What’s In and Not In the Baucus Health Care Plan?

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s plan has been released — and has set off a flurry of news articles, analysis and blog posts on the left, center and right, many of which take positions on the proposed plan. In response to a reader’s email about offering a compact roundup on the plan, here are some must reads/must views.

The Christian Science Monitor offers this summary:

Among the notable ways in which the Baucus plan differs from other healthcare bills now progressing in Congress:

It’s cheaper. The Baucus bill would cost an estimated $856 billion over 10 years, as opposed to, say, the $1 trillion the House multi-committee effort might run taxpayers over the same time period. Given the mysteries of the congressional cost-estimation process, this projected figure might yet change. GOP senators may also consider the approximately $200 billion difference to be insufficient.

Subsidies are smaller. The Baucus legislation would provide federal subsidies to purchase health insurance to individuals and families with incomes up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line. The House bill, by contrast, offers subsidies for those with incomes up to 400 percent of poverty line.

Baucus would cap at 13 percent of income the health insurance costs for those with incomes up to 400 percent of poverty. But some Democrats are already questioning whether this approach would burden some middle-class families with sizable new costs.

“This is reducing coverage for poor and working people,” said Rep. Charles Rangel (D) of New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

No government-run health plan. Baucus’s “chairman’s mark” does not include the so-called “public option,” government-run health insurance intended in part to help bring down costs by serving as a competitor to private insurance. The House bill, by contrast, does include such a plan.

Nor does the Baucus bill include a trigger that would lead to the creation of a public option if health costs rise by a certain amount. Instead, it calls for the creation of private, nonprofit health insurance cooperatives to compete with private insurers.

Such co-ops “would be a useful player, but not a game-changer,” says J.B. Silvers, a professor of health systems management at Case Western Reserve’s Weatherhead School of Management.

Tougher on illegal immigrants. Unlike the House bill, the Baucus legislation would bar illegal immigrants from purchasing health insurance through the new exchanges set up for individuals to purchase policies. It would also establish verification procedures to check the immigration status of those covered by the bill – a move long pushed by many Republicans.

Like other current efforts, the Baucus bill would require individuals to have health insurance. It would also ban insurance companies from denying coverage to those with preexisting medical conditions.
The AP offers this video report on You Tube, complete with embed codes. Note that the report says the White House response to this plan is “lukewarm.”

CNN offers this summary of the plan – and what it means to your wallet.

The Huffington Post has this list by RJ Eskow on why the plan is “really really bad.”

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein offers five ways to make it better.

The Wall Street Journal calls it “Public Option Lite”:

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus finally unveiled his health-care plan yesterday to a chorus of bipartisan jeers. The reaction is surprising given that President Obama all but endorsed the outlines of the Baucus plan last week. But the hoots are only going to grow louder as more people read what he’s actually proposing.

The headline is that Mr. Baucus has dropped the unpopular “public option,” but this is a political offering without much policy difference. His plan remains a public option by other means, imposing vast new national insurance regulation, huge new subsidies to pay for the higher insurance costs this regulation will require and all financed by new taxes and penalties on businesses, individuals and health-care providers. Other than that, Hippocrates, the plan does no harm.

Here’s a primer on the bill, at Time

Here’s a longer Crooks and Liars video of his announcement:

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman is always a good inside reporter, who has excellent sourcing. He doesn’t yet have a post or article up on Newsweek or MSNBC, but he did give a pointed analysis (Baucus apparently did not please anyone on either side or the Democratic party’s leadership) on Keith Olbermann’s show: