Courtesy of WikiCommons
We at USDemocrazy are kind of confused about most things… (Editor: what else is new?) But one thing we are not confused about is the utterly confusing nature of US health care. We are bewilderedly confused.
But for the simple folks out there like us, THERE IS HOPE!
After over a year of health policy struggles, things in Washington are beginning to move… unfortunately we are not sure in what direction.
Last week, President Obama laid out his own detailed vision for health care. Check out the actual plan, right here, as linked by the WaPo.
And… on this coming Thursday, the president and the Republicans are going to have a big pow-wow to lock horns on health care.
Because we are so confusingly confused, we have surfed the web to try to figure out what’s all this means… here’s what we’ve learned…
The NY Times sets up the stakes:
Mr. Obama’s proposal is the opening act to a week of high drama around health care that will culminate on Thursday, when the president convenes Democrats and Republicans at an all-day televised health care “summit” at Blair House.
The WaPo tells us that the plan is a bit of a compromise:
…it attempts to merge the Senate legislation with its counterpart in the House in ways that would address some of the most controversial provisions in the stalled bill.
The WSJ says the price tag is a “middle ground” as well:
The new White House’s proposal would cost $950 billion over 10 years, more than the bill approved by the Senate but less than the House measure.
Politico gets into how the President is trying to bring some elements together:
For example, it vastly scales back the tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans, which will please liberal Democrats, but by leaving out the public option, hopes to win over moderates… At the same time, the president makes a run at Republicans by boosting measures to crack down on waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare.
Salon tells us that Senator Ben Nelson will be losing his special deal:
Perhaps most notably from a political perspective, this new proposal eliminates a special deal that Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson got for his state under which the federal government would have paid for growth in Nebraska’s Medicaid population.
In the end, the President is aiming to get around that pesky Republican filibuster:
“This package is designed to help us [use reconciliation] if the Republican party decides to filibuster health care reform,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. “That was certainly a factor that went in to how we put this proposal together.”
Mike Allen at Politico says we have a change in buzzwords:
“Reform is the new change,” a senior aide told POLITICO.
Expect the tomatoes to go flying this coming week. In the meantime, what do YOU think?
