Sen. Brown touts health-care bill

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, touted the virtues of a proposed universal health-insurance plan during a telephonic news conference with reporters from around the state last week.

According to Brown, in his travels around the state he hears urgent indications from taxpayers and small business owners that the federal government needs to do something soon to make health insurance more affordable.

"I really want the public option," Brown said. "I know it will keep the insurance companies more honest."

Brown's conference call, which included President Obama's Director of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle, was part of a huge push by congressional Democrats to pass by next month a $1.5-trillion, 10-year overhaul of the nation's health-coverage system. The plan will require everyone to have health insurance, and require all businesses of a certain size to offer it.

It will also, however, offer a government-sponsored insurance plan for those who can't afford private plans. Funding for the reform plan will be raised by taxing those who earn more than $280,000 a year, levying a financial penalty on those who don't obtain health insurance, and imposing a payroll tax on businesses with payrolls over $250,000 that don't offer insurance plans.

DeParle cited a recent government analysis of health-care costs for Ohio residents and businesses, which found that on average, a single Ohioan with health insurance through an employer pays $4,054 a year (of which the employee's share was $770), and for family coverage, $10,967 (employee share $2,522).

With health-care costs rising at 6.4 percent year from 1991 to 2004, the study found, more than 29 percent of Ohioans surveyed in the last year reported having difficulty paying medical bills.

Athens County was just about right at the state average for this statistic, with 29.1 percent of respondents saying they had found it difficult to meet medical expenses. In neighboring Hocking and Vinton counties the numbers were higher, 41.1 percent and 39.4 percent respectively.

Brown stressed that participation in the government-run insurance plan will be voluntary, and that the plan is meant to provide a competitor to private plans and an option for those who can't otherwise afford insurance.

"The most important thing to know about the bill is, if Ohioans like their insurance, they can keep it," the senator said. "This will make the private insurers behave better."

DeParle called Brown "a key ally of the administration's" in trying to push the health-insurance reform bill through against mounting opposition.

Brown emphasized that Obama sees fixing the country's health-care system as a key factor in addressing the nation's deepening economic woes. He added that having a competing government-subsidized option in health insurance is crucial to keeping private providers honest. Though new regulations can be imposed on private companies to make them offer better service, he said, they "always find a way to game the system."

He compared this approach to former President Clinton's offering of more government-subsidized student loans, a move that Brown said made private banks bring down the "exorbitantly high interest rates" they had been charging for such loans.

He estimated that if the bill is passed, in the first year it could save families up to $2,500 on health-insurance costs.

Though citizens will be required to obtain insurance, and in essence will be fined for not doing so, Brown said the poorest Americans will have their insurance plans almost entirely underwritten, and even the penalty could be covered by government assistance in some cases.

"Everybody will have the ability to get health coverage, but not everybody will... Some people will refuse to get it, I assume," he said.

Those who don't will pay "not a huge fine, but a significant fine, determined by the Department of Health and Human Services," he added. "The very poor will get heavy government support." He said this will include the working poor. A family of four earning less than $44,000 a year, he predicted, would "get a government subsidy that pays the great majority of your health insurance."

Bringing almost all the population under some type of health insurance, Brown added, will also reduce the need to indirectly, and more expensively, subsidize the poor through things like emergency-room visits to charity hospitals.

"We want everybody in the system, so you don't have all the cost-shifting," he explained.

When one reporter asked why Obama should expect to accomplish sweeping health-care reform, when the more modest plan sought by Clinton was shot down in flames. Brown responded that the issue has only become more pressing since Clinton's time.

"The system is just so much more broke than it was 15 years ago," he said.