Didn't the Ron Wyden proposal have a smattering of BiPartisan supposrt?

[Perky]

Anybody care to articulate what it was?

[Tony_FLADEM]

1. Healthy Americans Act

The Healthy Americans Act (HAA), also known as the Wyden-Bennett Act, is a Senate bill that proposes to improve health care in the United States by creating a universal health care system that would be paid for by both public and private contributions. It would establish Healthy Americans Private Insurance Plans (HAPIs) and require those who do not already have health insurance coverage, and who do not oppose health insurance on religious grounds, to enroll themselves and their children in a HAPI.

[DrToast]

2. And it was better than the crap were getting.

[andym]

3. Very important because it opens up the exchanges to everyone

I believe. Should somehow a public option/medicare expansion come through reconciliation, they would be available to everyone.
Unless that is another Wyden amendment

[levander]

4. Description of Wyden's Healthy Americans Act...

This bill before the Senate, it gets like 95% of Americans covered. The Healthy Americans Act, it gets more, like 99% covered. The reason it gets more covered is because it handles the tax code better and reforms health insurance administration so it's not as costly.

First, the bill does include the mandate that all insurance companies must accept everyone. The flip side of which is that everyone must have insurance.

Now, the first thing the bill does that handles costs more effectively is it eliminates the employer health insurance tax break. That tax break favors those with a high income working for large companies. It replaces that tax break with ones for individuals, which we can now target more specifically based on income. E.g., if you're an executive or union member who has this ridiculously lavish health care plan, you no longer get a better tax break than the poor sob making $30K/year.

There is a stipulation in the bill that if your employer is currently providing you with health insurance, he now must add how much ever he was paying for that insurance directly into your wages. The employer doesn't get to keep the money because he no longer provides health insurance. He has to give that money to the employee.

Now, the bill before the Senate does address the unfair advantage the employer health insurance tax break by what you've probably heard called a "tax on Cadillac health care plans". But, from all reports I've seen, that measure just skimmed some of the cream off the top. It didn't eliminate the advantage.

Note that with individuals buying their own insurance, you're not beholden to your job for it. If you get sick, or get tired of your stupid job, you can find a new job without worry about what's going to happen to your health insurance. And, you can pick whatever health insurance you want. Your not stuck if your company has a couple of employees get sick, their health care costs get jacked up, so they switch to some horrible cheapo health insurance provider like happened to me a few years back.

Then, the second thing the bill does that handles cost better is eliminate half of the health insurance administration costs. A main measure the bill implements is that insurance premiums are no longer "experience rated", they would be "community rated". Experience rating is where a health insurance companies look at your, whatever health issues you've had in the past, how old you are, your gender, and decide whether or not to insure you and how much you would pay. This is a very expensive process. Community rating, health costs are looked at much more in aggregate. Age, gender, doesn't matter. Everyone pays the same. Anoter issue in eliminating health insurance administration costs is centralizing billing through the IRS. Your employer withholds your premiums from your paychecks and sends them to the IRS. The IRS pays the premiums to the health insurance companies.

To throw some numbers out as to the benefits this bill provides by handling costs more effectively, everyone making up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $88K for a family of four, gets subsidies to pay insurance premiums. From what I've seen of the bill before the Senate, their subsidies are like 133% or 150% of FPL. But, I haven't really double checked that number. And, not only do individuals getting subsidies under the Healthy Americans Act, but they also get the same tax break everyone else does for health insurance. The amount of the tax break they get doesn't go down.

For people who think the public option is the end all and be all of health care reform, the original bill does have it in there that if there aren't at least two private plans deemed affordable in a state, that the government will provide a plan. But, considering what happened in the last bill with the public option, I doubt that'd make it through.

The original CBO estimate for the Healthy Americans Act, not one they had to go back and forth with a million times like Harry Reid did, called the bill deficit neutral.

They didn't have to slash Medicare, they didn't have to rely on so many penalties for people not having insurance for funds, they didn't have to rely on taxes on prescription drugs and medical devices which will raise the costs consumers pay for them. They didn't say that if you're medical insurance plan is too lavish we're gonna tax you for that. Everyone gets the same tax break. You just get subsidies if you're income is below a certain level.

There was one new tax in there. It was a tax on business that slid from 3% to 26% based on the number of employees the firm had. And, the tax was just on profits. If the company doesn't make money, of course they don't pay that tax. I don't remember how much money it was supposed to raise. But, it was NOT $900 billion. I'm probably gonna go look up how much that tax was supposed to raise now.

This is where I originally got in-depth information about the Health Americans Act that wasn't just sales talk from a politician: http://www.lewin.com/content/publications/ComprehensiveHealthReformStaffWorkingPaper.pdf">Click

Senator Wyden has a page on it too. The links on the top right, under "More Information" are informative: http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Legislation/Healthy_Americans_Act.cfm">Click