Landmark Health Insurance Bill Passes House

theodp writes "A hastily-crafted amendment imposing tough new restrictions on abortion coverage in insurance policies helped pave the way for the House to approve the Democrats' bill to overhaul the nation's health insurance system. 'It provides coverage for 96 percent of Americans,' said Rep. John Dingell. Rep. Candice Miller disagreed, calling the legislation 'a jobs-killing, tax-hiking, deficit-exploding' bill. The 1,990-page, $1.2 trillion legislation passed by a vote of 220-215 and moves on for Senate debate, which is expected to begin in several days." Update — 11/08 at 13:45 GMT by SS: Changed vote totals above to reflect the actual bill vote. The 240-194 number was for the abortion restrictions amendment.

Comments

1.2T = 120B per year

[volt4ire]

Let's be clear: 1.2 Billion is the cost for 10 years, not 1 single upfront cost (like bailouts or emergency war funding supplementals)

Re:What's in it?

[Igarden2]

I forgot to mention the ultimate hypocrisy in this bill. Every member of the legislature is exempt from the bill. They have their own luxury system that is fully paid for by the taxpayers for life.

Re:What's in it?

[pla]

Pre-existing conditions is a wonderful way of saying that none of your previous doctors noticed it so we're not paying either.

Come again?

Preexisting conditions mean exactly the opposite of that - It means you did have the condition diagnosed before getting your current run of uninterrupted insurance coverage. The original idea behind such clauses actually had some merit - You couldn't skip out on having insurance, find out you have cancer, then get insurance solely to pay for your treatment.

Of course, the insurance companies, interested solely in profit rather than patient outcomes (hey, I hate them as much as anyone, but won't fault them (just) for doing exactly what they exist to do - Make money), discovered they could use this not just for acute conditions, but to deny treatment for things like diabetes or the standard cardiac cocktails most older males take, based on nothing more than the fact that you went one day too long without coverage between jobs.

But if no doctor ever diagnosed your condition, consider yourself good to go. Now, we do have some grey area here... If you had an X-Ray for a broken arm ten years ago, and it has a fuzzy patch near your current tumor, well, the insurance companies have whole teams of people looking for just such meaningless data as an excuse to deny benefits.

Re:What's in it?

[Martin Blank]

I thought it was interesting that Associated Press published an article recently on the profits of the health insurance industry, something railed against persistently by various politicians. They found that the usual average profit margin for health insurance companies was 6%, and last year it was only 2%. From 2003 to 2008, the growth in their costs exceeded the growth in their profits.

But then, as the article itself notes, no one seems interested in the actual facts of the debate.

Re:I think I can I think I can

[VincentFreeman]

Health care in this country is about the best in the world.

That is a lie.

"The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."

"Yet another study, cited in a recent report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19 developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system” ranked in last place."

It's early, I'm lazy, but the facts match up. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?em

Re:What's in it?

[internic]

All this did was offer up some competition to Insurance (not necessarily a bad thing), but will fund the indigent, which is mostly Illegal aliens here.

On what basis are you concluding that? A quick look suggests that a good estimate of the poor (by official poverty line) in the US is 39 million, while the illegal immigrant population may be something around 11 million. That says that at the most about a quarter of the poor are illegal immigrants, and that's assuming that all illegal immigrants are poor (which isn't strictly true, though I don't know how far off it is). In any case, the bill bars illegal immigrants from getting aid in buying health insurance, although it remains to be seen how that would be enforced.

What is really sad is that it had NOTHING TO LOWER COSTS. We are in need of tort reform (how much money is paid out for lawsuits); costs of the docs eduction; costs of the drugs; costs of the hospital; etc.

While the situation with malpractice suits may be unreasonable, it's probably not a major contributor to health care costs. It sounds plausible on the surface that it would be, but apparently the total expenditure on malpractice insurance is less than $7 billion per year, which is totally dwarfed by total healthcare spending (something like $2.5 trillion). The cost of doctors practicing defensive medicine is, of course, harder to pin down, but it sounds like most studies still peg it as small. In any case, the CBO is estimating the savings on healthcare spending from malpractice award caps at 0.5%. I think this gets talked about a lot by politicians because it sounds plausible, there are some legitimate problems with malpractice suits, and, most importantly, people making malpractice claims are a convenient scapegoat since most of us won't ever be one or probably even know one.

In terms of the other costs I agree, though. We pay an absurd amount for drugs and a lot more for medical procedures than most other developed democracies. I'm not certain of all of the reasons for that, but the most likely major reason is that in most of those places the government collectively bargins with providers on behalf of all citizens, setting prices for drugs and medical procedures (even in many countries where insurance is still provided by private companies, like Japan and Germany). You can certainly debate the merits of such a system, but its one indisputable advantage is cheap prices.

...neo-cons forbid negotiations for LOWEST PRICE. This is expected to costs something like 400 BILLION dollars, instead of 50 BILLION over the ten years that it was looked at. This is a nice and easy 350 billion dollars to be save. So, did the dems include that in this bill? Nope. They are leaving us at paying the TOP DOLLARS for this.

I don't know what the will was among the Democrats to change the rules on drug purchasing by the government, but I'm sure that even those who supported it would not have lobbied for inclusion in this bill only because this bill had uncertain prospects in the first place, so adding something else potentially controversial probably would have killed it. It's bad strategy. If they want to make that change, it should come in a different bill.