Galesburgers for Health Care Reform Regular people working to make a reform a reality…

This is a won­derful sum­mary of the entire health care reform effort by the same web­site that explains how your toaster works. If you have any doubts about your level of under­standing of this issue or if you know of friends and family mem­bers who don’t com­pre­hend what is involved in the health care debate this is a great place to get up to speed.
— Mike Kroll

The Times has just pub­lished a search­able ver­sion of the H.R. 3962, the House’s Afford­able Health Care for America Act.
— The New York Times

… Gallup’s most recent reading on public sup­port for health­care reform finds 44% of Amer­i­cans saying either that they will sup­port the final health­care reform bill that comes to a vote in Con­gress, or that they are likely to sup­port it. Slightly more, 49%, expect to oppose the bill. With such anemic public sup­port for reform, Sen. Reid could ben­efit from Obama’s playing a more vis­ible role in trying to rally public sup­port around what­ever plan the Democ­rats in Con­gress finally agree on.
— Lydia Saad of Gallup Polling

Here is a glos­sary of words and phrases being bandied about as Con­gress takes up Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s top domestic pri­ority: a bill that reins in health­care costs, expands cov­erage to mil­lions of unin­sured people and bars insurers from denying cov­erage for pre-existing con­di­tions or drop­ping cov­erage for the sick.

While the majority of Amer­i­cans appear to have made up their minds on health­care reform, 39% say their sup­port for a final health­care bill will depend on how the details still being worked out in Con­gress are resolved.
— Lydia Saad of the Gallup Organization

This Wash­ington Post-ABC News poll was con­ducted by tele­phone Oct. 15–18, 2009, among a random national sample of 1,004 adults including users of both con­ven­tional and cel­lular phones. The results from the full survey have a margin of sam­pling error of plus or minus three points. Sam­pling, data col­lec­tion and tab­u­la­tion by TNS of Hor­sham, Pa. 
*= less [Read More →]

Health insurers released two reports this week warning that the reform leg­is­la­tion passed by the Senate Finance Com­mittee would result in soaring premiums.

Both reports — by Price­wa­ter­house­C­oopers for America’s Health Insur­ance Plans and by Oliver Wyman for Blue Cross Blue Shield — pre­dict pre­mium increases of $3,000 to $4,000 per year for the typ­ical family without employer-based cov­erage. The finance panel’s bill “would have the unin­tended con­se­quence of increasing pre­miums and making cov­erage unaf­ford­able for mil­lions of people,” the Blues’ chief exec­u­tive, Scott Serota, wrote in a letter to Con­gress attached to his group’s report.

The White House and con­gres­sional Democ­rats have dis­missed both reports as slanted, last-minute attempts to block the leg­is­la­tion. “How many fatally flawed insur­ance com­pany ‘reports’ do insur­ance com­pa­nies need before their cred­i­bility is entirely shot?” said Finance Com­mittee spokesman Scott Mul­hauser.
— Alec MacGillis — The Wash­ington Post

When you look at the CBO analysis as pre­sented below it is very clear that the Senate Finance Com­mittee bill simply doesn’t go far enough in assuring afford­able health care for every Amer­ican. For many poor, unem­ployed or under­em­ployed the cost of obtaining health cov­erage through the so-called “exchange” is likely to remain cost pro­hib­i­tive yet the health insur­ance industry is so fearful of its inability to com­pete. A family of four with a house­hold income of $54,000 would need to spend almost $10,000 annu­ally, 18 per­cent of that income, for health insur­ance costs.
– Mike Kroll