The remaining conference committee fights - a partial list of items to be reconciled

[Are_grits_groceries]

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) promised Tuesday that President Barack Obama would receive a healthcare reform bill by the time of his State of the Union address in January.

Senate Democratic leaders plan to cut their holiday recess short and begin talks with their House counterparts immediately after Christmas in the hope of producing a final bill by mid-January.

With the public option fight all but over, here is a partial list of the issues they will be working on reconciling:

1- Reproductive rights. The Stupak language in the House bill bars all insurance plans in the exchange from being covering abortion and abortion related medical procedures. The Nelson language gives individual states the choice of adopting that language or not. Either way, it is a setback for reproductive rights, but the Nelson language would be better. Reproductive rights advocates will likely, and rightly, be pushing for better than the Nelson language.

2- Taxing high-end insurance plans: The House does not tax high end insurance plans, but the Senate bill does. Most of the people who have these high-end plans are union members, not wealthy people. Personally, I don't think we should be weakening the health care coverage of union members in this bill, and the House funding mechanism of a surtax on the wealthy is fine. Others argue that this is one of the best cost-containment aspects of the bill. A compromise mixing the two approaches is expected.

3- Employer mandate. The House wants their stronger employer mandate language in return for the defeat of the public option:

Another demand is for the Senate to accept the employer mandate contained in the House bill, which would impose a broad requirement on businesses to provide healthcare benefits to employees.

Shifting the mandate burden more to employers also seems like the politically smart move.

4- Subsidies: 574 billion versus 338 billion: Through 2019, the House bill provides $574 billion in subsidies (pdf, page 5) to help people purchase health care, while the Senate bill provides only $338 billion. That is a pretty big difference, and the final number needs to be closer to the House bill.

5- Medicaid at 150% or 133%? The House bill expands Medicaid eligibility to 150%, while the Senate bill only expands it to 133%. This is a public option discrepancy where the House bill is better (unsurprisingly).

6- National vs. State exchanges. The House bill has a national exchange, while the Senate bill only has state by state exchanges. Unless I am mistaken, the issue here is creating more competition (national exchange) versus not gutting state regulations (state level exchanges). If I am mistaken about the main issue at play here, please correct me in the comments.

7- Anti-trust exemption. The House bill repeals the anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies, while the Senate compromise does not (thanks, Ben Nelson).
http://www.openleft.com/diary/16635/the-remaining-conference-committee-fights



I think we will only hear about what is going on. I have no idea if what leaks from the committee will be true. It might be ugly in there or it might be a done deal already.