Obama Offers Health Care Compromise In Advance Of Thursday’s Summit

President Obama offered a detailed health care plan today based on the Senate bill, but with concessions to the House plan.  White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer calls it an “opening bid.”

• The proposal would provide more money to help cash-strapped states pay for Medicaid over the next four years and eliminate the unpopular “donut hole” coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug program.

• Mr. Obama would eliminate a controversial special deal for Nebraska — widely derided by Republicans as the “cornhusker kickback” — that called for the federal government to pay the full cost of a Medicaid expansion for that state. Instead, the White House would help all states absorb the cost of the Medicaid expansion from 2014, when it begins, until 2017.

• …while the president adopts the Senate’s proposed excise tax on high-cost, employer sponsored insurance plans, Mr. Obama makes some crucial adjustments based on an agreement reached in January with organized labor leaders, while also trying to avoid the appearance of special treatment for unions. Most crucially, the president would delay imposing the tax until 2018 for all taxpayers, not just for health benefits provided through collectively-bargained union contracts.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.