Word: reform
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...first task will be the cause of Kennedy's life: health-care reform. Kerry has been watching the coverage following Kennedy's death, and he worries about progressives using Kennedy's passing as an excuse to dig in their heels on the inclusion of a public option, a key point of contention. Senate Republicans have said they will not vote for a bill with one in it, arguing that the creation of a public plan to compete with private insurers is the first step to socialized medicine; House progressives have said they will not vote for legislation without such...
Where things go after Labor Day, both sides say, is impossible to predict. Four of the five congressional committees with jurisdiction over health-care reform have passed legislation, and reform advocates have not entirely given up hope that a bipartisan group of six members of the Senate Finance Committee will come up with a bill as well. But support for the entire exercise is dropping in the polls, especially among independents and older Americans. Increasingly, Democrats are talking privately of the need for a big September relaunch...
...health-care costs and burdening the economy as a whole. For instance, the uninsured would continue to show up for treatment in the expensive setting of hospital emergency rooms, and those hospitals would continue to shift those costs onto their paying patients. (See 10 players in health-care reform...
Another problem with trying to write a scaled-back bill is that so many elements of health reform are interconnected, politically and substantively. Take, for instance, the so-called individual mandate - a requirement that people buy coverage if their employers do not provide it (and the proposed employer mandate to require most employers to provide it is one of the things most likely to be jettisoned). Making an individual mandate work requires subsidizing people who could not buy insurance on their own, and that is expensive. Cut the subsidies and the mandate back too far, and insurance companies - deprived...
Read "Kennedy's Absence Felt on Health-Care Reform...