Changes to Senate health care bill released
Majority Leader Reid’s office has released the executive summary laying out the changes that have been made to the health care reform bill since it’s initial introduction. I’ve highlighted what I believe are some of the more important provisions.
Here’s Reid’s summary-
Tougher Accountability Policies for Health Insurance Companies
• Stronger medical loss ratios. Health insurers will be required to spend more of their premium revenues on clinical services and quality activities, with less going to administrative costs and profits – or else pay rebates to policyholders. These stricter limits will continue even after the Exchanges begin in 2011, and apply to all plans, including grandfathered plans.
• Accountability for excessive rate increases. A health insurer’s participation in the Exchanges will depend on its performance. Insurers that jack up their premiums before the Exchanges begin will be excluded – a powerful incentive to keep premiums affordable.
• Immediate ban on pre-existing condition exclusions for children. Health insurers will be immediately prohibited from excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for children.
• Patient protections. Health insurers will have to abide by a set of patient protections that, for example, protect choice of doctors and ensure access to emergency care.
• Ensuring access to needed care. The use of annual limits on benefits will be tightly restricted to ensure access to needed care immediately, and will be prohibited completely beginning in 2014.
• Guaranteed opportunity to appeal coverage denials. All health insurers will be required to implement an internal appeals process for coverage denials, and states will ensure the availability of an external appeals process that is independent and holds insurance companies accountable.
Stronger Policies to Make Health Care Affordable
• Innovation. Medicare will be able to test new models and, if successful, implement them via a stronger Innovation Center, Independent Payment Advisory Board, and other authorities.
• Transparency. New requirements will ensure that insurers and health care providers report on their performance, empowering patients to make the best possible decisions.
• Small businesses. A package of improvements include starting the health insurance tax credit in 2010, expanding eligibility for the credit, and improving the purchasing power of small businesses.
More Health Insurance Choices
• Multi-state option. Health insurance carriers will offer plans under the supervision of the Office of Personnel Management, the same entity that oversees health plans for Members of Congress. At least one plan must be non-profit, and the plans will be available nationwide. This will promote competition and choice.
• Free choice vouchers. Workers who qualify for an affordability exemption to the individual responsibility policy but do not qualify for tax credits can take their employer contribution and join an exchange plan.
Improved Access to Quality Health Care for Seniors, Children, and Vulnerable Populations
• Quality of care in Medicare. Seniors will benefit when additional health care providers are reimbursed by Medicare for the quality of care they deliver, not the quantity of services they provide.
• Children’s health. Support will be extended for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the adoption tax credit. Foster care children aging out of Medicaid will be able to retain its comprehensive coverage.
• Community Health Centers. A substantial investment in Community Health Centers will provide funding to expand access to health care in communities where it is most needed.
• Rural and underserved communities. Access will be expanded through funding for rural health care providers and training programs for physician and other types of health care providers.
• Vulnerable populations. A range of new programs will tackle diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and children’s congenital heart disease, will improve the Indian Health System, and will provide support for pregnant teens and victims of domestic violence.
Identifying Alternatives to Litigation
• Testing new models. States will be eligible for grants to test alternatives to civil tort litigation that emphasize patient safety, disclosure of health care errors, and early resolution of disputes, with a provision for patients to opt-out of these alternatives at any time. Alternatives will be evaluated to determine their effectiveness.
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Thanks Rick.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by rickungar, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: Changes to Senate healh bill released http://bit.ly/6w3GVn [...]
This health bill comes with its own dilemma for enforcement:
1. you will go to prison for not buying government health care
2. as soon as you enter prison you will have free government health care from the prison system
So why are you in prison?
You’ll go to jail if you refuse to pay the tax penalty you incur for refusing to buy health insurance (which will not be government-run now that Joe Lieberman and friends have had their way). Our society has shared costs that are paid for with taxes. Tax cheats go to jail in America. That’s how it should be.
In response to another comment. See in context »Actually, I’m pretty sure nobody is going to be going to jail for this one.
In response to another comment. See in context »Well than the Treaury Department must be america’s newest prison….because that is where Obama sent tax cheat Geithner.
