PBS Healthcare history

http://www.pbs.org/healthcarecrisis/history.htm

Health Insurance Access for Young Workers and College Students Act of 2009

SUMMARY AS OF:
10/21/2009--Introduced.

Health Insurance Access for Young Workers and College Students Act of 2009 - Amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the Public Health Service Act, and the Internal Revenue Code to require a group health plan that treats an individual who is a dependent child of a plan participant or beneficiary as a plan beneficiary to continue to treat the individual as a dependent child through at least the end of the plan year in which the individual turns age 25.

Improved Employee Access to Health Insurance Act of 2009

Improved Employee Access to Health Insurance Act of 2009 - Prohibits any state from establishing a law that prevents an employer from instituting an auto-enrollment process for coverage of a participant or beneficiary under a group health plan, or health insurance coverage offered in connection with such a plan, as long as the participant or beneficiary has the option of declining such coverage.

Promoting Health and Preventing Chronic Disease through Prevention and Wellness Programs for Employees, Communities, and Individuals Act of 2009

Promoting Health and Preventing Chronic Disease through Prevention and Wellness Programs for Employees, Communities, and Individuals Act of 2009 - Amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow employers a 50% tax credit for the costs of providing employees with a qualified prevention and wellness program. Defines "qualified prevention and wellness program" as a program that is certified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and that includes three of the following components: a health awareness component, an employee engagement component, a behavioral change component, or a supportive environment component. Terminates such credit after 2017.
Requires the Secretary of the Treasury to institute an outreach program to inform businesses about the availability of the prevention and wellness program tax credit.

Amends the Public Health Service Act (PHSA) to require the HHS Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to award grants to plan and implement prevention and wellness programs that promote health and wellness and prevent chronic diseases.

Requires the HHS Secretary to encourage states to work with insurance companies on ways to promote and incentivize the participation of individuals and families in prevention and wellness programs.
Amends PHSA and Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to set forth conditions under which group health plans may establish premium discounts or rebates for modifying copayments or deductibles for participation in a wellness program.

Sam Johnson re-introduces Association Health Plans

Washington, May 21, 2009 -

Today U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (3rd Dist.-Texas) re-introduced legislation to increase the insured through the creation of Association Health Plans (AHPs). 
“First and foremost, we need to make health care more affordable and accessible.  That is why my goal is to get every American insured.  Nearly eight in ten Americans in working families lack health insurance.  In fact, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents among all employed or self-employed adults -- 27%.  Enacting Association Health Plans is the best way to increase the number of insured Americans,” said Johnson. 
Association Health Plans allow small businesses to band together through associations and purchase quality health care for workers and their families at a lower cost.  The initiative would increase small businesses’ bargaining power with insurance providers, give them freedom from costly state-mandated benefit packages while keeping important consumer protections in place, and lower their overhead administrative costs by as much as 30 percent – these benefits that many large corporations and many labor unions already enjoy because of their larger economies of scale. 
“For many small-business owners, affordable health insurance through Association Health Plans is a matter of fairness.  Fortune 500 companies have excellent access to affordable quality health insurance.  Labor unions have excellent access to affordable quality health insurance.  Small businesses should have that same access to affordable, quality health insurance,” said Johnson.
Johnson represents Collin and Dallas Counties

Gingrey introduces Medical Liability Reform legislation

Gingrey introduces Medical Liability Reform legislation Bipartisan bill will ensure physicians are in our communities when we need them

U.S. Capitol

Washington - U.S. Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D. (R-GA) today introduced the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act, legislation to reduce frivolous medical lawsuits that are raising the cost of healthcare and driving many physicians out of business.  This bipartisan bill would abolish the financial incentives for filing expansive lawsuits, while providing a fair and timely reparations process for those who have been wronged.
“As a practicing OB-GYN for nearly 30 years, I saw skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates force good doctors to hang up their stethoscopes for good,” said Gingrey.  “Already, brain trauma patients are suffering as emergency rooms scramble to find on-call specialists. Women are forced to cross state lines just to deliver a baby.  Rural communities are left without hospitals.  This shouldn’t be happening in America, home to the best physicians and healthcare technology in the world.”
“Today’s medical tort system is designed for lawyers, not patients,” Gingrey continued.  “Average awards in medical malpractice cases have risen 76% in recent years.  This drives doctors to practice defensive medicine, adding $126 billion a year to our national healthcare costs.  By reforming our medical liability system, patients can still recover full economic damages, such as medical bills and lost income – after all, those who have been wronged deserve fair compensation.  But my legislation would put reasonable limits on run-away non-economic damages, and even maximize patient awards by ensuring the bulk of a patient’s recovery is not misdirected to an attorney.  Patients across America are depending on Congress to pass the HEALTH Act.”
The HEALTH Act:
--  Limits the amount of non-economic damages, or “pain and suffering” awards, to $250,000.
--  Will not permit punitive damages unless an actual economic judgment is rendered, and then limits the amount to no greater than twice the economic damages.
--  Maximizes patients’ awards by allowing courts to ensure an unjust portion of the patient’s recovery is not misdirected to an attorney.
--  Allows patients to recover the full cost of economic damages, such as medical bills and lost income. 
The HEALTH Act currently has 57 co-sponsors.

A Patient-Centered Solution

RSC Chairman Tom Price has introduced H.R. 3400, the Empowering Patients First Act.  This is another positive solution from the Republican Study Committee that grants access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans, and is centered around the patient.  By increasing patients’ control over their health decisions, we will make coverage more affordable, accessible and responsive, while offering more choices and the highest-quality care.

