House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) today unveiled an $894 billion reform bill that would provide insurance to up to 36 million people by expanding Medicaid and offering subsidies to moderate-income Americans to purchase insurance privately or through a new public plan option.
As proposed, reimbursement rates in the public plan would be negotiated between providers and federal health officials; they would not be based on Medicare rates.
The bill would expand Medicaid eligibility levels to 150 percent of the federal poverty level for all adults, a higher level than in earlier drafts of the legislation.
The bill would impose a new income surtax on individuals earning more than $500,000 and couples earning more than $1 million. In this respect, it differs from the measure under development by Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), which would impose a tax on high-cost insurance policies in lieu of a personal income surtax.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the House bill would reduce future federal deficits by about $30 million over the next 10 years.
