CT Progressive

Apparently HELP (Kennedy’s committee, currently being overseen by Dodd) has finally put together a public option for inclusion in their health reform bill – and it’s due tomorrow:

The new HELP framework allows the public plan to “reimburse health care providers at rates which will be no more than the average reimbursement rate paid by private plans offered through Gateways.” Under this arrangement, the new public plan would have to negotiate its own rates and play by the same rules as other private insurers within the Gateway (i.e. Exchange) — it “would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums.” What’s more, the public option would be responsible for attracting providers and would thus have to rely on competitive rates (instead of Medicare-like rates) to retain enough participants.

This is a “level playing field” plan, not a “strong” public plan – meaning that it won’t be able to go as far as the House version in controlling rising healthcare costs. We’ll see how it scores on cost when the Congressional Budget Office rates it over the next couple of weeks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 2:55 pm and is filed under National Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.