Senate Finance Committee releases proposed healthcare "framework"

Conservative Democratic Senator Max Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee has released a proposed framework for a health care reform bill. Baucus and his bipartisan "gang of six" have been working to create a plan that at least some Republicans could support.

The semi-liberal Ezra Klein thinks the bill isn't great, but isn't bad.

Insofar as the effort is aimed at filling in the cracks of the current system — making it more affordable, more transparent and less cruel — it's not a bad bill.

The legislation really would protect millions of Americans from medical bankruptcy. It really would insure tens of millions of people. It really will curb the worst practices of the private insurance industry. It really will expand Medicaid and transform it from a mish-mash of state regulation into a dependable benefit. It really will lay down out-of-pocket caps which are a lot better than anything people have today. It really will help primary care providers, and it really will make hospitals more transparent, and it really will be a step towards paying for quality rather than volume.

Over at Health Beat, Maggie Mahar is less favorably impressed:

Finally, if insurers can charge 50-somethings five times as much as they charge 20-somethings (who the Baucus plan refers to as “young invincibles”), a great many of them are going to need subsidies. More tax-dollars winging their way to Aetna.

But wait, there is a loophole here: “An exemption [from mandate that everyone buy insurance] is permitted if coverage is deemed unaffordable – defined based on a circumstance where the lowest cost premium available exceeds 10% of a person’s income.”  Okay, here’s the answer for 50-somethings that just can’t afford paying five times as much as younger customers: we excuse them from the program. No penalty, no mandate. In other words, we don’t cover them at all—at the point in their life when they are most likely to need heath care.

Somehow, this isn’t what I thought they meant by “universal coverage.”

Oh, and in case you wondered.  . . No, there is no public sector insurance option in the Baucus plan. The private sector insurance industry will have a monopoly on the millions of new customers who will be coming their way, tax subsidies in hand.

Meanwhile, Truthdig asks Does Max Baucus Represent Montana or Blue Cross? Certainly a reasonable question. If you'd like to formulate your own opinion, you can read the 18-page framework for yourself, or compare it to other versions of health reform making their way through Congress.