House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will unveil a healthcare reform bill that includes a government insurance option and an expansion of Medicaid. Senior Democratic House aides said the bill would likely include a version of the "public option" preferred by moderates and may raise Medicaid eligibility levels to 150% of the federal poverty level for all adults, a steeper increase than in earlier drafts.
Under pressure from moderate-to-conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to propose a government-run insurance plan that would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals rather than using prices set by the government. Pelosi said the public plan would compete with private insurers. The bill from members of the House Democratic leadership team would provide coverage to 35 million or 36 million people at a 10-year cost of expanding coverage that would be less than the $900 billion ceiling suggested by President Obama.
Los Angeles pharmaceutical billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announced plans to provide University of California regents with a $100-million guaranty underwriting the county's latest proposal to reopen Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital by 2012. Soon-Shiong said he has been invited to address regents Nov. 19 during their three-day meeting at UCLA, when they are expected to vote on the King proposal. The hospital closed inpatient services two years ago after inadequate care led to medical errors and deaths.
The federal government needs to further step up efforts to fight Medicare and Medicaid fraud to generate more savings to help pay for a healthcare overhaul, lawmakers say, and lealth-overhaul legislation moving through Congress contains provisions to beef up the government's antifraud effort. The U.S. loses at least $60 billion to healthcare fraud every year, and some estimates put the cost as high as 10% of the nation's total healthcare spending, which exceeds $2 trillion. Medicare and Medicaid are especially susceptible, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the decision to include a government-run healthcare plan in the Democrats' bill. While a handful of Democratic moderates don't like the public option, the liberals who support it easily outnumber them and at least some of them warned Reid they would oppose a bill that didn't include the option, the Wall Street Journal reports. Earlier in October, 30 senators sent Reid a letter saying "a strong public option has resounding support among Senate Democrats." and urging that any bill include one.
Lois Quam, an ex-UnitedHealth executive, says insurers are "simply wrong" to fight a federal government role as part of healthcare reform. In a speech at the University of Minnesota's Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, Quam threw her support behind a proposed government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. She also took on the insurance industry head-on, noting that insurers had opposed the creation of Medicare in the 1960s and opposed healthcare reform during the early years of the Clinton administration, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.