Health Affairs

In a Dec. 12 Health Affairs Web Exclusive [free access until Dec. 26], Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George Halvorson and two other Kaiser executives put forward a plan to cover 85 percent of California’s uninsured, and 98 percent of Californians overall, within two years. The plan, which includes an individual mandate and additional assistance for low-income Californians, has been generating quite a bit of debate in places like Crossroads/Healthcare, a health care blog linked to the Sacremento Bee, and the Healthcare Access Blog. Halvorson and colleagues Steve Zatkin and Jay Crosson also won praise for setting out their proposal from incoming House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chair Pete Stark (D-CA).

On Dec. 13, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced his own comprehensive health reform plan with support of labor and business. The Healthy Americans Act would aim to decouple insurance from its employer base and guarantee coverage for all Americans via a pool of private insurance plans.

For more on the future of employer-based health insurance, Health Affairs devoted its Nov/Dec 06 issue of the journal to the theme: “Will Employer Coverage Endure?”

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Access, All Categories, Health Reform, Insurance, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.