Those few who have access to a public option may not be able to afford it!

[Better Believe It]

Health care: Most wouldn't have public option
By Carolyn Lochhead
San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau
October 29, 2009

.... lost amid the ideological battle for or against a public option is a key overlooked fact: The vast majority of Americans would have no access to a public option even under its most expansive versions.

House and Senate bills limit the option to the smallest businesses and to individuals who cannot get insurance, or whose health care costs exceed 12.5 percent of their income. Even seven years into an overhaul, an estimated 90 percent of Americans, including nearly everyone who has employer-based coverage now, would be shut out of a public option.

The public option under all bills would be offered through insurance exchanges, a Web-based market for health plans. But most people who are unhappy with the insurance they have now would be locked out of these exchanges, leaving many Americans who are watching the debate in for a big surprise.

Only a handful of senators, such as Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mary Landrieu, D-La., have focused on widening the exchanges where a public option might be available. Wyden wants everyone who now has employer-based coverage to have access to the exchange if they don't like their insurance companies, but his efforts have been lost amid the narrower fixation on the public option itself.

Wyden, an iconoclastic liberal, questioned the basic assumption by his fellow Democrats that such a limited public option will provide adequate competition to private insurers.

"People are going to want choices, public choices and private choices, available to everybody, because that's how you're going to hold the insurance companies accountable," he said. "You can't expect that having 10 percent of the American people getting the public option will force major changes with the other 90 percent who aren't subjected to choices, public or private."

He pointed to another surprise that awaits the public: Even those who would have access to a public option may not be able to afford it.

Citing estimates that a family of four earning $66,000 could pay an estimated 19 percent of its income on health care under some bill versions, Wyden said, "I can tell you, Americans are not going to consider 19 percent of their income affordable coverage."

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL#ixzz0Vd78XiTu




Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL#ixzz0Vd6vZtT1




Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/10/29/MNAL1ABCOT.DTL#ixzz0Vd6hG4QT

[nightrain]

1. knr. all important points!!

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[joeycola]

3. nytimes today has some fiqures also.............

...........A hint of what might happen can be seen in an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Under a version of the Senate Finance Committee bill, the average single person would pay a $5,000 premium for a “silver plan” sold on the exchanges in 2016 but would pay $6,000 for a plan with less generous coverage if the reform failed.

WILL THERE BE HELP? Right now, only the poorest Americans get help, through the state-federal Medicaid program. The bills in both houses would expand eligibility for Medicaid to cover millions more people, and lower the contributions of the poorest Americans.

For those buying policies on the exchanges, perhaps 30 million people in all, the bills would provide tax-credit subsidies to help low- and middle-income people pay the premiums. People would have to pay specified percentages of their income toward the premium, ranging in the House bill from 1.5 percent for those barely above Medicaid level to 12 percent for those earning four times the poverty level, or $88,000 for a family of four.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01sun1.html

[ProSense]

4. "Landrieu, D-La., have focused on widening the exchanges where a public option might be available"

Really?

I not surprise Landrieu (who opposes a public option) supports Wyden's bill, it sucks.

[eridani]

5. Several of us have been going on about this for months n/t

[uponit7771]

6. "...under some bill versions..."

[Better Believe It]

7. And those versions will get worse during deliberations in order to appease the conservatives.