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[click to play video - Warning: it starts with a brief commercial (!) - it's short.]
The health care reform proposal that Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett co-sponsors with Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, known as the Wyden-Bennett plan, has mostly been ignored on Capitol Hill ... until recently.
We think it's time for Congress to take a close look at the senators' Healthy Americans Act. It has enough innovative ideas that merit consideration.
The Wyden-Bennett plan has two advantages:
- * It is a real bipartisan health care reform bill that has not achieved "bipartisanship" through tortorous, lobbyists-influenced negotiations.
- * Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is scored by the CBO -- which, remember is nonpartisan -- as having no adverse effect on the budget deficit.
In a nutshell, the Wyden-Bennett plan would allow workers to move away from employer plans and into national or state health insurance exchanges. The pools of health care insurance options would drive down costs. Employees who moved out of a worker health plan would get a pay increase that matched the cost of their new, outside plan.
There is tough medicine in the plan. It would end the tax exemption for employer-paid insurance. But that may be a reality to face if we want a health care system that can pay for adding the uninsured to health care insurance rolls. Wyden-Bennett also promises to provide legitimate competition in public insurance. That has real potential to drive down costs. Its incentives to shop for health care coverage would spur much-needed competition in the industry.
We're not offering an endorsement of the Healthy Americans Act. Given the realities of what politicians have the courage to vote for, the entire bill remains a longshot. However, it would be wise to start thinking about the Wyden-Bennett bill before final legislation lurches out of Congress.
To see a PDF draft of the Healthy Americans Act, go to:
http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Healthy%20Americans%20Act/HAA_How_It_Works.pdf
full draft >
http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Healthy%20Americans%20Act/HAA_Section_by_Section.pdf
[Not perfect, but perhaps the path to - in that nothing will ever be fixed about the run-away costs of health care until we undo the disastrous separation of paying customer (employers) and consumers (employees). Only a truly free market with folks spending their own money on care can provided the honest leveling that needs to take place - it's past time we start the job. This bill seems to be that first step toward providing individual insurance competition just as we already have for auto insurance - it's the right {only} long term solution that can't be 'gamed' by special interests at our expense.]
READ MORE
then >
"DEBATE Wyden-Bennett 'Healthy Americans Act'"
Whitehouse: mailto:president@whitehouse.gov
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
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and as always, pass it on...
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