Health Care Like Congress?

[Annie]

Not so much:

Dissecting the Kennedy Health Bill - WSJ.com

Dissecting the Kennedy Health Bill
No, you won't be able to keep your insurance if you like it.
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

Last September Sen. Barack Obama promised that under his health-care proposal "you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves." On Monday, President Obama repeated that promise in a speech to the American Medical Association. It's not true.

The president is barnstorming the nation, urging swift approval of legislation that is taking shape in Congress. This legislation -- the Affordable Health Choices Act that's being drafted by Sen. Edward Kennedy's staff and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee -- will push Americans into stingy insurance plans with tight, HMO-style controls. It specifically exempts members of Congress (along with federal employees; the exemptions are in section 3116).

Members of Congress "enjoy the widest selection of health plans in the country," according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. They "can choose from among consumer-driven and high deductible plans that offer catastrophic risk protection with higher deductibles, health saving/reimbursable accounts and lower premiums, or fee-for-service (FFS) plans, and their preferred provider organizations (PPO), or health maintenance organizations (HMO)." These choices would be nice for all of us, but they're not in the offing. Instead, if you don't enroll in a "qualified" health plan and submit proof of enrollment to the federal government, you'll be tracked down and fined (sections 3101 and 6055).

For a health plan to count as "qualified," it has to meet all the restrictions listed in the legislation and whatever criteria the Secretary of Health and Human Services imposes after the bill becomes law. You may think you're in a "qualified" plan, but the language suggests that only plans with managed-care controls such as the "medical home" will meet the definition (sections 3101 and 2707).

"Medical home" is this decade's version of HMO-style insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with a primary-care provider to manage your access to costly services such as visits to specialists and diagnostic tests. Medical home providers in "qualified" plans, states the Kennedy bill, will have a "payment structure" based on "incentives" rather than payments for each doctor visit or procedure (section 3101)....

 

[Oddball]

Same bullshit different year.

That "same health care that congress gets" bilge is really easy to say when 200+ million people are paying the freight for 535 overdressed welfare moochers.

 

[Harry Dresden]

That "same health care that congress gets" bilge is really easy to say when 200+ million people are paying the freight for 535 overdressed welfare moochers.

Dude....John Kerry wants to know.....is it the tie?

 

[driveby]

You mean they're lying ? omgnoway ...........

 

[PoliticalChic]

You mean they're lying ? omgnoway ...........

It's not that they're lying that's astounding, it's that so many still believe them.

Watch Senator Boxer speak to a brigadier general, and imagine how she views the rest of us.