Harry reid says 24,000,000 americans won’t be covered in the health bill…who are these 24,000,000, why can’t they be covered….and won’t we have to build new jails to hold all 24,000,000 plus the other millions of patriotic americans who will refuse induction into obamacare?
In response to another comment. See in context »Secretary Geithner paid all the taxes he owed, plus penalties, to the IRS. Thus he is not a tax cheat. That’s how the IRS works – they give you the opportunity to make up for your failure to pay taxes you are determined to owe, and if you refuse to pay them, you are a tax cheat and you go to jail. Rick, you’re exactly right – you’ll only go to jail if you glom yourself up into some kind of tax protester over health care.
In response to another comment. See in context »He is a confessed tax cheat
Will you be watching democracy in action as harry reid has set a health vote for monday morning 1:00 am
see:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/12/19/while-you-sleep-100-am-monday-vote-set-on-obamacare/
I call it a bloodless coup d’état, when harry reid can negate the deomcratic process by buying votes
In response to another comment. See in context »Tim Geithner is not a confessed tax cheat. The Secretary made an error on his taxes. He was working for the IMF at the time, and because the United States is one of the only nations in the world that refuses to negotiate tax treaties with the big international organizations, the formulas for paying your taxes based on wages from an institution like the IMF are complex. I would know because I almost made the same mistake as the Secretary during my time as a contractor to the United Nations. When he was alerted to the error he made, the Secretary resolved his tax debt instantaneously, and with penalties. Tax cheats are people who deliberately hide income to prevent the IRS from being aware of it. Secretary Geithner did not do this.
These are the kinds of facts and the details that a Glenn Beck fan fiction author like yourself is incapable of grasping because you’re only interested in alleging a fantasy in which your rights are taken away. They haven’t been, and you’ll be fine in the morning, and the morning after in January when our President is likely to sign health care reform legislation into law. If the health care mandate is unconstitutional, our conservative-leaning Supreme Court is certain to strike it down, and failing that, a Republican Congress can get itself elected and repeal the Obama health care reforms that it finds odious.
Why do you guys bother attempting to respond to andy with facts? He’s not interested in facts, he’s only interested in attempting to spread lies and half truths.
I have to agree with the vice-president’s column in The New York Times on this one. Those seeking perfection are undermining those seeking to do good. As a liberal, I find this a flawed bill, deeply flawed perhaps, but not fatally flawed. Yet the clamor from the left continues to agitate to have the whole thing tanked. Why is it bad to finally keep insurers from throwing those with pre-existing conditions or those who are too expensive off the insurance bus? That single piece alone strikes me as awfully important. It also answers the question, raised on TrueSlant yesterday, as to why the middle class will be vested in this bill if it becomes law. Such folks come from all socio-economic classes. Their only crime is that they happen to be sick.
Next customer:
$100,000,000 inserted into health bill for senator Dodd
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002956.html
Dems win first vote: Tom Harkin thinks he is voting for universal health care
“Today we are closer than we’ve ever been to making Senator Ted Kennedy’s dream of universal health insurance coverage a reality,” Sen. Tom Harkin said ahead of the vote…”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/21/health-care-passes-key-senate-test/
I think he is confusing it with the health care he gets free from the taxpayers
Well, at first read, it sounds like there is some resemblance of reform in this bill, but I still would prefer they scrap it in favor of something better. We’ve clearly been screwed by health insurance lobbyists and corrupt senators, and our President should have done a better job getting his democrats in line.
I’m not sure I understand the point of having an ‘exchange’ if there is no public option or aggressively negotiating version of medicare to compete with the other providers. Maybe it’s just over my head, but aren’t all the current insurance providers really just branched off of 3 or 4 big companies?
I’m sorry, but in this case, I think the bad is the enemy of the moral/rational.
Our legislative branch is broken.
We need to get all of the old people out of there. (No offense to Rick).
It really amazes me how many people think it’s acceptable to tell millions of people to be patient and wait because they don’t happen to like the way this bill is written. Before you sit there and tell people they should wait a year or two for another bill to be written and passed (if at all) go spend a few hours in an emergency room talking to people who have been sitting there all day because they don’t have insurance and a doctor then come back here and explain to me how you can with any sense of decency explain to me why we should be willing to take a gamble and wait a few years to get a better bill.
