President Barack Obama will use a bipartisan summit Thursday to push for sweeping health-care legislation, but if that fails to generate enough support the White House has prepared the outlines of a more modest plan.
His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.
It would do that by requiring insurance companies to allow people up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ health plans, and by modestly expanding two federal-state health programs, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, one person said. The cost to the federal government would be about one-fourth the price tag for the broader effort, which the White House has said would cost about $950 billion over 10 years.
Officials cautioned that no final decisions had been made but said the smaller plan’s outlines are in place in case the larger plan fails.
Such a move would disappoint many Democrats, including Obama. They have worked for more than a year to pass comprehensive legislation like the plan the president unveiled Monday, which would cover the bulk of the 46 million uninsured people in the U.S., set new rules for health insurers and try to control spiraling health-care costs.
Liberal Democrats in particular would be dismayed by any ratcheting back of ambitions. But more-conservative Democrats nervous about the fall elections could be more comfortable with a scaled-back measure.
Continue reading at The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703510204575085970815851804.html
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9 Responses
Bipartisan, these days, is not so bipartisan anymore.
Who would have ever thought that the idea of ensuring universal health care for American citizens would become a cause decried by conservatives as nefarious and, said with a really nasty sneer, “liberal?”
I believe it was Decartes who once commented that one should measure how advanced a society is by how it treats its ill, mentally ill and elderly. On this health care question, we are the one and only western democracy that has not found some way to provide universal or near-universal health care for its citizens. Shameful
2, you are INCORRECT as usual. We have healthcare available for EVERYONE already. Its called you go to the hospital & they treat you. That is the law! When the govt runs healthcare it will limit treatment due to cost etc. This happens wherever they have govt/socialized medicine. This happens in EVERY COUNTRY & I cannot understand how people don’t see this FACT.
The president in his dillusional view of things doesn’t want to change the existing bill & is very willing to use illegal tactics to push this disaster thru. His dillusional view of the meaning of ‘bipartisanship’ is he keeps the bill as is but he will put in clauses the other side wants. That is NOT bipartisanship. That is called trying to save your political backside. That is called Barackhusseinobamaship.
They had the votes to push this & every other part of their socialist agenda thru, yet with the help of the Ribono Shel Olam they have been largely unsuccessful. Derech Hateva this makes no sense except to say the socialist liberal democrat party wants to drag the Right down with them too ala saul alinsky ym’sh.
Mark Levin – There are middle aged couples in my community who both work, who do not have the benefit of employer based coverage and who cannot afford insurance. They are totally locked out of routine and necessary preventive care, such as mammograms, colonoscopys, pre-natal care and check ups. I have friends that have kept married children on their own policies, illegally, because the young couples cannot find affordable covereage.
When my children, all now married, were getting ready to find shidduchim one of the very few “conditions” I had on how they lived after marriage was that theyy had to set up their lives so they had medical insurance. It’s that important
If you think ER care covers routine and necesary health care you are – “as usual” – sadly misinformed.
Another thing Professor Levin – Are you aware that countries such as Switzerland and Italy have universal coverage totally through regulated private insurance companies?
You know Mark, you share something with the Nancy Pelosis of world, on the left – your ideological rigidity appears to serves you as a convenient substitute for substantive knowwledge.
YonasonW,
The president is crying about the high costs of healthcare Boo hoo!! Well that is currently a PRIVATE issue and the govt wants to take on the costs which would be almost TWENTY PERCENT of the economy? THAT IS NUTS!!
I never said the ER covers routine healthcare and perhaps INSURANCE shouldnt either. After all, you get insured for bad things not routine.
I too pay my own insurance so I know all about it however I didnt have insurance for most of my life and I was NEVER locked out of any care! There is something called paying out of pocket and that’s what I did. Granted it set me back a bit on occasion but I gambled (and that’s what insurance is … a GAMBLE) and didnt get insurance so I had to pay for the care.
I dont know about the Swiss however that NOT what Obama and his band of merry thieves want to do here and you know it!
I have seen what socialized medicine did to a very dear family member when he got sick in the UK. He went to the doc and they claimed it was a cold. The problem was that 5 hours later his windpipe closed on him and he was without O2 for over 5 minutes. He went from a normal kid to one in a coma for many months and now some 16 years later is in a wheelchair, cant walk, talk, eat, etc. I saw how when he was in hospital, the socialized medicine was there over and over when they “happended” to not take him for catscans, ekgs etc. I dont wish that on any enemy of mine.
This is nothing more than a major intrusion on our freedom of LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS because they wont pay for everything and we will have to do what the Premier from Alberta did which was ESCAPE the claws of Canada’s wonderful system and fly to Florida for treatment. Can you afford the airfare??? Not to mention that everything will then be out of pocket!!
If you want your kids to have insurance that’s nice and they should go out and work for it. They could work for a company that provides it or they could make enough money they they could afford it themselves. Mark Levin or any other of the 300+ Million people of this country SHOULD NOT PAY for the healthcare in anyway for YonasonWs’s healthcare.
Are there changes that could be done, yes! However the change just about 80% of the country does NOT want is govt intrusion.
Let us chose our own policy and let it be TOTALLY TAX DEDUCTIBLE from our Income Taxes.
All health related expenses should be deductible.
Allow us to chose policies from across state lines.
Do something about all the frivolous lawsuits.
KEEP THE GOVT OUT OF OUR LIVES!!
And that’s just the beginning!
It’s not a matter of coming up with a plan. It is the people. The problem is in the character of the American people who are in administrative positions. The best of plans will not work in this culture. Sadly, that is my opinion.
Further, Obama is making a mess out of a mess by thinking he is competent when he is not. He should be impeached, but I cannot say who should replace him as Rudy is retired from public life. Can we really withstand 12 years of destructive presidents? I almost miss even Nixon.