While Barack Obama continues to push for universal health care coverage, and the Republicans continue to throw a fit, there is an alternative bill, widely-supported but little-known. The Healthy Americans Act, first introduced in 2007 and also known as the Wyden-Bennett bill, may have bipartisan support.
The bill would change the tax deduction from an employer one to an employee one, meaning that it would liquefy your health plan. The bill would charge a tax to employers that would range between 3%-26% of basic coverage, depending on the size of the employer. Individuals would receive a six thousand dollar tax credit (on average). Programs like Medicaid and SCHIP would be done away with, but would be replaced by state-run programs that would help administer the new program. State's would help citizens choose from numerous policies, most offered by insurance companies, but also from a public program. The bill would mandate coverage for all Americans, and taxes to pay for the program would come out of one's paycheck, much like Medicare. Individuals could still buy plans outside the state-run programs to augment their basic coverage. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill budget-neutral in the short-term, and it actually saves money in the long-term.
So this bill basically has everything that liberals want. It has a federal program to compete with health insurance companies, and an individual mandate. It also has everything that Republicans want, including tax cuts and "free-market" competition. So will it get passed? No. First, for liberals, it removes people from their employer provided coverage, a non-starter for the labor movement. Secondly, for conservatives, the state-run control over insurance companies, even while forcing millions onto their rolls, still smacks of a "government take-over." While the bill is not what Obama and most Democrats would have wanted or drafted, it does overhaul the health insurance landscape in this country while expanding coverage, and controlling cost, and it is a bipartisan bill. If even one Republican, even the sponsor of the bill, would promise to vote for it, we would have the bi-partisan health care solution that Obama has promised.
1 comment:
This sounds like a good solution, why haven't we heard of it? We need some sort of reform, any sort of reform, and if we don't like it, we can build on it, but we need to get the ball rolling. Republicans, who march in goose-step, don't want to support anything that might look like a Democratic help for the American people. Although they were in power for the last 8 years, there was no help offered to the American people. We've seen what they will do, but they don't want us to see what the Democrats would do for us.
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