June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The largest expansion of U.S. health care since the creation of Medicare in 1965 may emerge from legislation designed to reshape the medical industry and change how Americans receive and pay for care.
Congress today begins crafting legislation that Democratic leaders plan to push through both chambers by their August recess. The measure may require all Americans to get medical insurance, force insurers to accept all patients and end the tax break for employer-paid health benefits. These changes may be hammered out with unprecedented speed at the urging of President Barack Obama, who four days ago said “this is the moment.” The U.S. will spend more than $2 trillion this year on health care, the Health and Human Services department reported in February.
Obama has made a health-care overhaul his top domestic priority, using his February budget proposal to call it a “moral” imperative to extend coverage to the country’s 46 million uninsured. Obama also tied the long-term fiscal soundness of the U.S. to controlling medical costs. Health care consumes 18 percent of the U.S. economy and may rise to 34 percent by 2040, the White House Council of Economic Advisers reported June 2. The coming weeks will be pivotal if the House and Senate are to meet their goal to send Obama a single bill in October. “The president wants a bill by Oct. 15,” Baucus said in an interview yesterday. “He’ll get it.”
One issue is taxing employer-provided health benefits, which Obama opposed during his presidential campaign. In an interview yesterday with Bloomberg News, Obama said he wouldn’t rule out such a proposal.
“I don’t want to predetermine the best way to do this,” he said. “I’ve already put forward what I think is the best way. Let me see what comes out of the Hill and we’ll have that debate then.”
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