Great questions!I'll check back to answer/follow-up as time allows. For those of you who want to be informed but feel like reading this and that is too much can I suggest two great resources?http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Topics/Reform.aspx (each of the topics on the left has a separate RSS feed so you can subscribe just to the topics that matter to you) http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=daily2_fullreport (again, an RSS feed)These will give you headlines and then you can -- time allowing -- click to read the full story.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

Cooper, yes I think the media is doing a better job. We've lost the Harry and Louise ads because the insurance industry is riding along (to greater and lesser degress). In 93 Clinton presented a bill to Congress. WRONG. We have three branches of government for a reason. If the president we supposed to draft bills then he would be the head of Congress and we'd be closer to a parliamentary system.This time around the WH is participating but Congress is drafting and really taking a active role in having a wide array of witnesses up to talk about health reform. I've been to some 15 witnesses hearings that went ALL DAY. Different committees are (and have been) forming work groups, etc. And frankly people are more frightened. The economy is terrible, companies are losing market share because health costs are eating them alive... And really, Obama has come out so strongly for reform that I think NOT doing something would be seen as abject failure on his part.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

Brandie asked if I think Congress is taking on too much too fast. Specifically she mentioned cap and trade (a climate change bill) being 1300 pages and then a vote the next day.Well, the 24-hour vote thing is really a myth. Yes, the FINAL version of bill didn't come out until a few hours before but that bill had been worked over. There are LOTS of bills that come to the floor with only a few days or hours notice and many are hundreds of pages. But for the most part, the majority and minority help their members (except when they don't want too and start waiving their arms and crying uncle to divert attention) with talking points  and summaries. The Cong Research Service provides summaries. Committees have hearings and markups and summaries. It is almost never a fast process. I'll dig up a post I did over at MOMocrats to illustrate this point better. Do things get missed? Sure. To paraphrase Pat Schroeder (a fav fmr rep of mine) "No one wheels a truck behind them with the code of federal regulations in the back." So stuff gets tacked on (called non germane amds) but some of that can be limited by the rule that governs debate on the floor . Brief civics lesson: When legislation comes to the floor, it is either governed by a rule (from the House Rules committee, which sets the time for debate, decides what amendments are in order, etc.) or not. If it not under a rule, it on the suspension calendar and is usually something that is noncontroversial like a proclamation recogizing National Child Abuse Prevention Week.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

For those of you asking questions about child care, end of life care, or eldercare... The answer is that I don't know. I know there is plenty of attention being paid to eldercare/http://http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=28231 /hospice as part of the contiuum of care. And it is true that most people want a different death experience than they actually receive. I'd try Death With Dignity or maybe National Palliative Care Assoc. for details on their efforts to include certain provisions in the billWith regard to child care. Physical care for children would be quite good, I think, under the bill. States have been v. successful with SCHIP and so I think could be successful here too. If you're speaking about daycare or developmental care for kids, the answer again is "I don't know." I'm honestly still wading thru the 600+ p Senate bill draft and the House committee draft. And it changes day-to-day too -- there were over 300 amendments pending the Senate bill when the HELP committee started work.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

Re: CJF's questions about keeping costs down. I think one of big areas in reducing spending is something called comparative effectiveness research. CER, when combined with electronic health records, could save money by finding out what treatments are the most effective for the least money. If you have treatment A and it works as well, or very nearly so, as treatment B, and it costs substantially less, then we should use it. This is an oversimplication, of course.Still, the honest truth is that we don't know, for many treatments/interventions, what works best. Many states have high medical practice rates so some tests and whatnot are ordered to ward off lawsuits -- which is why I support tort reform.Commonwealth Fund has some great stuff on improving quality thru CER: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Publications/In-the-Literature/2009/June/Comparative-Effectiveness-Research.aspx

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

Hi all, I'm your host, Melissa. I'm posting my in my profile, in case anyone is wondering who I am, what I do, and how I came to be an "expert" on health reform. I put expert in quotes intentionally -- this is BIG topic and I'm hard-pressed to think of anyone who knows all the details well. I just wanted to make one thing clear before we start: I'm here today as a topical expert, not a representative of my organization. Opinions expressed are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer, any member of Congress, or the Women's Caucus. With that out of the way, I look forward to your questions!

