Big Release

by digby

As dday mentions in the previous post, the House has finally released its plan "America's Affordable Health Choices Act" and, pending those issues dday talks about, according to Jonathan Cohn, it looks pretty good:

The three House committees writing health care legislation have just released the full text of their bill. And my immediate, admittedly tentative reaction is strongly positive. Once fully implemented, this reform plan will accomplish most of the goals on my mental checklist:

Cohn says it takes longer to come fully online than he would have hoped, but that is likely due to the arbitrary budget cap.

The "public plan" is actually several public plans, all of which will be available as soon as the plan is operational. (This should not be confused with the HCAN requirement of "available on day one" which was in response to the trigger option, which is not included. It was never intended to be a requirement that everyone be covered the day the bill was signed, which would be physically impossible.)

As dday points out, this plan is self-financing, so any nonsense about "taxpayers being forced to pay for things they don't believe in" (in my case, paying for John Ensign's Viagra) must be ignored. Premiums will pay for this, so if you don't like what it covers, don't buy it.

I'll look forward to reading everyone's impressions of the bill as the wonks get their grubby paws on it. But remember, it's only step one. We stil have to see what emerges from the House of Lords. And then the games really begin.



.