House Democratic leaders plan to release a finished version of their health overhaul today and say they have reduced the measure’s cost to less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Members of the Ways and Means Committee said Friday that the bill would be paid for chiefly by a combination of spending reductions in Medicare—$500 billion to $600 billion worth, over 10 years—and a new income surtax on wealthy Americans that would produce $540 billion over the same period. Read more »
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced an agreement in which three associations representing the hospital industry agreed to Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling $155 billion over 10 years as part of a health overhaul that assumes coverage of 95 percent of the American people. Read more »
The White House wants House Democrats to make deeper spending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and do more to change payment systems for doctors and hospitals as part of a health overhaul they are writing. Read more »
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, meeting with four GOP members of the Finance Committee, committed to producing a bipartisan health-care bill with no set timeline and promised to include Republicans in a Senate–House conference on the legislation. Read more »
How high an income is too high when it comes to government subsidies of health insurance plans? Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee pushed that question to the forefront as they tried to carve the top subsidy level in the health overhaul bill from the 400 percent of poverty favored by Democrats down to 250 percent of poverty. Read more »
Senate Finance Committee member Kent Conrad told reporters that the panel is looking hard for alternatives to taxing health care benefits in light of polling over the July Fourth congressional recess showing the public is cool toward that approach to financing a health overhaul. Read more »