Obama’s Revised Health Care Reform Bill Costly, Controversial

Just three days before Pres. Obama’s Health Care Summit, the White House unveiled its revised health care proposal.
Obama’s Revised Health Care Reform Bill Costly, Controversial
President Barack Obama speaks during a meeting with state governors at the White House on February 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
2/23/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/obobo96955825.jpg" alt="President Barack Obama speaks during a meeting with state governors at the White House on February 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)" title="President Barack Obama speaks during a meeting with state governors at the White House on February 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1822748"/></a>
President Barack Obama speaks during a meeting with state governors at the White House on February 22, 2010 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Just three days ahead of President Obama’s Health Care Summit on Feb. 25, the White House unveiled the president’s revised health care proposal. The revised proposal, which was posted in full on the White House Web site, focuses on affordability, accountability, and anti-discrimination. It also makes provisions for a competitive health insurance market and fiscal stability in the national budget.

The proposal is a measure that is attached to a budget bill, and requires only 51 votes to pass, but without bipartisan support, there could be serious political problems.

One of the most controversial parts of the proposal is a measure for Health and Human Services to get new authority to block premium increases.

Prior to the report’s release, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in an interview with FOX news on Sunday, “It strikes me as rather arrogant to say, ‘We’re gonna give it to you anyway.’ And we’ll use whatever device is available to achieve that end.”

The proposal would make insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care ever. It would reduce premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who can’t currently afford coverage—according to the White House these Americans number in the neighborhood of 31 million people.



The competitive health insurance market provisions of the proposal would give tens of millions of Americans the same insurance choices as members of Congress. It also lays out what the Obama administration calls “commonsense rules” for keeping premiums down and preventing insurance industry abuse.

Americans with pre-existing conditions would not be discriminated against under the Obama proposal.

Finally, it aims to reduce the federal deficit by $100 billion over the next decade, and by about $1 trillion in the next 20 years, by cutting down on government overspending, waste, fraud, and abuse.

Some of the more controversial measures in President Obama’s plans are in areas where he says he “bridges the gap” between bills in the House and the Senate.

It includes changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Senate-passed health insurance reform bill to also include policies from the House-passed bill and the Obama’s priorities. Some of the key, and more controversial changes there include eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision (which was considered a special deal for the state), and gives “significant additional federal financing” to every state for Medicaid expansion.

It also proposes to close the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap, and strengthen the Senate bill’s provisions for more affordable insurance for individuals and families. It would raise the threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family to $27,500. By 2018 it would apply to all plans.

Increased insurance protections for consumers would include creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority. The change would allow for federal assistance and oversight to states in conducting reviews of unreasonable rate increases, and other unfair practices of insurance plans.

A new study by the RAND Corporation on health insurance reform found that legislation passed by the Senate in December would cut the number of uninsured Americans to 25 million by 2019. The figure represents a 53 percent decrease in the number of uninsured Americans, and an increase in overall national spending on health care by about 2 percent between 2013 and 2019.

On the House side, the study found that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) cumulative federal spending to subsidize health insurance premiums for low-income people obtaining individual insurance would be $400 billion by 2019. In addition, federal spending on Medicaid would go up by $499 billion in the same time period.

“While our forecast concludes the Senate plan would cover slightly fewer people than the legislation passed by the House, the costs of the Senate bill also would be lower,” stated Elizabeth A. McGlynn, associate director of RAND Health and co-leader of the RAND COMPARE initiative.