FixHealthCarePolicy

The Public Option Threat Still Buried in the Senate Bill

Most Americans now believe that major health care legislation will not pass this year. But as Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler explains in The New England Journal Medicine one seemingly minor proposal in the Senate health care bill could end up having huge repercussions for our entire health care system:

“The Senate legislation contains strong directives to the OPM, requiring it to negotiate medical-loss ratios (the percentage of premiums that insurers actually spend on medical care for enrollees), minimum benefits, profit margins, premiums, and “such other terms and conditions of coverage as are in the interests of enrollees in such plans.” Crucially, the legislation also specifies that the OPM-administered plans would automatically be deemed to meet all the requirements for plans to be offered through the health exchanges created by the legislation.1 This means that OPM-administered plans could in practice operate free of many of the financial regulations that exchanges might impose on other plans, allowing the plans to operate under their own OPM-designed regulations.” (more…)

Tags: New England Journal of Medicine, OPM, public option, Senate Bill, Stuart Butler

Have a Health Care Question? Ask Us Today

The Heritage Foundation and POLITICO have teamed up to bring you a live web chat today at 12 noon ET on health care.

Stuart Butler, Heritage’s vice president for domestic and economic policy, will answer your questions about the health care debate and react to President Obama’s speech last night to a joint session of Congress.

For more than 30 years, Butler has played a major role in shaping Washington’s policy debate on a wide range of domestic issues from health care and Social Security to welfare reform and privatizing government services. His abiding passion is health care, where he has argued for a restructured system based on consumer choice and state-led innovation.

Click below to join the chat.

Tags: Stuart Butler

Heritage’s Stuart Butler on the Public Plan

Tags: public plan, Stuart Butler, video