A bi-partisan coali­tion of Sen­a­tors in the Finance Com­mit­tee will unveil their plan Medicare to insure more peo­ple in the U.S. The chair­man of the com­mit­tee Sen­a­tor Max Bau­cus, a Mon­tana Demo­c­rat will begin to debate the “Backus” health care plan this week.

Today’s Atlanta Jour­nal Con­sti­tu­tion has a great break­down of the plan, includ­ing how much it costs, who it will be paid for and more. The plan plans on cov­er­ing 95 per­cent of Amer­i­cans at a cost of 900 bil­lion over 10 years. The plan will not cover ille­gal immi­grants, and hopes to have the states pick up some of the cost.

For our snip­pet on this story, we go to the New York Times Blogs, writer By David M. Her­szen­horn tells us some of the par­tic­u­lars of the plan.

The House leg­is­la­tion, as well as a Sen­ate frame­work released by Mr. Bau­cus, calls for rais­ing the income eli­gi­bil­ity thresh­old for Med­ic­aid to 133 per­cent of the fed­eral poverty level — a fig­ure that for 2009 trans­lates to about $14,400 for an individual.

A big change is that child­less adults under age 65 who are now typ­i­cally excluded from Med­ic­aid will be eli­gi­ble. So will many par­ents who now often face tighter restrictions.

Cur­rently, states must offer Med­ic­aid to preg­nant women and to chil­dren under age 6 from fam­i­lies with income under 133 per­cent of the poverty level. States must also offer cov­er­age to chil­dren age 6 to 18 from fam­i­lies with income below the poverty line.

And though many states have set higher thresh­olds for chil­dren, typ­i­cally at more than 200 per­cent of poverty, many par­ents of these chil­dren do not have cov­er­age. Only 11 states cover par­ents earn­ing more than 133 per­cent of poverty.

Experts esti­mate that roughly one-third of Amer­i­cans who cur­rently lack insur­ance earn less than 133 per­cent of the poverty limit — a group of 10 mil­lion peo­ple who might join Medicare under the pro­posed new rules.

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