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The measures would bar insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions and for the first time limit their ability to charge higher premiums on the basis of age or family size. Expanded coverage would be paid for by cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from future Medicare payments to health care providers. Each house also envisions higher taxes
-- an income tax surcharge on million-dollar wage-earners in the case of the House, and a new excise levy on insurance companies selling high-cost policies in the Senate Finance Committee bill. Apart from Snowe, Finance Committee Republicans cited higher taxes, a greater federal role in the insurance industry and other concerns as they lined up to oppose the bill. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the legislation would place the nation on a "slippery slope to more and more government control of health care."
Snowe said there were problems with the bill, but the risks of doing nothing were too great. "We should also contemplate the decades of inaction that have brought us to this crossroads," she said. "The status quo approach has produced one glaring common denominator, that is that we have a problem that is growing worse, not better." Across the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants have been at work for weeks trying to blend legislation approved by three House committees. The eventual result is certain to include a government option, but the details of the plan have split the rank and file and leaders have spent days struggling with the issue.
[Associated
Press;
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