Rep. Pete Stark introduces AMERICARE Healthcare Act

[antigop]

http://www.house.gov/stark/news/110th/pressreleases/20070328/20070329_americare.htm
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U.S. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA), Chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, today introduced the AmeriCare Health Care Act. This straightforward legislation would provide universal coverage by building on what works in today’s health care system – Medicare and employer-based coverage.

“After more than a decade on the back burner, America’s 45 million uninsured are finally receiving the attention they deserve,” said Stark. “Employers, unions, consumer groups and presidential candidates are all debating not whether our health care system needs reform, but how it should be improved. I suggest AmeriCare, a simple proposal that would guarantee quality health care for all, reduce costs and improve quality for people who already have coverage.”

Under the AmeriCare Health Care Act, people would either be covered through their employer or through AmeriCare, a new program modeled on Medicare. AmeriCare would use Medicare’s existing administrative infrastructure, but improve upon its benefits to provide a comprehensive prescription drug benefit, mental health parity, pediatric care and family planning and pregnancy-related services.
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Summary is here:
http://www.house.gov/stark/news/110th/pressreleases/20070328/americare_summary.pdf

Commonwealth Fund Study:
http://www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=469753

[aquart]

1. It's a mistake. He has to take the employers out of it.

We still aren't facing the problem. Or reality.

[antigop]

2. I was disappointed in this. Pete Stark has been a proponent of Medicare for All. n/t

[Hoyt]

3. I hear you guys, but we have to start somewhere now.

I too would be for a sweeping change, but I don't think that will happen for years -- too many stupid people opposed to what they consider "socialized medicine" and other such BS.

But, we need an affordable system that assures everyone a basic level of health coverage when their employer stops offering a health plan or shifts more cost to the employee, people become ill, get fired, tell their employer to shove it, etc.

Stark has done some great things under Medicare -- stuff that has kept the greedy from unfairly profiting from illness. He also realizes the political realities.

To get something moving -- that addresses the most critical need of affordable, available coverage -- something like Stark's proposal is needed right now. It can be modified later.

Again, Stark’s proposal may not be the ultimate answer; but, there are just too many dumbasses out there to enact a sweeping change without years of debate and stalling. The same ones that still back the bushmen will stand in the way of a sweeping change (remember Clinton’s attempt in the early 1990s).

But, I don’t think they can stop something that allows the opponents to hold on to some of what they consider dear (I’m convinced one characteristic of many Republicans is “As long as I’ve got mine, the hell with anyone else”).

I’ll listen to what Stark has to offer.

[antigop]

6. No, this is all so simple really.....

Stark controls the committee. He can release a Medicare for All bill (without employer involvment) to the committee. Then you lean on the Dems on the committee to vote FOR it so it comes out of committee.

Stark needs to take a stand NOW! If it doesn't pass, then he can say he tried.

This could be his best chance for getting what he has always wanted.

[Hoyt]

7. I just don't think it will happen, but

Give people a choice between a Medicare like system and commercial plans and most will gravitate toward the Medicare system fairly quickly for cost, availability, and security reasons (a lot of employers will bail out of their current plans too).

If you don't give people a choice -- the 30% who still think bush is God -- will prevent any meaningful change for the next 10 to 20 years by labeling it "socialized medicine" and using the same fearmongering that got us in Iraq. A lot of good people will get hurt during that period.

I really wish it were as simple as you describe -- I'd back it -- but it's not going to happen without ticking off a lot of people who will try to scuttle it.

[antigop]

8. It is that simple.... look at the surveys

The "30% who still think bush is God" are outnumbered.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Let the Repugs vote against it -- force Bush to veto it -- and the Dems are a shoo-in in 2008, with Medicare for All as a cornerstone of their domestic platform.

It's that simple.

[antigop]

9. And California DID pass SB 840 -- it really is that simple n/t

[Skidmore]

4. The employers and the insurance industry.

Or make the insurance companies work together and remove them from the banking industry.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Medicare for everybody, uncap FICA, roll back Chimp's tax cuts.

Voila!

It's not that fucking hard.

[annabanana]

10. Sorry . "Universal Coverage" isn't universal health care.

Let the insurance compnaies continue to cover property and life and dancer's legs and stuff like that. Health care doesn't belong on that list.

[warren pease]

11. Yeah, that's what bothers me too...

The word "coverage" implies the continued involvement of for-profit insurance carriers, which means that this plan will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction. If you're going to build a new health care system around the single most destructive element in the current one, why would you expect different results?

That's why "single-payer universal access" is key. Let the insurance industry go do its parasite routine somewhere else. Health care is too important to be left to "market forces," which is code for allowing the usual rapacious quest for ever higher profits to squeeze every last penny out of subscribers. As profit-oriented organizations, the insurance industry's objectives are in inevitable and irreconcilable opposition to those of its rate payers.

wp