Health Insurance Values » HealthLog with Dave Keller

On the - reform - road again

Congress returns, health care reform debate intensifies

On September 8, Congress returned from recess and promptly focused on health care reform discussion. During the break, Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy lost his battle with brain cancer, which certainly reignited the cause for his supporters—Kennedy passionately endorsed health care reform. While many speeches and conversations have occurred over the past two weeks, there are two especially important events worth noting.

The day after Congress reconvened, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress on health care. Some interpreted his speech to mean the public option was dead, while other believed he breathed new life into it. Either way, it was a call to action and clearly reinforced the president’s desire to reform health care sooner than later.

You can read the transcript of the president’s September 9 speech here. Kaiser Health News published this analysis by a panel of experts. And America’s Health Insurance Plans offered this response.

On September 16, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus released his long-awaited bill, America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009. While it did not include a public option, it did call for health insurance exchanges that would allow consumers to choose their health care plans. Read the Congressional Budget Office analysis of Baucus’ bill here. USA Today offered this side-by-side comparison of the major issues in the proposed bills. Congress will start its markup of the bill on Tuesday, September 22.

In other news, on September 10 the U.S. Census Bureau released its Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008 report, which stated the number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 45.7 million in 2007 to 46.3 million in 2008, while the percentage remained unchanged at 15.4 percent.

The uninsured also made headlines on September 17 when the Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance published research estimating that uninsured, working-age U.S. residents are about 40 percent more likely to die in a given year than otherwise comparable, privately insured U.S. residents are. In 1993, this gap was 25 percent.

While we may not come to a consensus on health care reform anytime in the near future, I think we can all agree health insurance is important to our physical and financial wellbeing.