{"id":34886,"date":"2009-10-29T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"911fc4bc-9915-4fd6-b885-722b91dcf8aa"},"modified":"2009-10-29T12:40:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T16:40:00","slug":"audio-health-on-the-hill-house-health-bill-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/34886","title":{"rendered":"Audio: Health On The Hill – House Health Bill Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey <\/strong>discusses the latest health reform proposal\u00a0unveiled today<\/a> by House Democratic\u00a0leaders.<\/p>\n

\n
\n Listen to audio interview<\/a>\u00a0(mp3) | Read KHN’s\u00a0summarized major news coverage<\/a> of the bill.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n Transcript:<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n

\n Jackie Judd:<\/strong> Good day, I\u2019m Jackie Judd with Health On The Hill. Breaking News from Capitol Hill. House Democrats have unveiled their bill for health care reform. It\u2019s the product of work of three House committees. Joining me today is Mary Agnes Carey from Capitol Hill. Mary Agnes, what\u2019s the big picture? <\/p>\n

\n Mary Agnes Carey:<\/strong> House Democratic leaders today unveiled their health reform package. They said it will come in at under $900 billion under the next decade. It will increase insurance for 36 million people who don\u2019t have it now. It will have, as we\u2019ve known from previous measures, it\u2019ll have an individual mandate with some exemptions for hardship and so on, and also an employer mandate. But they\u2019ve made some significant changes for small business. They said that small businesses , for example, whose payrolls are under $500,000 would be exempted from the mandate, and then that mandate penalty would come in on a gradual basis between $500,000 and $750,000 on payroll. That\u2019s important because a lot of members with small business constituencies said requiring businesses to cover their employees would be a hardship. So that was a major concession. Of course, the public plan, which we\u2019ve all heard so much about, is contained in the House bill. It would be paid for with negotiated rates for hospitals and physicians and for other providers. Again, that was an important change from the prior bill, which would have paid on Medicare rates. House moderates in the Democratic party, as well as those representing rural areas said that our providers need negotiated rates to stay in business, so that was a major change in this bill. <\/p>\n

\n Jackie Judd: <\/strong>And so with all of those changes, do the House Democratic leaders believe that they have the sufficient number of votes to pass this? <\/p>\n

\n Mary Agnes Carey:<\/strong> They\u2019re feeling good about it. They\u2019re feeling confident. They\u2019ll have those 218 votes before they see a House vote, which they said tentatively could occur at the end of next week. <\/p>\n

\n Jackie Judd:<\/strong> And what are the biggest differences – we understand at the moment – between the House version and the Senate? <\/p>\n

\n Mary Agnes Carey:<\/strong> On the public plan, for example: In the House, it will be there and it will be part of the health insurance exchange. In the Senate, Democrats were talking about an opt-out provision for states that would allow governors and state legislatures to say \u201cno, we\u2019ve decided that we don\u2019t want to participate in the public plan.\u201d That\u2019s one of the major differences. Another major difference between the bills is on how they finance it. In the House, they\u2019ve decided to put an excise tax on high-income earners. That definition would be $500,000 for individual people and $3 million for couples. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll see that excise tax in the final bill that\u2019s in the works in the Senate, and if it is, part of the House package. And also, the House package is going to allow the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate prescription drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries. In the Senate, Max Baucus, who is head of the Finance Committee, as well as the White House, have cut a deal with the drug industry to limit their exposure on financial issues in this bill and I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to see allowing the HHS Secretary to negotiate Medicare drug prices, but the House Democratic leaders were not part of those negotiations, so that\u2019s why that provision is in the House bill. <\/p>\n

\n Jackie Judd: <\/strong>And a final question, Mary Agnes. In terms of the time table, does it still seem to be that if there is going to be legislation approved by Congress that it would happen before Christmas? <\/p>\n

\n Mary Agnes Carey: <\/strong>That is absolutely the goal of Democratic leaders in the Senate and in the House. Their very strong feeling is they have momentum on their side; it\u2019s an important issue. Next year, as we all know, we face a mid-term election. It would be very difficult to get legislation of this size done then, so they\u2019re pushing their hardest to have it done this year before they leave for the year. <\/p>\n

\n Jackie Judd:<\/strong> OK, thank you so much. Mary Agnes Carey outdoors on Captiol Hill – we can hear the background there. Thank you so much. I\u2019m Jackie Judd with Health On The Hill. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KHN’s Mary Agnes Carey discusses the latest health reform proposal\u00a0unveiled today by House Democratic\u00a0leaders. Listen to audio interview\u00a0(mp3) | Read KHN’s\u00a0summarized major news coverage of the bill. Transcript: Jackie Judd: Good day, I\u2019m Jackie Judd with Health On The Hill. Breaking News from Capitol Hill. House Democrats have unveiled their bill for health care reform. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}