President Obama is not giving up on health care. According to The Huffington Post, today the President officially released his own health care reform proposal in a last-ditch effort to unite the Democratic Party around reform.
The proposal, a bite-sized 11 pages, is being pitched as a foundation on which members of Congress can build. Presidential aides stressed that Republicans will have a chance to amend it. The document, which works from the Senate bill but also incorporates provisions from the House bill, will be part of the much-anticipated bipartisan health care reform summit on Thursday.
“We view this as the opening bid for the health meeting,” said Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. “We took our best shot at bridging the differences.”
You can read the entire proposal here. Some of the major points:
- It removes the $100 million in Medicaid funding that Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) had secured for his home state of Nebraska.
- It adopts the House’s more generous measures to help individuals purchase insurance, and adopts the Senate’s approach when it comes to penalizing individuals who don’t buy insurance.
- It closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap by 2010.
- It adopts the Senate’s model for health insurance exchanges (virtual marketplaces for consumers to compare and buy coverage) making them state-based as opposed to national.
- It adopts the Senate’s moderate abortion provisions.
- It raises the “Cadillac tax” threshold from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500, and delays the provision until 2018.
- It establishes a national health insurance authority to fight premium increases.
- It removes any public option.
