Obama's health care bullet points

Here are some key points from the White House:

It includes a targeted set of changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Senate-passed health insurance reform bill. The President's Proposal reflects policies from the House-passed bill and the President's priorities. Key changes include:

• Eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid;
• Closing the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole" coverage gap;
• Strengthening the Senate bill's provisions that make insurance affordable for individuals and families;
• Strengthening the provisions to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid;
• Increasing the threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and starting it in 2018 for all plans;
• Improving insurance protections for consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to provide Federal assistance and oversight to States in conducting reviews of unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.

Health care under attack

Health care is under attack by the Republicans. Even though most of Obama’s health care reform won’t go into effect until 2014, Republicans are vowing to repeal the new health care plan.
Tuesday’s elections were a clear display of voter frustration, but Democrats and Republicans continue to argue about what voters actually want. Certainly the economy was a big factor, but was this a vote against health care too? The Republicans certainly think so, saying they owe it to Americans to repeal it.
John Boehner, will assume the role of House Speaker and has vowed to repeal the Healthcare Reform Bill. The future of Health care reform in the U.S. may very well be decided as a new Congress enters office in January 2011.
But repealing the Healthcare Reform Bill may prove a difficult task for Republicans, because Democrats control the Senate and the White House. A true repeal of health care reform is unlikely before 2012.
Even if Boehner had sufficient votes to repeal health care, the Democrats still control the Senate. Should the repeal pass in the Senate it faces a certain Presidential veto and Congress won’t have enough votes to override it.
Republicans are keeping their eyes on 2012 for a full repeal because the White House will be up for grabs again.

New Health Care Bill: Changes Happening in 2010

• Children age 26 and younger will be able to remain covered under their parents health insurance plans (this is increased from past age limits which were anywhere from age 22-25).
• Medicare recipients will receive a $250 rebate to help in closing the “doughnut hole” (with the goal being to close the doughnut hole completely by 2020).
• Health insurance companies will be banned from excluding coverage for pre-existing conditions for children.
• Adults with pre-existing conditions will be eligible for coverage into high risk health insurance pools until future health care exchanges are up and running.
• Health insurance companies will be prohibited from levying annual limits and lifetime limits on coverage.
• All new health insurance plans must provide coverage for preventative services with no out of pocket cost (all health plans will be forced to comply by 2018).
• Those companies that offer health benefits for early retirees ages 55 to 64 will receive assistance from a temporary reinsurance program.
• All new health insurance plans will have to comply with new regulations that lay out an appeals process for when health insurance claims are denied.
• Small businesses that employ less than 50 people are eligible for a tax credit equal to 35% of their health insurance premiums (this increases to 50% by 2014).
 

New Health Care Bill: Changes Happening in 2011

• Medicare will offer wellness visits for free one a year and personalized prevention plans. All new Medicare plans will offer preventative services with no out of pocket cost.
• Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage or the Prescription Drug Plan will receive a 50% discount on brand name drugs immediately with additional prescription drug discounts to follow.
• The current penalty tax of 10% on all distributions from a Health Savings Account before the age of 65 on nonqualified medical expenses will increase to 20%.
• A small business alternative to a cafeteria plan will be presented so that small businesses can offer tax free benefits without having to deal with the administrative costs of a cafeteria plan.
• Everyone earning more than $200,000 as an individual or $250,000 for those who file married filing jointly will have their Medicare payroll tax increased from the current 1.45% to 2.35%.

 

New Government Health Care Pricing Site

A New Marketplace In 2014

In 2014, a new health care marketplace will be established and will ensure that American families and businesses have quality, affordable health care coverage options. In 2014 New, competitive private health insurance exchanges will give millions of Americans and small businesses the ability to pool together and purchase affordable, quality coverage, the same way large employers do. And the exchanges will offer the same choices of coverage that members of Congress will have.

Small businesses with fewer than 25 employees will be eligible for enhanced tax credits to help pay for their employees’ coverage.

Small businesses with up to 100 employees in a state will be able to join SHOP Exchanges, where they can pool together with other businesses to buy affordable, quality coverage for their employees.

Taken together, the provisions of the law are expected to expand coverage to 32 million Americans who would have otherwise been uninsured.

Top 10 facts to know about health care reform

By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 7:09 p.m.

PolitiFact has checked hundreds of claims about health care reform and read the plans under consideration by Congress. As the Democrats move toward a final vote, we've selected 10 facts about the actual health care legislation that every voter should know. Agree with the measure or not, here's what it intends to do and where the big unknowns are. We've linked to our previous reporting on each issue throughout the story; click through for even more sources.

