Talking to Myself: health care reform references

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Senate to take up single payer

CommonDreams.org reports that the Senate will take up Bernie Sanders's single-payer health plan today.

Update 12/17/09: Senate Republicans used extreme obstructionist tactics to completely block discussion of Sanders's amendment to the health care bill. See this post by John Nichols of The Nation, crossposted at CommonDreams.org.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Health insurance reform -- read all about it.

Here are some reference links about the health care reform debate.

There are currently three bills making their way through Congress, being considered by five different committees. Three different House committees are working on versions of HR 3200. The Senate's HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) has its own bill, and the Senate Finance Committee is working on yet a different bill. The Senate will merge its two bills, and the House will pass a final version of HR 3200. After that, a conference committee will put together a final version of the bill.

Much of the debate around health care reform centers around the advisability of something called a public option. You can find a description of Jacob Hacker's original proposal for a public option here. (HR 3200 contains a much watered-down version of this proposal that would allow the public option as a choice only for those who don't already have some form of insurance coverage.)

The public option was originally conceived as a compromise that would not be as controversial as single-payer health insurance (sometimes called "Medicare for all.") You can read the text of HR 676 here. You can find more information about single payer on the site of Physicians for a National Health Program. I also wrote a recent post on a conservative version of single payer called balanced choice.

Some of my favorite sources for health care legislations news include