Check out your local or national news sources, open your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and walk into your nearest coffee shop – the talk is on the House’s historic health reform package passage last night.
In fact, nothing of this magnitude has touched our health care system since Medicare and Medicaid in the 60’s. And while it is the talk of the town… many don’t really know what the current legislation means for them, their families, or their country.
So what’s in the bill? Here are some of the “Cliff Notes”:
•Extends coverage to another 32 million Americans over the next 10 years. How? By making it easier to qualify for Medicaid; and providing subsidies (money the government gives you without any promise of paying it back) for low income individuals and families to buy insurance.
•Requires all Americans to buy health insurance or face a yearly penalty. The initial penalty (starting in 2014) will be $95. By 2016, the penalty would be either: a flat fee of $695 or 2.5 percent of your income.
•Employers not offering coverage could pay up to $2,000 per worker as a penalty.
•Bans insurers from denying coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions (begins in 2014) and a requirement that adult children be permitted to stay on their parents' policies until age 26 (begins this year).
•Taxes on high-cost insurance plans (often referred to as “Cadillac” plans) beginning in 2018. Applies to health plans that cost more than $10,200 a year for individuals and $23,000 a year for families.
•Any individual making above $200,000 or couples making above $250,000, pay increased taxes on their income.
•Insurers face more federal regulation and a new premium tax starting in 2014.
•$250 million has been allotted to fight waste, fraud and abuse.
So what’s NOT in the bill?
The elephant in the room is cost containment. The bill does not fully address how to slow the inherent, rising cost of health care.
Technology is more expensive; we’re using services at an increasing rate; Americans have chronic conditions that require not only prevention by physicians but lifestyle changes by patients; and the cost of pharmaceuticals like biologics (like the medicines used to treat cancer) keep increasing – just to name a few.
You can learn more about the bill and hear other Americans’ opinions on it by visiting the following sources:
MSNBC- what Americans really think about health care reform
Health Care Reform – What it is and isn’t
So it passed. What happens now?
In short,a new era in America’s health care system is underway. While many effects of the bill won’t be felt for a few years, the transition is beginning.
Learn more about rising health care costs and what you can do as a consumer to contain them. Visit www.WhatsTheRealCost.org.
