Exposing the Senate Healthcare Bill (Problems #1 - 2

I recently have downloaded the full text of the Senate Healthcare Reform bill - which can be located and downloaded here.

Over the course of the upcoming days, and weeks, I will be reading through the bill, and to the best of my ability, highlighting passages and sections that I feel hold severe problems in an effort to bring the light of public scrutiny to this bill.

#1- With Medicare and Medicaid having huge unfunded liabilities, the Senate bill has a provision to allow for a new Medicare/Medicaid for those who aren't eligible for the original Medicare/Medicaid. So we are going to take a program that is failing, and create a copy of such a failing program to allow for more people to enter such a program?

‘‘SEC. 2228. STATE FLEXIBILITY TO ESTABLISH BASIC HEALTH PROGRAMS FOR LOW-INCOME INDIVIDUALS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR MEDICAID.

#2 - On Pages 70-72 of the bill there are sections regarding the transferring of funds to states. This section states that a fund can be established for states who do NOT opt out of the public option, and the amount of funds will be determined by "secretarial determination". So although some Senators will vote for a public option if states will be allowed to opt out, the states will be penalized by not receiving funds that other states, possibly neighboring states, will receive to lower premium costs. This is an attempt to create a de-facto public option.