jbet777/healthcare

Comparing the House and the Senate Health Care Proposals
The New York Times
November 19, 2009

A point by point comparison of the Senate and House bills

From the page: If there was any doubt that Senate Republicans are eager to drag their heels when it comes to health care reform, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) removed it on Sunday.

The Kentucky Republican, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," demanded that the Senate take, at the very least, six weeks to deliberate legislation once it is sent to the floor for amendments.

"There will be a lot of amendments over a lot of weeks. The Senate is not the House, you saw in the House there was three votes and it was over in one day," McConnell warned. "This will be on the floor for quite a long time."

From the page: Republicans in Congress and some of their business allies in Washington are fuming over a new report commissioned by the Business Roundtable (BRT), an organization that represents more than 50 of the nation's biggest corporations.

The report claims that parts of the Democratic legislation could cut healthcare costs substantially.

From the page: "many analysts are saying that neither bill goes far enough to slow rising health care costs â€" an issue that President Obama has made central to his reform agenda.

We asked some experts what are one or two provisions not in the bills that could help contain health care costs going forward?".....

From the page: "House Republicans announce their plan to overhaul health care in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosis measure. Included in the bill are billions in incentives for states who increase number of insured and malpractice limits. Dr. Nancy Snyderman talks with Congressman Bill Cassidy (R, La.)"

An insurance industry CEO explains why American health care costs so much
By Ezra Klein | November 2, 2009



From the page: On Friday, I sat down with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson to talk about health-care reform. The conversation was long and ranging and will take a while to transcribe. But before we really got into the weeds, Halvorson handed me an astonishing packet of charts. The material was put together by the International Federation of Health Plans, which is pretty much what it sounds like: an association of insurance plans in different countries. But it showed something I've never seen before, at least not at this level of detail: prices.

The packet's 36 pages are mostly graphs showing the average prices paid in different countries for different procedures, diagnostics and drugs. There is a thudding consistency to the pages: a series of crude bars, with the block representing the prices paid by American health-insurance plans looming over the others like a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines.

Is This The Best We Can Do? - Healthcare House Bill - Kucinich(D-OH)
10/29/09