This solution is centered around four main principles:

#1:  Access to Coverage for All Americans

• The Empowering Patients First Act makes the purchase of health care financially feasible for all Americans, covers pre-existing conditions, protects employer-sponsored insurance, and shines light on existing health care plans.

#2:  Coverage is Truly Owned by the Patient

• This legislation grants greater choice and portability to the patient, and also gives employers more flexibility in the benefits offered.  It also expands the individual market by creating several pooling mechanisms. 

#3:  Improve the Health Care Delivery Structure

• Physicians know the best care for their patient.  That's why this legislation establishes doctor-led quality measures, ensuring that you get the quality care you need.  It also reimburses physicians to ensure the stability of your care, and encourages healthier lifestyles by allowing employers to offer discounts for healthy habits through wellness and prevention programs.

#4:  Rein in Out-of-Control Costs

• A key concern in positive reform is reining in out-of control costs.  This legislation does this by reforming the medical liability system.  Also, the cost of the plan is completely offset through decreasing defensive medicine, savings from health care efficiencies, sifting out waste, fraud and abuse, plus an annual one-percent non defense discretionary spending step down.   

GOP Solutions for America

http://www.gop.gov/solutions/healthcare

Thomas More Law Center v. Obama

Randy Barnett, filed a brief supporting that appeal. We argue that the outermost bounds of existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence — the "substantial effects doctrine" — prevent Congress from reaching intrastate non-economic activity regardless of whether it substantially affects interstate commerce. Nor under existing law can Congress reach inactivity even if it purports to act pursuant to a broader regulatory scheme. Even the district court recognized that "in every Commerce Clause case presented thus far, there has been some sort of activity. In this regard, the Health Care Reform Act arguably presents an issue of first impression." What Congress is attempting to do here is quite literally unprecedented. "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States." Cong. Budget Office, The Budgetary Treatment of an Individual Mandate to Buy Health Insurance 1 (1994). Nor has it ever said that people face civil penalties for declining to participate in the marketplace.

The Nuts and Bolts of the ObamaCare Ruling

Recognizing the vulnerability of relying on the Commerce Clause alone, the Obama administration in the Florida case shifted its emphasis to the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. That clause empowers Congress to enact "all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" its enumerated powers. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly explained, the Necessary and Proper Clause does not expand the scope of Congress's enumerated powers. Instead, it gives Congress the ability to select among various means of exercising them — for example, the enumerated power to "establish post offices" necessarily and properly includes a power to print stamps.

The Obama administration claimed that the individual mandate is a necessary and proper means of carrying out its reforms in the health-insurance market. These reforms include requiring insurers to offer coverage to those with pre- existing conditions, to extend coverage to dependents up to age 26, and to eliminate lifetime coverage caps. Because these reforms make health insurance more expensive, the government's lawyers claim that unless everyone is forced to buy health insurance, too many healthy people will sit on the market sidelines as "free riders" until they become ill. So in order to make the "reformed" health-insurance market work, it's necessary and proper to force everyone to buy insurance.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12749

Federalist 45

Madison writes that the new Constitution does not in principle enlarge the powers of the Federal government, but merely renders that government more effective in carrying out its existing duties:

If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing Congress by the articles of Confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them.

Central to administering these powers, Madison argues, is the power to tax. Further, he states that this power has precedent in the Articles of Confederation:

The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future Congress will have to require them of individual citizens

Madison also argues that the National Government is indeed subservient to the State Governments, yet the Federalist structure serves as a method of disguising this truth. Madison argues that the National Government must rely on the states to pass amendments, and the states themselves can propose and pass amendments at their choosing

fallacy of false dichotomy

A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options.
False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice ("If you are not with us, you are against us.") But the fallacy can also arise simply by accidental omission of additional options rather than by deliberate deception (e.g., "I thought we were friends, but all my friends were at my apartment last night and you weren't there."). False dichotomies may also arise when it is incorrectly assumed that, as philosopher John Searle^[1] writes, "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction;" to the contrary, Searle insists that "it is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory of an indeterminate phenomenon that it should precisely characterize that phenomenon as indeterminate; and a distinction is no less a distinction for allowing for a family of related, marginal, diverging cases." Similarly, when two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.

The Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey Rebellion, less commonly known as the Whiskey Insurrection, was a resistance movement in the western part of the United States in the 1790s, during the presidency of George Washington. The conflict was rooted in western dissatisfaction with various policies of the eastern-based national government. The name of the uprising comes from a 1791 excise tax on whiskey that was a central grievance of the westerners. The tax was a part of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to centralize and fund the national debt.

Governor and Attorney General pledge to defend health care

http://oregoncapitolnews.com/blog/2010/03/31/governor-and-attorney-general-pledge-to-defend-health-care/

Constitutionality of the Health Care Law Called Into Question

http://www.c-span.org/Events/Constitutionality-of-the-Health-Care-Law-Called-Into-Question/10737419334-1/

The Senate also voted overwhelmingly to repeal a tax reporting section of health-care reform, reports Jennifer Haberkorn:

"The Senate voted Wednesday for the first time to repeal a piece of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, rolling back a new tax reporting requirement that’s been universally panned by business owners. The amendment to repeal the 1099 reporting requirement passed 81-17 with broad bipartisan support. The provision was one that Obama identified in his State of the Union speech as something that Democrats were willing to change. The Senate voted several times last year on repealing the requirement, but all the attempts failed amid partisan bickering over how to pay for it."