The HCR Plan of the Moment: 10am, Friday 1/22

[Clio the Leo]

.... at least this is a plan that SOME of those who have the power to make plans are considering. ;)

A New Search for Consensus on Health Care Bill
By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
Published: January 21, 2010

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Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the package might plausibly include these elements:

¶Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

¶Insurers would have to offer policyholders an opportunity to continue coverage for children through age 25 or 26.

¶The federal government would offer financial incentives to states to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults and parents.

¶The federal government would offer grants to states to establish regulated markets known as insurance exchanges, where consumers and small businesses could buy coverage.

¶The federal government would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them defray the cost of providing health benefits to workers.

¶If a health plan provided care through a network of doctors and hospitals, it could not charge patients more for going outside the network in an emergency. Co-payments for emergency care would have to be the same, regardless of whether a hospital was in the insurer’s network of preferred providers.

The package could also include changes in Medicare, to reduce the growth in payments to doctors and hospitals while rewarding providers of high-quality, lower-cost care. To help older Americans, it could narrow a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, sometimes known as a doughnut hole.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the proposals were “totally doable” and could help perhaps 15 million people.

“Medicaid already covers poor children through age 18 and could be expanded to cover all nonelderly poor people, regardless of age,” Ms. Rosenbaum said. This proposal does not go as far as the House or Senate bill, but she said, “It’s an idea that has been supported in the past by health policy experts across the political spectrum.”

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At a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus on Thursday, some lawmakers, like Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, compared the Republican victory in Massachusetts to Hurricane Katrina. They said the election results had blown away any chance of passing a huge bill, just as the hurricane had swept away houses.

Other Democrats, like Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, denounced an agreement to finance coverage of the uninsured by imposing a tax on high-cost health plans. The agreement was announced last week by White House officials and labor union leaders.

“People were scathing in their criticism of the excise tax,” Mr. Nadler said, even though collectively bargained health plans would be exempt until 2018.

Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, said: “We should take a step back and say, ‘What are the things people really want out of health care, the things that are popular?’ Then we could step back in and try again.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/health/policy/22health.html?ref=politics