Senate Finance Committee Democrats were successful in defeating a health overhaul amendment their chairman said would have created "an unworkable set of delays in the markup process."
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Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus will face a number of challenges from left-leaning Democrats when his health care overhaul comes to the floor, but many of those battles are already being fought in committee as his panel marks up the proposal.
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House Democratic leaders hope to produce a consensus version of their health care overhaul legislation. However, rank-and-file Democrats remain divided on the bill's central, controversial proposal: to create a government-run insurance plan, popularly known as the public option, to compete with private insurers.
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A central issue in the health care overhaul debate has been how much the legislation will cost taxpayers. But as Senate Finance Committee members head into their markup, Democrats on the panel are becoming increasingly vocal about how much the bill will cost people required to buy insurance. Read more »
The House passed a bill that would prevent Medicare premiums from rising sharply for some senior citizens. The legislation would prevent about 11 million Medicare Part B recipients from having to shoulder more than their share of an annual premium increase because of complexities in federal law and the likelihood that Social Security recipients won't get a bump in their benefits next year to cover the cost of the premium increase. Read more »
The big insurer Humana has fired the opening volley in the great battle of the health overhaul pay-fors at the Senate Finance Committee, but the health industry may have a tough time avoiding the combination of cuts and fees that Committee Chairman Max Baucus has laid out to pay for his overhaul measure covering some 94 percent of the American people. Read more »