Health Insurance Articles

Senate Debate On Health Care Legislation Delayed Till End Of October

2009-10-11

Despite President Obama's repeated statements calling for the health care reform process to be expedited, the senate vote on health care has been postponed again, this time until the end of October. The delay came after both Democratic and Republican leaders raised serious concerns. As the previously set date for voting drew near, six senators, including two members of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Senate leaders requesting the postponement of the health debate.

There were several issues underlying the request to slow things down. First, there was still significant conflict between political parties about what health care reform should look like. This was raising anxiety for those who believed that an issue as important as health care reform could only succeed with a bipartisan effort. Second, there was still considerable ambiguity about the estimated cost of health care reform and where the money would come from. Some leaders expressed concern that any increased taxes would create an outcry in these challenging economic times. Third, there was philosophical disagreement about the nature and level of proposed government involvement in health care reform. Some feel the government should take over health care completely, whereas others feel the government has no business there at all. A middle-of-the-road approach is the Kennedy proposal, in which a government-run health care plan could compete with private carriers.

In response to these various concerns and to the complexity of an endeavor as multi-faceted as health care reform, the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Max Baucus, agreed to delay the vote awaiting a preliminary analysis from the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office. The analysis would include information about projected cost, the impact on percentage of Americans with health care coverage and the effect on federal deficits. The hope is that, with information from this analysis, the Senate could move forward quickly with a vote.

In fact, there are already some important areas of consensus. For example, most people agree that health care coverage should become mandatory, and that the costs of health insurance must be reduced. While it is agreed that the time has come for health care reform, as the saying goes, "the devil is in the details."

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the proposed health care legislation would mean that 94 percent of eligible Americans would have health care insurance. The cost they projected of following the current Senate Finance Committee's proposal would be $829 million over 10 years, with the projection of significant reductions in federal deficits.

Now that the figures are in, it will be interesting to see how the government moves forward on this important and controversial issue.