Health care reform still faces challenges
WASHINGTON — As President Barack Obama prepared to sign sweeping health insurance changes into law, some states threatened to revolt and the focus Monday turned to the Senate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. signs the Senate Health Reform bill, Monday, March 22, 2010, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
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How many covered
32 million uninsured. Major coverage expansion begins in 2014. When fully phased in, 94 percent of eligible nonelderly Americans would have coverage, compared with 83 percent today.
Cost
$938 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Insurance mandate
Almost everyone is required to be insured or else pay a fine, which takes effect in 2014. There is an exemption for low-income people.
Insurance market reforms
Starting this year, insurers would be forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions, and from canceling policies because someone gets sick. Parents would be able to keep older children on their coverage up to age 26. A new high-risk pool would offer coverage to uninsured people with medical problems until 2014, when the coverage expansion goes into high gear. Major consumer safeguards would also take effect in 2014. Insurers would be prohibited from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more. Insurers could not charge women more.
Medicaid
Expands the federal-state Medicaid insurance program for the poor to cover people with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, $29,327 a year for a family of four. Childless adults would be covered for the first time, starting in 2014. The federal government would pay 100 percent of costs for covering newly eligible individuals through 2016.
If the Senate approves a package of changes this week, a special deal that would have given Nebraska 100 percent federal financing for newly eligible Medicaid recipients in perpetuity would be eliminated. A different, one-time deal negotiated by Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu for her state, Louisiana, worth as much as $300 million, remains in the measure.
Taxes
To make up for the lost revenue, the bill applies an increased Medicare payroll tax to the investment income and to the wages of individuals making more than $200,000, or married couples earning more than $250,000. The tax on investment income would be 3.8 percent. If the Senate follows through, it would impose a 40 percent tax on high-cost insurance plans above the threshold of $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families. The tax would go into effect in 2018.
Prescription drugs
Gradually closes the "doughnut hole” coverage gap in the Medicare prescription drug benefit that seniors fall into once they have spent $2,830. Seniors who hit the gap this year will receive a $250 rebate. Beginning in 2011, seniors in the gap receive a discount on brand name drugs, initially 50 percent off. When the gap is completely eliminated in 2020, seniors will still be responsible for 25 percent of the cost of their medications until Medicare’s catastrophic coverage kicks in.
Employer responsibility
Employers are hit with a fee if the government subsidizes their workers’ coverage. The $2,000-per-employee fee would be assessed on the company’s entire work force, minus an allowance. Companies with 50 or fewer workers are exempt from the requirement.
Subsidies
Aid is available on a sliding scale for households making up to four times the federal poverty level, $88,200 for a family of four. Premiums for a family of four making $44,000 would be capped at around 6 percent of income.
How you choose your health insurance
Small businesses, the self-employed and the uninsured could pick a plan offered through new state-based purchasing pools called exchanges, opening for business in 2014. The exchanges would offer the same kind of purchasing power that employees of big companies already benefit from. People working for medium-to-large firms would not see major changes. But if they lose their jobs or strike out on their own, they may be eligible for subsidized coverage through the exchange.
Government-run plan
No government-run insurance plan. People purchasing coverage through the new insurance exchanges would have the option of signing up for national plans overseen by the same federal office that manages the health plans available to members of Congress. Those plans would be private, but one would have to be nonprofit.
Abortion
The bill tries to maintain a strict separation between taxpayer dollars and private premiums that would pay for abortion coverage. No health plan would be required to offer coverage for abortion. In plans that do cover abortion, policyholders would have to pay for it separately, and that money would have to be kept in a separate account from taxpayer money. States could ban abortion coverage in plans offered through the exchange. Exceptions would be made for cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother.
GOP health care summit ideas
Following a bipartisan health care summit last month, Obama announced he was open to incorporating several Republican ideas into the legislation. But two of the principle ones — hiring investigators to pose as patients and search for fraud at hospitals and increasing spending for medical malpractice reform initiatives — did not make it into the legislation. The measure incorporates only one, an increase in payments to primary care physicians under Medicaid, an idea mentioned by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
The Associated Press
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