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

The op-ed that Cooper references below, by Paul O'Neill, if a great example of an opportunity to save money and do good. Re-hospitalization are a HUGE money suck -- I'm with O'Neill that we need better transparency/reporting of medical erros and hospital infections. When I went to California for the first time, I was amazed to see health dept letter grades posted at restaurants. I mean, restaurants! They should be posted in doctors' office and hospital admitting too! Re: Krugman. He has better inside info than I do.  CBO scoring is complicated but Senate HELP is managing. Ezra Klein over at Wash Post actually posted a PDF of the CBO document.... I'll look for it.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

Julie asked what will be covered state to state. The honest answer is "I don't know."Some states -- TX, AZ -- have very few, if any, insurance regulations. Others, like my home state of MD, are high-mandate states. That is, they require insurers to cover lots of different kinds of care. As a result, insurance in high mandate states is typically more expensive. Some of the high mandate v. low mandate state thing is tied up with unions too. When unions couldn't increase wages as fast, they could increase ins. benefits so some high union states have generally better benefits packages.At the moment, it looks like most everything covered by http://http://www.cms.hhs.gov/medicaidearlyperiodicscrn/02_benefits.asp will be required coverage for all plans, public or private, if they want to participate in what Obama has called the exchange. The exchange would help uninsured folks buy insurance from a variety of plans -- private and public. You can read a summary of the Health Insurance Exchange on pp. 6-7 http://http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/HealthCareFullPlan.pdf .I think quite a bit depends on the shakeout. The House's plan is more liberal, the Senate more conservative. And there are fights within -- the HELP Committee officially headed by Kennedy but with Dodd taking charge is more liberal than Senate Finance headed by Max Baucus.

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

re: A public plan. And will it really cost a TRILLION dollars? Hi Julie! Thanks for asking about a public plan. For now, it seems some sort of public plan will be included along with health reform. That means a plan paid for and perhaps administered by the federal government. We already have some of these -- Medicaid, Medicare, etc. Some work well (the Veterans Administration is touted for being an cost-savings innovator while still providing quality care); some don't (Medicaid reimbursement rates are low, compared to private ins., so it is very difficult in some areas to find a doc and esp. a dentist). The public plan might only be open to some -- say those making 400% of the federal poverty line (about 88k for a family of 4). And it might not be created unless private insurers fail to meet some obligations (see this for details: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/kerry-pushes-for-public-o_n_220822.html). It might be a regional system like states that self-insure, or a co-op plan where members (doctors and hospitals) own the system and have subsidies. But onto the MONEY... That oft-repeated figure of ONE TRILLION sounds scary. But try to think about it like this -- it is $100 billion a year over 10 years. To cover some 45-50 million Americans. A lot of the costs are front-loaded because we need research to know if X treatment works better than Y treatment (comparative effectiveness research). We need loan money or subsidies to train primary care health professionals -- we're short about 500k nurses. We need funds to set up electronic medical records. Also, think about this the next time you hear someone getting hysterical about costs: Every year, Congress passes a bill to fund the Depts. of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. That bill? In FY2009 the Senate proposed $626 BILLION for JUST ONE YEAR (including spending on Medicaid and Medicare).

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.

From the NY Times, 4/6/09

AT 1 pm EST, MONDAY, JULY 6: Find out all you need to know about what is in store for the future of healthcare - especially as it pertains to women and families. Want to know more about what the pending healthcare legislation means to you? You may wonder - what is a public health plan and does it mean I'll have to give up my health insurance? We all have so many questions and we have a leading expert to help! Join us as we talk about these and many more questions with Melissa Schober, Senior Legislative Analyst at Women's Policy, Inc.