Claim: Baucus health proposal written by former health insurance VP

BY DANIEL TENCER
RAWSTORY
Published: September 9, 2009

The compromise health care reform proposal introduced by Sen. Max Baucus on Monday appears to have been literally written by a former health insurance company vice president, several bloggers asserted Wednesday.

The proposal, which does not provide a public option but compels individuals to purchase health insurance, was written by Liz Fowler, a former vice president of WellPoint and currently the senior counsel to Baucus, writes blogger Marcy Wheeler at the Firedoglake Web site.

Wheeler points out that the name “Liz Fowler” appears as the author in the document properties of the PDF file circulated by Baucus’ staff earlier this week. (The PDF can be found here. To see the author, save it to your hard drive, right-click on the icon, and select “Properties.”)

However, it’s unclear to what extent Fowler wrote the document herself. As Jane Hamsher pointed out Wednesday morning at her Campaign Silo blog, parts of the document match, almost word for word, a health bill amendment put forward by House Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas, a Blue Dog Democrat, in July.

Hamsher cites blogger Jon Walker’s comparison of the two texts:

Ross’ amendment:

• The governing documents of the cooperatives incorporate ethical and conflict of interest standards designed to protect against insurance industry involvement and interference in the governance of the cooperative.
• Baucus’ framework:
• Its governing documents must incorporate ethics and conflict of interest standards protecting against insurance industry involvement and interference.

The health reform proposal was put forward by Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat who is part of the “gang of six” Republican and Democratic senators who are working on a compromise health plan that could pass the Senate.

Amanda Terkel reported at ThinkProgress on Tuesday that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs admitted the document had been sent to special-interest groups before it reached the White House.

The plan has taken criticism from all sides, not least because of its requirement that all individuals under the age of 65 must purchase health care coverage, under a penalty of $3,800, as Jed Lewison states at Daily Kos.

By comparison, under the plan, the penalty for companies employing 50 or more people that do not purchase health insurance for their employees would be $400 per employee — a fraction of what it would cost to cover those employees, and therefore unlikely to serve as incentive to purchase employer-provided health care.

Even without a public health option, the Baucus plan is estimated to cost $850 billion to $900 billion over 10 years, according to the New York Times.

NBC’s Ken Strickland reports that the “gang of six” have not decided yet whether to accept Baucus’ proposal.