NEW HELP Committee Bill

The Washington Post and AP are reporting that there is a new revision to the Senate HELP Committee health care reform bill. I'm still trying to get ahold of a copy of the revision, most sources are only giving a vague overview from a pre-July 4 holiday letter sent out by Kennedy and Dodd, and it's not posted on the HELP Committee site.

Cost is down to $611.4 billion over 10 years from over $1 trillion for the original bill. That makes me wonder if they abandoned the CLASS Act for disabled adults.

As of now it looks like mandates stay that there will be a $750 per full-time worker and a $375 per part-time worker annual fee on companies that do not cover their employees. Employers with fewer than 25 employees are exempt which strikes me as odd because those are the people who generally have the problems not getting employer based coverage. However, they say the new provisions, including an expansion of Medicaid, will cover 97% of Americans. That, however, may change as the Finance Committee scales back its proposed expansion of Medicaid. No word on the cost to individuals who cannot afford coverage.