votes can be mustered for it. He won't be doing any of the mustering obviously.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 22, 2010 (boomark / email).