Health-insurance firms offer plan for uninsured

WASHINGTON — With Democrats returning to power in Congress and vowing to make health care a top priority, the health-insurance industry Monday unveiled a proposal to extend coverage to nearly 47 million uninsured people.

Ever since former President Clinton's attempt at a sweeping overhaul went down to defeat, due in no small measure to opposition from insurers, the issue has been locked in a stalemate. But the turnover in Congress, coupled with growing pressure from business and labor leaders feeling the pain of rising costs, could open the way for at least some progress.

The proposal by America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, calls for providing coverage within three years to all uninsured children, currently numbering about 8 million, and within 10 years to virtually all adults. The plan includes tax breaks for the working poor and increased spending by the government for Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

The largest of the tax breaks would go for universal health accounts. Individuals could set aside up to $2,000 a year and families up to $4,000 and use the money to pay for any type of health insurance, not just plans that require patients to pay significant upfront costs.

The insurers also called for giving low-income families a tax credit worth up to $500 when they secure health insurance for their children. They said their proposal would go a long way toward providing basic coverage to more than 40 million uninsured.

The trade group made no recommendations as to how the government should pay the bill of $300 billion over 10 years, but it noted that expanding coverage to the uninsured would bring significant savings to the insured. That's because the insured subsidize much of the health care provided to the uninsured in the form of higher monthly premiums.

The proposal also lacked a requirement that employers or individuals buy health insurance, a mandate that many see as essential to reaching the goal of coverage for all. And it failed to deal with the creation of purchasing pools to bargain down the cost of coverage or with industry practices that exclude people in poor health.

Americans spend about $2 trillion a year on health care; about $600 billion of that is from the U.S. government.