Gil Duran, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, email’s over the following statement in response to inquiries about her support for broad health reform.
I support:
1) Reducing costs and expanding coverage
2) Prohibiting the denial of insurance because of pre-existing conditions
3) Moving toward either a non-profit model of medical insurance or to one where premium costs can be controlled, either through competition in a public or cooperative model or through a regulated authority.
4) Assuring the financial survival of Medicare, because it is slated to run out of money in 2017.
5) Preventing the transfer of Medicaid costs to states, which could result in billions of dollars of additional loss to the State of California.
6) Establishing means testing for programs like Medicare Part D, which pays for prescription drugs
Clearly, the individual mandate – and how it is funded – is the critical, and as yet unanswered, question.
Though Democrats don’t bandy about the term too often, the mandate is a provision that will require uninsured people to buy health insurance–private or public–on the individual market. Because many can’t afford their own plans, though, it will require a great deal of subsidy and could, in the short term, impose a significant cost. Without the mandate, health care won’t be universal. But supporters of the public plan note that without a government run option to root out waste and inefficiency, the choices available to consumers will suffer, and private insurance companies will reap windfall profits on the consumer dime.
