Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Trouble

Item One, from today:
Waxman, Blue Dogs Strike A Deal: ... Roll Call reported ... "the deal would cut more than $100 billion from the Democratic health bill, increase exemptions for small businesses and prevent the public insurance option from basing reimbursements on Medicare rates".
Item Two, from Monday:
House Progressive Take Hard Line on Public Option: ... eight members of the caucus wrote to Speaker Pelosi on behalf of the entire CPC, to draw a line on any efforts to further weaken the public option ... "the public option must not be based on any trigger and must be available immediately. Further, the public plan must be on a level playing field and receive the same subsidies as private plans in the Health Exchange. And, it must be connected to the Medicare infrastructure, including the provider and payment system".
Not sure how this is going to go down.

Update: Well, this actually sounds pretty reassuring. In the short term, there's still a big difference between "use Medicare negotiated rates", or even Medicare rates plus some markup, and "let the HHS negotiate rates". But in the long run the two would converge.

2 comments:

Neil Sinhababu said...

Yeah, that doesn't look good.

Neil Sinhababu said...

Okay, that's better. But there are a variety of reasons to want the public option to be a good short-term deal, and that's why I'm hoping that the Progressive Caucus forces some concessions here.