Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Possible Senate Compromise of Public Health Plan
On the agenda for the Senate health care debate today is the highly controversial “public plan.” In the original Senate bill, the public plan offered is government ran and would compete against private insurers. According to the bill, this would drive down costs of health care. There has been much opposition to the government-run public health insurance plan in the Senate and among many Democrats. It has been one of the hot issues that Senator Reid has had to consider changing to get his 60 votes to pass the bill.
Senator Reid wants a decision soon and has considered a compromise to gain the votes. Under this compromise, the public plan would be run by private insurers and not the government. Big insurance companies would be sell the plan that would be monitored closely by the government. The Office of Personnel Management, which currently handles federal employees health insurance plans, would monitor the private insurance companies and making sure the private insurance companies were not making a profit off of the public plan.
Many Senators are not wild over the new plan, but see it as a huge improvement and may consider voting for it.
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