Editor's note: This is the first of a two-day series on health care reform proposals. The second day features the thoughts of the five Republicans vying to challenge Baucus in the fall election.
HELENA - Montana Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the most powerful committee in the U.S. Senate, says he's making health care reform a top priority this year and next - although he hasn't spelled out many detailed proposals.
What he has done is outline five principles he wants to pursue, including "universal coverage," which he defines as making health insurance affordable for all Americans.
Yet Baucus, a Democrat, says he is not talking about the government guaranteeing or providing a basic level of health care, as it does in many industrial nations.
Private insurance companies will still provide a large chunk of the nation's health coverage and most individuals and businesses still will have to buy or somehow obtain their own insurance, he said in an interview Friday.
"We will have insurance companies in America," Baucus said. "We'll have uniquely American solutions.
"Those (other) countries have a different history of the public sector providing health insurance. That's their history, that's their culture. We Americans are a younger country, and we're founded on a principle of independence, on free markets."
Baucus opened hearings last week before the Senate Finance Committee on health care reforms.
Earlier this year, he outlined his principles, which include universal coverage, controlling costs, increased emphasis on disease prevention, and "shared responsibility," meaning that government, individuals, employers and others should help pay for reforms.
He also said he wants to investigate how to create larger health insurance "pools" that people can buy into, and to create a new, independent entity that would research the effectiveness of medical therapies, drugs and treatment, to help control costs.
Baucus said that while the Finance Committee is holding hearings now on health care reform, the real work won't happen until 2009, under a new president and Congress.
"Now is the time to seriously address health care reform," he said. "It's been kind of simmering around the edges for a while, but it's close to reaching a boil right now.
"We really don't have a health care 'system' in America. It's a conglomeration of different groups. Everybody is out trying to do their own thing, trying to make a buck, and a lot of people are falling through the cracks."
Families USA, one of the leading health care national consumer groups, believes Baucus is taking a "pragmatic approach" that can appeal to both Republicans and Democrats, said its deputy executive director, Kathleen Stoll.
Stoll said the broad-based insurance pools of consumers could offer health insurance that would be affordable for people who are older or sicker.
Government subsidies likely would help poor people buy insurance, health insurers might face tighter regulations on price, and some form of controlling costs would be introduced, she said.
"He's been very strong on that principle of sharing risk," Stoll said of Baucus. "I think he is in sync with where (we) want to go.
"The devil's in the details and we're not there yet, but he is providing important core principles for health care reform. He's lowering the ideological divide a bit, and I think that's extremely valuable."
Yet Bob Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said it's hard to judge the Baucus approach because the senator hasn't provided any real details of what he wants or is proposing.
"None of these things are spelled out," Moffit said Friday. "The language doesn't tell me anything about what the policy actually is. It's a good sound bite, but it doesn't say anything."
The Heritage Foundation supports reforming health insurance markets, to give individuals more power to form their own groups and shop for insurance nationwide.
Moffit said it's easy and popular to say that everyone should have affordable coverage, but the trick is how that goal is achieved, and whose freedoms are preserved and whose aren't.
"There is an Orwellian use of language in health care reform, where people say 'contribute,' which really means taxes, and 'responsibility,' which really means mandates," Moffit said.
Baucus said Friday he is considering whether individuals should be mandated to buy health insurance, but that he hasn't decided on the issue.
He also said "nothing is off the table" - except, apparently, a government-financed system that guarantees a level of health care for all.
Baucus said he has invited former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid to a June health care summit in Washington, where Reid will show a version of a recent television piece he did for the Public Broadcasting System on health care systems in other countries.
Reid examined health care in Germany, Taiwan, Switzerland, Japan and Great Britain. Each of the countries guarantees health care for all, either through a government-run system or a tightly regulated system that includes private insurance.
All of the countries developed their systems in the past 50 years, and Switzerland and Taiwan in the past two decades.
Baucus said it's a "tragedy" that 47 million Americans are without health insurance in one of the world's wealthiest nations, and that his goal is to find a way to achieve universal health coverage.
"I want the Finance Committee to be ready, to be ahead of the curve," he said. "That's why I've begun hearings, getting the facts out, pushing the edge of the envelope."
Published on Sunday, May 11, 2008. Last modified on 5/11/2008 at 1:32 am
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Sorry Max..the healthcare horse has been beat to death with no action by you or anyone else in Congress........you know,you COULD could just give ALL Americans the same benefits you and your fellow incompetents have.
So a vote for Iron Max means America is going to have ......(fill in the blanks) health care. Five terms, the head of Senate Finance Committee, with over $10 million in his campaign war chest,and still, all Max can do is act like he is the new guy and has no opinion. Time for a change in Washington, time for Max to retire!
How can the people at the Gazette maintain a straight face while publishing this hogwash? Max hasn't done anything in 30 years. Even his fellow liberal senators pay no attention to him. Its so sad for Montana....
Montana is MAXED OUT!!! Max is always silent until 10-12 months out before an election and then he is ready to fix everything that been broken for the past 30 years, then he goes quietly into the next 5 years before he has to come to life again. This guy has been the biggest phony Montana has ever had in office. Do your State a favor and lets get some new blood, Democrat or Republican, lets get a fresh outlook here and get you off the public dole. Max Baucus, - "he's been in Washington too long". I believe that's the line his party used on Burns for his relection-time to turn the tables.
Max knows less about health care than he does about economics. The scary thing is that this is also true of most of congress. The problem is TOO much government in heath care. If you want waiting lists, less innovation of new drugs and procedures, and less choices when it comes to health care, then by all means vote liberal this November. I have no problem with socialism - as long as they don't try to drag me into it.
The biggest problem with American's health care, which Max doesn't seem to recognize, possibly because he prefers to deal with what is possible, is that health insurance is the problem. As someone who has had good insurance all my life, I am still aware that medical issues have cost me a lot of out-of-pocket money because the U.S. is so concerned with ensuring that people pay their way on health rather than insuring them so health costs don't destroy lives. We need a single payer system with full coverage of everyone and power to deal with the medical community for better pricing. The insurance companies pay about one-third of the so-called retail price of a procedure, but Medicare can't even bargain with the pharmaceutical industy.
this is a joke. Max's Committee is not ahead of the curve on anything. The biggist fiscal crisis facing our nation, social security, medicare and medicaid are all under his jurisdiction and he fiddles away.
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