Questions on Health Care Legislation? Me too.
In my last blog post [1], I said that I'd post some links to summaries on the various health care bills floating in Congressional limbo. It's taken me a week, and while I'm still not satisfied with the results of my searches, here is what I came up with.
First, let's look at bill summaries. These reference various proposals - the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, the House Tri-Committee (a fancy way of combining the Education and Labor, the Ways and Means, and the Energy and Commerce Committees), and President Obama's Principles for Health Reform - but don't actually make you read the legislation. Trust me when I say that is a blessing.
- My favorite is this summary by the Kaiser Family Foundation [2]. More on it below, but if you only look at one of these links, this should be it.
- Families USA [3], a non-partisan non-profit health care advocacy organization, has put together numerous topic-specific reports on health reform:
- Coverage for America: We All Stand to Gain [4] discusses how the House bill will make health insurance affordable for all Americans
- Don't be fooled by the title, 10 Reasons to Support the Health Care Reform Bills [5]is no fluff piece. It cuts through the legal-ese and is full of references on what the bills contain and why these changes are needed
- Setting the Record Straight on Medicare [6] briefly discusses what health reform would do for Medicare
- A short piece explains Why Employers Should Share the Responsibility of Paying for Health Care [7]
- They have lots of other reports and summaries here
[8]
- The Kaiser Family Foundation has a great online comparison tool to view the various health care reform proposals. While longer (and more technical), Kaiser still tries to use understandable language.
- This link takes you to a side by side comparison [2] of all 4 proposals. I refer to this frequently, and it has a good search function.
- This link [9] allows you to pick any number of the various proposals to compare side by side, and includes a wider variety than the one above. Also very helpful.
- This link [10] compares only the proposals that have passed out of their respective committees (the Senate HELP Committee and the House Tri-Committee)
- This link takes you to a side by side comparison [2] of all 4 proposals. I refer to this frequently, and it has a good search function.
- Ezra Klein had a blog post about the House Tri-Committee bill [11] that I thought did a good job of outlining what is in the bill
Then the various committees also have their own summaries. They make for very dry reading, but if you can get through them they can also tell you what's in their proposal. I did not find one on the Senate Finance Committee page, probably because they haven't finalized their bill yet.
- House Education and Labor bill summary [12], and there is also a whole page with links on this bill here [13]
- House Ways and Means page with links to the bill [14]
- House Energy and Commerce Committee press release and brief summary [15] of the bill
- Senate HELP Committee press release with Section by Section Narrative [16]
- Kaiser Family Foundation side by side of Senate Finance Committee Options, Senate HELP, House Tri-committee bill, President Obama's Principles [2]
Finally, if you're a glutton for punishment, the entire House bill (called HR 3200) is online, accurate to July 14, 2009. I found it through this Congress.org link [17], but you can also access a very large PDF of it here [18].
I hope that through these links you can answer for yourself some of the concerns and questions you have about the bill.
Democracy works best when we can be presented with the legislation and make up our own minds instead of having someone suggest to us what to think with a clever sound byte.
Links:
[1] http://www.cfra.org/../../../../../../blog/2009/08/16/more-reasons-health-care-reform
[2] http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/healthreform_sbs_full.pdf
[3] http://www.familiesusa.org/about/
[4] http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/coverage-for-america.pdf
[5] http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/10-reasons-to-support-reform.pdf
[6] http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/medicare-setting-the-record-straight.pdf
[7] http://www.familiesusa.org/assets/pdfs/health-reform/employer-responsibility.pdf
[8] http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/by-date/publications-by-date-2009.html
[9] http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm
[10] http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/healthreform_tri_full.pdf
[11] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/the_house_releases_its_health-.html
[12] http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BILLSUMMARY-071409.pdf
[13] http://edlabor.house.gov/blog/2009/07/americas-affordable-health-choices-act.shtml
[14] http://waysandmeans.house.gov/MoreInfo.asp?section=52
[15] http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1723:energy-and-commerce-committee-passes-historic-health-care-reform-legislation&catid=122:media-advisories&Itemid=55
[16] http://help.senate.gov/Maj_press/2009_07_15_b.pdf
[17] http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billtype=H.R.&billnumb=3200&congress=111
[18] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.txt.pdf
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