Having been forced out of the private insurance health care system due to serious medical problem I’m getting damn tired of people telling me due to their ideology that I should be willing to wait a few years to get the help I desperately need because their nose is out of joint about how this bill has come down.
In response to another comment. See in context »I didn’t say anything about waiting a few years. You inferred that. In fact, if anyone had asked, I hate the way our legislators make you wait years until a bill even takes effect. Our congress is perfectly capable, but clearly unwilling to pass meaningful reform…. THIS YEAR!
In response to another comment. See in context »Sorry eheller but your response is absurd. If you think scrapping this bill and starting all over again doesn’t mean at least a two year wait you have no concept of how these things work. Also could you please explain me to what makes you so certain a “better” bill could get through the congress? How do you expect a better bill to get past a GOP filibuster? Where do you think these votes are going to come from to pass a bill that you approve? Do you think Joe Lieberman is going to suddenly see the light? Do you think Olympia Snow (btw who has proven herself to be a liar by voting against cloture yesterday since this bill meets the criteria that should claimed could get her to support a bill) is suddenly going to jump on board? Tell me the math as to how you see a better bill getting through this congress.
In response to another comment. See in context »My response is far from absurd, just because it is unlikely to happen with our current state of corruption. I understand your realist/pessimist point of view on the situation, and appreciate the desperate need for reform, which is why it surprises me that you’re not as furious as I am about a system that clearly has already let you down. For the record, I have mentioned in the past that the filibuster is a red-herring and the rest of congress needs to grow a pair and call their bluff. They don’t need Lieberman or Snow to pass reform, and the plain and simple truth is that if our president had any kind of control or sway over his democrats (isn’t he the leader of his party?) instead of appearing as a weak cheerleader for moderate change and major compromise, then this health care bill should have looked a whole lot different now than it currently does. I’m a progressive idealist, I admit, but if someone doesn’t say these things, then people will continue to think that it’s OK for the government to keep giving the people who elected them half-a$$ed legislation that does little but give large quantities of cash to companies who lobbied for it with the smallest amount of regulation.
Do I think the bill is a step in the right direction? Well, like I said, I think some things in there look like reform, but I guess we won’t really know if it makes any difference until it takes effect. Get back to us in 5 or 6 years and let us know how you feel about it then.
I have no malice toward anyone who is concerned about getting more people better healthcare.
In response to another comment. See in context »Without Lieberman there are 59 members in the Dem caucus, explain to me how you get past a filibuster without him?
In response to another comment. See in context »Amen!
In response to another comment. See in context »Two questions
1. What do you intend to do with the old people? And, by the way, I’m old but I’m not Medicare old yet!
2. Do you currently have health insurance?
In response to another comment. See in context »Rick or anyone who wants to… can you please explain to Brian why some people like me believe the filibuster is a load of bull?
I have to get some work done.
Happy Holidays, all!
My responses got a bit out of order above so,
To Brian – The Amen was in response to your comment about making people wait for the help they need now. You are so rght.
To Eheller- I was asking you what we should do with the old people and whether or not you have insurance.
As to Eheler’s comment involving the filibuster, while many of us are against it, it still exists whether we like it or not.
Many of the issues you are raising in this debate are discussed in the post I just put up. I suggest you all drop whatever you’re doing and rush to read it!
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Rick Ungar rounds up the major changes to the new bill. Too much to post here, but there are a lot of [...]
RE:Do you like Social Security? Did you know that, as initially passed, millions of people were left out of the program, particularly African-American citizens?
Never heard that one before
The problem with social security…is the Feds instead of investing excess funds as they came in….stole them and put them in the general federal budget
…the opposite of what state and local government has done for 22 million public employees…where they have invested $3 trillion for public employee retirement in wall street, foreoign markets, and real estate
All retirement dollars for teachers, cops, fire, city, state employees come from big profits generated by big evil corporations such as walmart, exxon, insurance giants, etc etc etc
The pension giant CALPERS besides having a $200 billion retirement fund for calfiornia public employees…also has a giant fund invested in wall street generating health dollrs for retired california state workers who all get free health care after they retire….