What's in the federal health care bill for this year? A refresher.
Chip Shields
There's a good summary in the Report of Financial Examination that Oregon conducted on Providence Health Plans on what's in the federal health care law for this year. I thought BlueOregon readers might appreciate it. Here are the elements. They begin 9/23/10:
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no lifetime limits on benefits.
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restricted annual limits on benefits.
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insurers cannot rescind coverage except for fraud.
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certain preventative services and immunizations will be required to be covered.
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unmarried children can remain on parents' health plan until age 26 and
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children cannot be denied coverage on employment-based plans for pre-existing conditions.
There you have it.
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7:29 p.m.
Sep 14, '10
So, let the GOP go public about being against all those things.
8:38 p.m.
Sep 14, '10
And to pay for it beginning 2011 all FSA's will no longer be able to purchase OTC medications with pre-tax dollars (unless prescribed; kind of backwards). But in 2013 FSA's now generally allowed up to $5,000 will be capped at $2,000.
Also according to a Jult 2010 study these changes will add about 2.6% to all insurance renewals. Also, 57% of group health plans will significantly raise the dependent employee cost to be on employer plans to pay for the inclision of dependents up to age 26.
9:09 p.m.
Sep 14, '10
Fewer choices, more mandates, and higher costs. I would like to hear people argue against these things, and I am sure that we will.
9:15 a.m.
Sep 15, '10
To be fair, there are lots of choices right now and there have been for quite some time. Yet healthcare in this country continues cost skyrocketing.
If your answer to higher costs is the old ideological saw of more choices--then I submit that you're riding under the definition of crazy: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.
It ain't happening.
6:26 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
I am not promoting doing the same thing we have been doing. I think it is crazy to think that health care currently operates as a free market, and that our only options are what we have now and a single-payer system.
8:12 a.m.
Sep 16, '10
Ed: under most every objective metric, single-payer is the most cost-effective, efficient way to get health care delivered.
Besides "socialism", what other reasons do you have for disagreeing with it?
8:03 p.m.
Sep 16, '10
Carla, that is simply not true. Would you promote single-payer delivery of food? Automobiles? Anything else? We sit here, living proof of the advantages of a free market, and you promote an approach that has been proven faulty on numerous occasions. I am baffled.
8:19 p.m.
Sep 16, '10
Actually it is true. Under most every objective metric, single-payer is the most cost-effective, efficient way to get health care delivered.
That is verifiable fact supported by actual data.
But you trot out the phony slippery-slope blather.
9:58 a.m.
Sep 15, '10
So you would rather that people not have to have insurance and only when they have a medical issue, they have go to an ER to get the most expensive, least-effective treatment with the cost shifted to you and the rest of us?
6:12 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
You make it sound like those are the only two options. Not the case.
8:18 p.m.
Sep 16, '10
Really? Explain the option then for uninsured people that can't afford private insurance to get non-ER treatment please. A public clinic which you pay for through taxes?
9:16 p.m.
Sep 14, '10
Sorry, the study was performed by Mercer Consulting
9:20 p.m.
Sep 14, '10
Ah yes, but you repugs do love those recisions and exclusions, especially for the children. The increase the profits for your favorite corporate medical insurance bandits. Thanks to this health care bill my sister-in law with cancer will now be able to live, my younger brother's kids who are over 18 will be able to have health insurance. Explain to the American people why someone with a prior condition should die, explain why someone without group coverage can't get the same deal as someone who does at a state market place. Go sell your repeal to those people and explain why 30% of their health care dollar needs to go to corporate profits.
6:31 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
Bill, why do you want politicians involved in your health care in the first place? I sure don't. BTW, who is the 'repug' you are referring to?
PS - And what in the world is your issue with corporate profits? You act like it is a sin to improve your lot in life.
8:23 p.m.
Sep 16, '10
Funny, corporations would realize more profit if we had a single payer system and no longer had to care the cost of healthcare on their books.
Why do you want insurance company beancounters over-ruling your doctor?
12:35 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
Did anyone from Blue Oregon attend the Oregon Health Authority forum in Portland on Monday night? Or any correspondents attend any of the others around the state?
I went to the Portland forum and I left more discouraged by the way reform is shaping up than I went in. It was interesting how much support there was in the audience for single-payer (interesting, as opposed to surprising, this being Portland), but it's clear that the new system being devised is going to struggle mightily attempting to provide anything resembling fair access to everyone. I'm not convinced it is going to work, and what I'm afraid will happen is that it will be so spectacularly expensive that it will unravel before real reform -- reform that recognizes that our insurance model doesn't work for delivering basic health care -- will have a chance to take hold.
1:09 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
This is why the public option was so critical (and can still be added) in being the bridge to single payer through basic self-interest of individuals.
2:38 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
Agreed. Hopefully, like social security, this law will be seen as a starting point.
6:44 p.m.
Sep 15, '10
Many people here are presenting a false choice: You must either choose what you currently have, or choose single-payer government run health care. That is a gross misrepresentation of the issues. There are a lot of other options available; perhaps people have been stuck in the existing system for so long that they have lost perspective.
8:22 p.m.
Sep 16, '10
Sure there are more expensive, less effective options than single payer, but I would rather we go for the most effective (both in terms of cost and effectiveness of coverage) system.