Ten more things about the official Kennedy-Dodd health care bill

The Senate HELP Committee staff has filed an official copy of their draft legislation with the Senate clerk. A friend and I were discussing today two possible tactical scenarios:

  1. The weekend leak forced the majority staff to release their official text as damage control. Under this scenario, filing the official copy is a damage mitigation strategy: “If there’s going to be a version out there, let’s at least have it be a version we want.”
  2. The weekend leak was by the majority staff, and filing the official text is part of a gradual rollout strategy.

I’m guessing scenario 1 is right. Either way, we now have official text to chew on. This text is more expansive than the leaked version I posted Monday. It contains some new items, but is largely identical to the leaked draft.

More importantly, I have now had more time to read the 615 page bill. (I skimmed some parts.) Doing so turned up some things I missed the first time. So here are ten more things you should know about the official draft of the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill.

(Editorial note: I have made a page that will always have the latest version of this complete list, along with the comparison to the House Democrats’ bill. I will also post when I update that page.)

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  • The employer mandate section from the leaked draft has been replaced with [Policy under discussion].

    A few inside friends confirmed my guess – they think this is a tactical move by the majority staff to try to relieve blowback from the employer groups: Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, NFIB (the small business lobby), etc. Until it is otherwise demonstrated, I will continue to assume that the Chairman’s mark will include language that will roughly parallel that in the leaked draft.
  • The bill gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services authority to limit premiums and profits of health plans by forcing plans to rebate to enrollees premiums above a certain margin.
    Specifically,  section 2704(a) is the “Requirement to provide value for premium payments.” A health plan must report how much of their premium revenues are used for clinical services, how much for “activities that improve health care quality,” and how much for “all other non-claims costs.”Section 2704(b)(1) then tells the Secretary to look at how much other health plans spent on “all other non-claims costs,” […]