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Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon tackled questions from women bloggers on health care this week- answering on topics ranging from the public option's chances to exactly how the proposed reform would work for a particular family.
You can listen to audio of Senator Merkley's call here:
Or you can read the transcript here:
**start transcript**
Nancy Watzman: Hi. Welcome everyone. I’m Nancy Watsman of the Sunlight Foundation, representing BlogHer today in their community journalism initiative on healthcare policy.
The Sunlight Foundation is a nonpartisan, non-profit dedicated to using the power of the internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency.
As CEO, Lisa Stone, announced BlogHer has been sponsoring a bipartisan series of telephone conference call to connect women bloggers directly with their legislators.
Today on the call we’re lucky to have Jeff Merkley from Oregon and I’d like to turn it over to him for a brief introduction and then we’ll start taking questions.
Jeff Merkley: Thank you very much Nancy and thank you to the entire community of BlogHer for allowing me to participate. I’m pleased to be here to discuss current efforts of - our current efforts to reform our healthcare system.
I’m a member of the Health Education Labor and Pensions committee or better known by the acronym HELP committee. And that committee put out a healthcare reform bill in July. Just last week we received a bill out of the finance committee as well and those two bills are being merged.
They are different in some significant ways. One is that the bill from the HELP committee had a strong, robust public option. The bill from the finance committee does not.
There are a host of issues that are really at the heart of this reform but perhaps the very heart is the idea of creating a market sometimes called a gateway or exchange where every individual and business can go and select from a range of healthcare insurance choices.
This enables our individuals and small businesses that have had to buy insurance on their own, to buy now by being a part of a very large pool. And by so doing, getting a much better price and much better range of choices.
So that’s at the heart of this. Also key pieces are investment in prevention, investment in disease management, a series of insurance reforms such as the insurance company would have to accept anyone who applied - guaranteed acceptance.
They would have to cover existing conditions or preexisting conditions. And they could not dump folks out of health insurance once they were members of the plan. Currently you can pay your premiums for 15 years, get seriously ill and then have the insurance not renew your insurance.
And that’s really outrageous and unfair and it needs to stop. So we have insurance reforms. We have an extension of insurance so those who don’t have it. And we have serious efforts such as the public option to bend the cost curve.
So that’s - those are kind of the three big components. And with that, I’ll just thank you again for inviting me to be a part of this conversation.
Nancy Watzman: Okay. Let’s move to questions. Can we get the first caller?
Operator: Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to register a question please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. You’ll hear a three toned prompt to acknowledge your request.
If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw that registration please press the 1 followed by the 3. If you’re using a speakerphone we do ask that you please lift your handset before entering that request.
One brief moment for our first question. Our first question comes from line number 678W. Please proceed with your question.
(Danine): Hi. My name is (Danine) and I’m calling from Wisconsin. I had a spinal cord injury in 2005 and I was paralyzed from the neck down. I have recovered my mobility for the most part but I have a lot of health problems.
And I’ve been on disability and Medicaid since then. I’m hoping to work my way toward self employment but in order to do that I need affordable health insurance. And I need - my guess is that the best way to do that is through a public option.
We’ve heard Senator, recently that they’re talking about talking about a public option in combining the two bills. What is the status of the public option in the Senate?
Jeff Merkley: (Danine) thank you for your call and I’m