1. The plan is not a government takeover of health care like in Canada or Britain.The government will not take over hospitals or other privately run health care businesses. Doctors will not become government employees, like in Britain. And the U.S. government intends to help people buy insurance from private insurance companies, not pay all the bills like the single-payer system in Canada. The key parts of the current U.S. system -- employer-provided insurance, Medicare for the elderly, Medicaid for the poor -- would stay in place. The government would create health insurance exchanges for people who have to buy insurance on their own, so they could more easily compare plans and prices.

2. Insurance companies will be regulated more heavily. They will be told the minimum services they must cover, including preventive care. They will have to pay out a certain percentage of premiums for patient care. By 2014, when the exchanges open, insurers won't be able to deny customers for pre-existing conditions.

3. Everyone will have to have health insurance or pay a fine, a requirement known as theindividual mandate. The government intends to cap premiums for people who make below a certain income. For people who buy insurance on the exchanges, a family of four making $88,000 would have a cap of 9.5 percent of their income. Lower incomes would have lower caps. The fine for not having insurance would be a minimum of $695 per person per year, with exemptions for financial hardship and other special cases.

4. Employers will not be required to buy insurance for their employees, but large employersmay be subject to fines if they don't provide insurance. But Congress wanted to encourage employers, especially large employers, to offer insurance. So they created a fine for employers with more than 50 workers: If those employees buy insurance on the exchanges and qualify for a low-income credit from the government, then the employer would have to pay a fine. Fines are calculated based on number of employees; for large firms, the fines could be significant.

5. The vast majority of people will not see significant declines in premiums. When President Obama talks about premiums going down, he usually means they won't go up as much as they would otherwise.  For the four out of five people who get their insurance through their employer, the savings would land in the 0 to 3 percent range by 2016, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO. People who buy insurance on their own, but who don't qualify for government subsidies, could actually see their premiums rise by as much as 10 to 13 percent, but that's largely because they'll be getting beefed-up policies that would pay for more basic services, especially preventive care. Low-income people who qualify for new credits to buy insurance would see the biggest drops.

6. The plan might or might not bend the curve on health spending. Critics say there aren't enough provisions to reduce waste or fraud, but Democrats say they're not being given enough credit for new cost-saving pilot programs that could be rapidly expanded. The most recent estimate of the plan, released Thursday by the CBO, said that it would spend $940 billion over 10 years. But new taxes, penalties and cost savings would offset that spending, according to the CBO, so that overall the plan pays for itself, dropping the deficit by slightly $138 billion over 10 years. Obama has said the plan will save more than $1 trillion in the second 10 years, but that estimate, according to the CBO, is highly speculative.

7. The government-run Medicare program will keep paying medical bills for seniors, but it will begin implementing cost controls on health care providers, mostly through penalties and incentives. The legislation would reduce payments for hospital-acquired infections or preventable hospital admissions. For Medicare Advantage, the federal government intends to reduce extra payments, taking away subsidies to private insurance companies. Insurers will likely cut benefits in order to not lose profits. The bill does not address the "doctor's fix," an expected proposal that Congress usually passes to prevent doctors' Medicare payments from severe cuts.

8. Medicaid, a joint federal-state program for the poor, will cover all of the poor, instead of just a few groups the way it currently does. Right now, to qualify for Medicaid, a person has to be poor and also disabled, elderly, pregnant or a child. Under the new plan, all poor adults would qualify.

9. The government won't pay for elective abortions. But under the Senate plan, people will be able to buy insurance that covers abortion on the new health insurance exchanges, as long as the insurance company pays for the services with patient premiums, not taxpayer subsidies. Medicaid has an exemption for cases of rape, incest or the life of the mother.

10. No one is proposing new benefits for illegal immigrants. Some House members had hoped that illegal immigrants would be able to buy insurance with their own money through the new exchanges, but that now appears unlikely.

MYTHS ON HEALTH INSURANCE

• Health insurance reform will use my tax dollars to fund abortions.
• Seniors will not have access to Medicare Advantage plans.
• You will be forced to purchase insurance you can't afford.
• Health reform will lead to massive tax increases and kill jobs.
• You will be forced to purchase insurance you can't afford.
• Businesses will suffer under health reform.
• This bill does nothing to bring down the cost of health care.
• he small business tax credits won't actually provide relief.
• The new law extends coverage to illegal immigrants.

TRUTH BEHIND HEALTH CARE!!!

Linkages between Health and Human Rights