Within six months of President Obama signing the healthcare bill into law, you can expect these benefits to begin helping (as reported by Crooks and Liars and USHealthCrisis.com)
- Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday.
- Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions.
- No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage.
- Free preventative care for all.
- Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insurers.
- Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
- The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
- Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
- Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
- No more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.
These are important steps in comprehensive reform, and I think conservative writer and former Bush speechwriter David Frum nails it when he asks:
Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
These reforms are hopefully here to stay. Hopefully, This means that future cancer survivors might not have to face the same hurdles getting the radiation treatment or chemotherapy they need that I faced. Hopefully, This means I don’t have to see students face the challenges of tragic diseases only to be denied healthcare when their parents change carriers. Hopefully, this is only a first step toward a more holistic approach to healthcare in this country.
To clarify, I won’t feel this reform is finished until we have a solid public option available to every person regardless of age, race, gender, income level, or medical history. I won’t see this as finished until pre-existing conditions stop being a problem at all ages. Today, though, is a good step in the right direction, and incremental progress is better than no progress at all.
Update:
I think this quote by E.D. Kain at True/Slant sums things up pretty well:
In the end, perhaps the greatest thing going for this bill is the possibility that it will open future avenues for better reforms down the road. That is not a very compelling argument, of course, but who knows? It may in fact be the most important argument of them all.
