Health Care Reform
Over the past year, since the election of President Barack Obama, there has been a lot of commotion on Capitol Hill regarding health care and how it’s going to affect innumerable groups such as working Americans and middle class, small business owners and entrepreneurs, big businesses and insurance companies, the medical field, the under insured, Medicare and Medicaid, the private sector and the federal budget, senior citizens and children, and many more. The outcome of this will no doubt be historical and change health care radically. For better or for worse is the concern, however. Everyone agrees health care reform is necessary, but there is yet to be any middle ground.
To highlight an example of how messy this situation is, here is an example: The Medicare program is expected to begin operating at a loss by 2015, for lack of funds. The government will no longer be able to afford the program. One proposed point in the new reform would actually cut the program by 500 billion dollars, to “strengthen” and “reform” the program. Nothing in government is that simple, and many political commentators are already in arms over this, as they believe this will only lead to the creation of new offices and programs, burdening the system further. A related but separate proposition would add millions to the program. Unless someone knows something I don't, this isn’t going to work, clearly.
The president, who has been working on this bill with both houses of congress for nearly a year, wants to see these changes :
• Tax credits to the middle class for health care, the largest ever to be seen in this country. It would provide an affordable option to over thirty million citizens, who are currently under insured or not insured at all.
• More competition between insurance providers, driving costs down. Equivalent coverage being stressed, he wants individuals to receive the same coverage options that congressmen and congresswomen have.
• More accountability and responsibility for the medical field, preventing insurance fraud and exploitation. Theoretically, this would also drive down premiums.
• Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage or charge outlandish premiums for people with pre-existing conditions.
• A 10-year plan to reduce the deficit by nearly one hundred billion dollars over the next decade, and a trillion dollars over the following decade.
The additional Patient Protection and Affordable Care act, as quoted from http://www.whitehouse.gov
• Eliminating the Nebraska FMAP provision and providing significant additional Federal financing to all States for the expansion of Medicaid;
• Closing the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap;
• Strengthening the Senate bill’s provisions that make insurance affordable for individuals and families;
• Strengthening the provisions to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid;
• Increasing the threshold for the excise tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500 and starting it in 2018 for all plans;
• Improving insurance protections for consumers and creating a new Health Insurance Rate Authority to provide Federal assistance and oversight to States in conducting reviews of unreasonable rate increases and other unfair practices of insurance plans.
In conclusion, we can only hope lawmakers can put these changes into effect without sinking an entire sector of the private economy, as feared.
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