Faith Letter/Ad: Ahead of Thursday’s bipartisan summit, faith groups placed an ad in The Hill Newspaper calling on the President and Congress to have the courage, vision, leadership, and faith to move meaningful health care reform forward. Nearly 150 national and state/regional organizations signed the letter in the ad, along with 26 national faith leaders.
Bipartisan Summit: While there was certainly a fair bit of political theatre at times, with legislators on both sides reading talking points and spouting divisive rhetoric, there was also a good bit of constructive debate at yesterday’s bipartisan summit – particularly, around issues such as waste, fraud and abuse; minimum standards for insurance policies in the exchange; medical malpractice; and the need for better coordination of care, particularly for those with chronic illnesses. One issue where there was difficulty reaching agreement, was on the issue of coverage:
John Boehner, I looked at your bill; I think, as I said, there’s some overlap on some issues. But when it comes to the coverage issue, the Congressional Budget Office says yours would potentially increase coverage for 3 million people and the efforts of the House and the Senate would cover 30 million… We can have an honest disagreement as to whether we should try to give some help to those 27 million people who don’t have coverage… And it may be that the other side just feels as if, you know what, it’s just not worth us doing that. But one of the things I hope we don’t do is to pretend that somehow, for free, we’re going to be able to get those 30 million people covered. We’re not. If we think it’s important as a society to not leave people out, then we’re going to have to figure out how to pay for it. If we don’t, then we should acknowledge that we’re not going to do that.
— President Barack Obama
As I have yet to see a news report that does a good job of characterizing or summarizing the debate from yesterday, I’m leery to refer to one here for more information. Rather, I would encourage anyone who has the time to watch the summit for themselves. Being aware that most of us don’t have that kind of time, I would encourage you to at least watch President Obama’s opening and closing remarks. A couple of other particularly good speakers were Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) (morning session, 0:59) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) (afternoon session, 1:42).
(For more information on the President’s proposal, see this mid-week blog post)
Anti-Trust Exemption: In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House on Wednesday voted 416-19 to end the antitrust exemption for health insurance companies (HR 4626).
For additional resources on health care reform, visit the Abundant Life health care page.
