Gov't plan can coexist with private insurance

 

Tuesday, Jul 28,2009, 2:24:46 PM   Click:

WASHINGTON_A new health insurance scheme called by President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress could coexist with private insurers, without leading to the bankruptcy, an analysis by experts suggests budget apolitical.

The estimate by the Congressional Budget Office apolitical _ considered good news by Democrats _ who led Monday that leaders make progress on health care review before lawmakers go home for August.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., A floor vote is always possible in the coming days, Democrats and convened a meeting of all members of his home late Monday afternoon. In the Senate, a small group of legislators of both parties to resume negotiations were in search of a difficult compromise.

Obama's ambitious timetable for his top domestic priority has slipped as Democratic dissension has slowed the legislative work.

The White House and congressional Democrats were angered two weeks ago when the budget office director, Douglas Elmendorf, told Congress that the House bill lacked mechanisms to bring health care costs under control.

Now, Democrats are using the budget office's suggestion that a government-run insurance plan would not destroy private insurers to rebut one of the main charges against their proposal _ that it would lead to a federal takeover of the private health insurance marketplace.

The controversy seems far from settled, given uncertainty over projections of how a revamped health care system would work.

Polls have shown that Americans support the idea of a public coverage option as part of health care overhaul. The insurance industry and employer groups say it could drive private insurers out of business, particularly if the government plan had the power to pay medical providers below-market rates.


More than 160 million workers and family members now get health insurance through an employer. A widely cited study by the Lewin Group, a private health research firm, estimated that more than 100 million people would sign up for the public plan proposed by House Democrats, making it the dominant insurer in the land.

But the budget office, in a letter Sunday to a senior Republican lawmaker, said its own estimate for the same legislation is "substantially smaller."

CBO estimates that only 11 million to 12 million people would sign up for the public plan _ making it a much smaller player in the market. The government coverage would be available alongside private plans through a new kind of insurance purchasing pool called an exchange. CBO estimated about 6 million of those enrolled in the public plan would be workers and family members of employers that joined the exchange.

The reasons the estimates are so far apart have to do with different underlying assumptions.