To Fund Children’s Health Plan, House Would Pay Insurers Less
Bush threatens veto.
WASHINGTON — House Democrats would rely less on tobacco taxes than the Senate would and more on cuts to Medicare insurers to pay for a proposed $50-billion expansion of a children’s health insurance program.
The proposal, introduced late Tuesday, also would eliminate a 10% cut due next year in the reimbursement rate for doctors who treat Medicare patients. Instead, the legislation would give doctors a 0.5% increase in their reimbursement rates each of the next two years when they treat Medicare patients. 
Democrats would pay for the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, through a 45-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes. They would also lower payments to many insurance plans participating in the Medicare Advantage program over four years.
The Senate proposes spending $35 billion more for SCHIP, and would pay for it by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by 61 cents. That would push overall spending for SCHIP over the next five years to $60 billion.
President Bush has indicated he would veto the Senate bill. The White House has recommended a $5-billion increase in the program.
“If he wants to veto healthcare for kids, historians will deal with that,” said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont).
The 10-year-old program subsidizes the cost of insuring children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance.
More than 6 million people, including about 600,000 adults, get health insurance coverage each year through SCHIP. The federal government pays for about 70% of the program, and the states pay the rest.
The House bill is more than 900 pages long and deals with much more than SCHIP. It would eliminate cost-sharing for preventive services in Medicare, such as cancer screenings. It reduces the co-payment on mental-health outpatient services from 50% to 20%.
The bill would also freeze reimbursement rates for some Medicare providers next year; namely, home health agencies, nursing homes and long-term-care hospitals. Such hospitals typically care for patients with complex needs who stay in the hospital more than 25 days.
It even takes on the new Medicare drug benefit. Now, Medicare recipients must have less than about $11,700 in assets to qualify for extra help in paying for their medicine. The House bill would increase that threshold to $17,000.
It also allows beneficiaries to change drug plans if the list of drugs covered changes during the course of the year. It would also allow coverage of benzodiazepines, a category of drugs often used in the treatment of anxiety disorders and insomnia.
The overall cost of the bill is about $90 billion over five years.
Republican leaders made it clear that they believed the proposed expansion of SCHIP was too large.
“It will continue to increase taxpayer-funded coverage for adults and middle-class children and move the United States toward a system of completely government-controlled healthcare,” said Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
How much do we spend in Iraq each month? Priorities are way out of whack!
gotta love those wacky pro-life, compassionate conservatives.
war (which IS NOT pro-life) is a country’s only worthwhile “investment”.
healthcare?
move along, please.
education?
nothing to see here.
oh, halliburton?
right this way, sir.
well done, indeed.
And good health care received while they are young, potentially helps create healthy adults. It seems even Bush could do the math: Healthy kids = healthier adults = healtheir soldiers to fight more wars, from which he and his cronies benefit. Win, win, all the way.
Bush’s views on health care make me sick.
First off, on July 10th, our Decider/Inquisitor/Commander Guy/Corporate and Religious Right Mouthpiece-in-chief made the incredibly callous and clueless remark that “people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”
Sure, and the rich and poor alike are free to sleep under bridges, too.
WTF? Was Bush’s line ad libbed, or did somebody actually write that line for him? My guess is the latter. The idea that “there is plenty of free health care in emergency rooms” has been tested, pushed, and refined by right-wing think tanks for several years. It finally percolated its way to the top, and blew out through Bush’s ignorant mouth.
Now I don’t want to go around seizin’ on every misquote or mistake that POTUS makes, for that would make for a whole lot of seizin’ (to everything there is a seizin’, so to speak), and I simply haven’t got that kind of time.
But our Compassionate Conservative-in-chief has gotten my dander up again by objecting on philosophical grounds to a bipartisan Senate proposal to boost the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) by $35 billion over five years by levying a 61-cent-a-pack increase in the federal excise tax on cigarettes.
By threatening to veto the proposed legislation, Bush has essentially told the 6.6 million children currently covered by SCHIP, and the 3.3 million presently uninsured American children for whom these additional funds would be used to provide medical care, to “Go to the emergency room.”
Mr. Bush apparently has no philosophical objections to the number of children equivalent to the entire population of the state of Oregon going without health care. Why should he? We all know that he also has no philosophical objections to the number of Iraqis he’s killed equivalent to the entire population of Austin, Texas.
After all, it has been made eminently clear these past six years that the ability of Mr. Bush and his ilk to care about life is inversely proportional to the number of cells something has. If we were raising the excise tax on cigarettes to protect one-hundred-celled blastocysts, well, then, that would be different.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Doesn’t Health Care “promote the general welfare” ???
Children don’t have a choice if their parent is a single mom waiting tables.
If a child can’t get help it could limit their ability to learn.
All I can think about is the 2004 elections.Bush just about declared himself God’s chosen leader, a humble Christian. If the behavior of Bush is any indication of what Christianity is all about then I will remain a “heathen Pagan” LOL!
Healthcare is critical to our NATIONAL SECURITY but Bush is too busy spending $10 Billion per month on an occupation in a country that had no weapons of mass destruction and was not a threat to the United States.
If you haven’t seen Michael Moore’s new movie “SICKO”, it is well worth the time and money.
As usual, Congress is addressing the Health Care Problem in this country with a band-aid.
I’ve only been smoking for 52 years and already I’ve gotten a little cough. So, there may be some logic in loading up cigarette taxes to pay for health care that we can’t otherwise afford while funding wars and other political rackets.
However, if all the propaganda about tobacco is true, all of us smokers will soon be dead. When there are none of us left to tax, who’s going to pay for the care of the non-smokers who come down with Parkinsons and Alzheimers? (Oh, you didn’t know that nicotine enhances resistance to those diseases? Check Google for that and other supressed information.)
As far as health care for kids (or anyone else)is concerned, the taxes may be raised and collected, but Korporate Amerika gets their cut first…and, as you’ve seen, they don’t leave much for the peasants.
Meanwhile, my addiction-driven brain is looking forward to tobacco tax increases sufficient to promote a thriving black market.
BTW - New American Edition of DSM-IV lists:
PARANOID; a citizen who has all the facts.
My favorite qoute of the day:
” “It will continue to increase taxpayer-funded coverage for adults and middle-class children and move the United States toward a system of completely government-controlled healthcare,” said Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana ”
Then let’s get this baby moving! Bring it!
Not in the least surprised that Bush will burnish his credentials further by vetoeing healthcare for America’s poor children. After killing tens of thousands of Iraqi children, what’s a few poor kids worth? But what’s eye-opening is the Democratic line. The HMOs, BigPharma, and their friend appear to have the Dems by the balls, and squeezing tight. Makes me sick.
I used to go around saying that there was some good in everybody. I don’t do that any more.