Senate Finance Committee heath insurance reform bill does not include extension of transplant drug coverage

By Bill Peckham

NephrOnline links to a New York Times article Baucus Releases Senate Health Care Proposal, which reports that "the much-ballyhooed, long-wrangled-over Baucus health care proposal, is now on the table". NephrOnline characterizes the Senate Finance Committee bill - America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 - as a "Senate bipartisan proposal". Senator Baucus certainly wanted Republican support for his proposal but at this point calling it bipartisan is optimistic.

Baucus has released the "Chairman's Mark" (223 page PDF file) which is a first draft version of the bill. The Chairman's Mark is readable; there doesn't appear to be anything in the legislation that specifically relates to Medicare's dialysis program. The hope was that the Senate Finance bill would include language to match the language in the House health insurance reform bill HR3200, language that would extend immunosuppressant drug coverage. Immunosuppressant drug coverage does not look to be in the Senate bill but there is still a chance that it could be slipped in when the bill is converted from English to the final legislative language.

So long as the language is in one of the bills (the House bill or the Senate bill) there is a chance the language will make it into the final bill. This would happen during the conference process when leaders of both Houses of Congress meet to meld the House and Senate bills into one piece of legislation. There is a long way to go in this process but at least at this point one of the bills is set to have language that would extend immunosuppressant drug coverage without including an odious extension of the Medicare Secondary Payer provision.

Comments

[A. Nonimus]

Punishment for any failure to get health insurance through the income tax return is Unconstitutional and therefore llegal

Determination of guilt or innocence and punishment for guilt is the job of the judicial branch. The IRS is not part of the Judicial branch.

Punishment without access to the courts violates he prohibition against bills of attainder and the 14th Amendment requirement for "due process".

Since you will be punished without being charged and not given the opportunity to defend yourself, you are deprived of your right to defend yourself ad your property.

The right to remain silent as protected by the 5th Amendment extends to proceedings involving fines, penalties and forfeitures. In other words you cannot be punished for failing to disclose if you have health insurance, and you cannot be PUNISHED for failing to provide that information, as any punishment for a failure to provide information is a "compelling" against the right to remain silent and such a "compelling" is forbidden by the 5th Amendment.