Fix Health Care Policy » Key Documents

The President’s Health Care Proposal

Kisa Smith — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:13:07 +0000

Read the summary here.

Read the President’s letter sent to Congressional leaders on March 2, 2010 here.

Click here to read Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) letter to President Obama regarding the White House Health Care Summit.

The House and Senate Bills

Kisa Smith — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:47:15 +0000

The Senate Health Bill can be found here

(An in-depth look at the Senate Health Bill by Heritage analysts)

The House Health Bill can be found here

(An in-depth look at the House Health Bill by Heritage analysts)

Read about the Key Differences Between the House and Senate Bills

Employer Letter to Pelosi and Reid

Kisa Smith — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:49:50 +0000

On January 19th, 2010, 675 businesses sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid asking them to step back from the health care bills they passed and return to the basics of health reform.

To read the complete letter, Click Here.

Republican Governors: Health Care Bills Omit Reform

Kisa Smith — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:53:44 +0000

Twenty Republican governors and governors-elect sent a letter to Congressional leaders today urging them to refocus and pass “meaningful health care reform, not hastily prepared partisan legislation which omits reform and saddles American taxpayers for generations to come.”

“Governors of both parties have said for months how bad this bill is for the states and our nation,” said RGA Chairman Haley Barbour. “Now is the time for leaders in Congress to finally listen and restart this process so they can get health care reform right.”

The governors criticized the lack of transparency in the legislative process and called the current health care bills “a lost opportunity to improve the lives of Americans, create a sustainable system of health care and help stabilize both our state and national economies.”

The governors highlighted that the House and Senate bills fail to fix the broken Medicaid and Medicare systems and instead entitle 15-20 million more people to Medicaid. The net result of this expansion “will be a significant cost shift to those privately insured around the country” and will further damage already hurting state budgets.

They also criticized the inflexibility forced upon states in the current bills. The governors write that the current proposals would eliminate the ability of states to negotiate Medicaid provider rates and force the states into a one-size-fits-all, federally-designed health insurance exchange.

Last, the governors urged Congress to take steps to create a system, which “eliminates red tape, empowers consumers to engage in making good health care decisions in the private market, and guarantees affordable coverage for patients with preexisting conditions.”

Full text of the letter can be found by clicking here.

House vs. Senate Bill Comparison

Kisa Smith — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:17:52 +0000

As Heritage experts have pointed out, there are major differences between the Senate and House Health Reform Bills. The Tri-Committee House Staff recently compiled a document highlighting the major differences, entitled “House-Senate Comparison of Key Provisions”, which can be found here.

Letter from 12 Democrats Opposed to Medicare Buy-In

Kisa Smith — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:04:09 +0000

Click here to read the letter from 12 Democratic senators expressing their opposition to a Medicare buy-in proposal if it uses current Medicare reimbursement rates.

CMS Analysis on Senate Bill

Kisa Smith — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:00:48 +0000

Richard Foster, Chief Actuary of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), recently released analyses on the effect and impact of the proposed “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009″ (Senate Health Bill, HR 3590).

For the analysis on estimated financial effects of the bill, click here.

For the analysis on estimated effects on Medicare, click here.

In Pictures: Size and Weight of Reid Health Bill Breaks All Records

Kathryn Nix — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:11:24 +0000

House and Senate Democratic leaders are breaking records left, right and center with every new version of Obamacare they roll out. But if you thought they’d be competing to provide better methods for reforming the health care system, you were wrong. Instead, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) are duking it out for who can write the biggest and bloated bill that will actually bend the cost curve up. Senator Reid holds the record at a whopping 2,074 pages.

Unless you were planning on replacing your barbells with the Reid health care bill or using H.R.3962 to cure insomnia, these proposals will do little for your health. Experts have agreed that neither plan would do a thing to lower the rising costs of health care, one of the main forces behind the inaccessibility of the health care system as a whole. Instead, every page penned by Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid will create more federal regulations American families must comply with before they can obtain health coverage.

It’s time lawmakers realized that health care is too complex to micromanage from Washington. Instead, Congress should seek to increase the number of insured and lower costs through state-based, free-market reforms that won’t require massive new taxes, increasing federal power, government program expansion, or thousands of pages of legislation.

We are certain that by Saturday night, when the first big vote is taken, every one of those 100 Senators will have read, digested, and pondered every single word. Right?

Kathryn Nix currently is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. Her views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: http://www.heritage.org/about/departments/ylp.cfm