Baucus Delivers Healthcare Proposal - Xmas Comes Early For Big Insurance

[Vinnie From Indy]

Max Baucus has delivered for big insurance...and how!
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Mr. Baucus's plan requires most Americans to carry health insurance and gives tax credits to low- and middle-income people to help them buy it. But as expected, the proposal wouldn't create the type of government-run health-insurance plan that President Barack Obama has pushed for. Instead, it would create new nonprofit health-insurance cooperatives to compete with private insurers, a compromise aimed at helping draw support from some Republicans and moderate Democrats.

Mr. Baucus's plan is paid for through a series of new revenue increases and spending cuts and is designed not to increase the deficit. It includes a tax on insurance companies when they offer particularly generous health-insurance plans. It also expands the government's Medicaid program to help cover the poor.

To make it easier to buy insurance, the plan calls for new health-insurance exchanges that would provide standardized information on insurance plans and pricing to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to shop for coverage.

The new plan, sent late Saturday to committee members, closely resembles what the committee was seeking before the Senate left Washington for the August recess. The committee needed to plug a $100 billion shortfall in the plan's budget over a decade, and Mr. Baucus, a Montana Democrat, assembled a combination of spending changes and revenue increases to make up for the gap, according to people familiar with the proposal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125233977333690447.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[The Magistrate]

1. Indeed, Sir: The Insurance Co. Relief Act Of 2009

It amounts simply to a mammoth tax-payer subsidy for insurance profiteers, and will work also to reduce the quality of benefits generally offered by the grasping wretches....

[laughingliberal]

3. Or, as Wendall Potter said...

The Health Insurance Corporation Protection and Profitability Act of 2009

[msongs]

2. if we had president who would kick this guy's butt this nonsense would stop nt