Legislators to host town hall meetings for health-care reform

As the August recess draws to a close, Indiana legislators are meeting with constituents and gaging public opinion on the health care reform bills making their ways through both houses of Congress.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce passed its bill on July 31. It could face a full vote when the House reconvenes in September.

The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved its version in July, and the Finance Committee now faces an informal Sept. 15 deadline from President Obama to produce a final version.

The House bill, called America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, aims to ensure access to affordable health insurance to approximately 40 million uninsured Americans.

The bill would establish a marketplace in which individuals could shop among public and private health insurers.

It would introduce market reforms, including restrictions on insurance companies’ ability to raise premiums and deny coverage. Employers would not be required to provide insurance, but those who don’t would be subject to penalty taxes ranging from 2 to 8 percent of their payroll.

Businesses with payrolls less than $250,000 would be exempt from the tax.

According to the text of the bill, the public option would be financially self-sustainable and compete on a level playing field, meeting the same benefit requirements and complying with the same market reforms as private plans.

Indiana’s Republican congressmen cited concerns about expanded government involvement, higher taxes and the financial durability of the plan.

In July, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the reforms would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about a third, at a cost of $1 trillion dollars over 10 years.

Rep. Dan Burton, R-5th District, opposes the bill and would oppose any version that mandated a government-run program, said Matt Prine, a spokesman for Burton.

“Putting a government official between the patient and the doctor is overstepping the boundaries of what government should do,” Prine said.

He estimated that three-quarters of constituents who have contacted Burton’s office since the bill’s proposal were opposed to it.

In an August editorial, Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd District, called the bill a “bureaucratic maze” and a “federal government takeover.”

But reactions in other districts are more mixed.

Liz Farrar, a spokeswoman for Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-8th District, said constituents have called in advocating a pure single-payer system in which the federal government is the sole provider of health insurance, while others have called for the elimination of Medicaid. Most fell somewhere in the middle.

Ellsworth has not yet taken a definitive position on the bill, but he and the rest of the Blue Dog Coalition will likely play an important role in the fate of the plan.

The group of 52 fiscally conservative House Democrats has already been successful in postponing a vote until after the August recess and in introducing changes to the legislation that will shave $100 billion off its estimated cost.

Congressman Baron Hill, D-9th District, a leader of the Blue Dogs, remains open to discussing other ways to decrease premiums and increase competition within the insurance industry, said Katie Moreau, communications director for Hill’s office.

The request to delay the vote does not indicate a lack of support, but a desire to meet with constituents and gather suggestions from key stakeholders, she said.

“These are significant changes that will dramatically alter the current bill for the better,” Hill said in a press release.

“But, it’s also one step one of a very long process. Step two is going home to Southern Indiana and hearing from direct stakeholders and my constituents about ways we can further improve such legislation.”